It wasn't a mystery anymore to connect the dots on how their marriage proposal had took shape after his revelation and they remained at their own ends of the mattress blinking at the vastness of lies that surrounded them that night. Everything was explained: why they had insisted that the wedding take place within a week since they had made the first phone call or the fact that he didn't try reaching her even once before they took their vows.
"Now I know why you didn't call me..." She said and he turned to face her back, while she stayed still as a rock.
"You were embarrassed..." Her voice sounded steady as she spoke with no overpowering emotions ruffle her sense of calm that finally began coursing her body; from having realized he hadn't insensitively undermined what they shared all those years, "And thinking that I had been the one who had proposed, you didn't want to rub it in that I was no less an hypocrite for having condescendingly looked down at all those friends of us who had eventually turned into couples"
"And I'm sure, you thought no high of me either..." There was some of that regret in his voice too; that he hadn't acted on it sooner to dig further into the proposal when his instincts must have told him otherwise all the time.
"I did...How can I? When its still fresh in my memory the summer you beat up those Shankar brothers black and blue because they chalked our names inside a heart on our prep school walls..." She finally shifted, her bangles and her anklets clinking in the heat of the silence that made her ears burn with something akin to spending the moment inside a furnace.
"That I did...Only because you cried the whole time the previous night and wouldn't let me catch shut eye for a minute..." He shook his head and carried one of his annoying smirks that made her want to whack his head.
But there was something else that had gone long unacknowledged from that day forward, from having seen his cold defiance to the shankar brother's act and she pushed it aside just as she'd practiced all along.
"Lord..." She sighed wistfully, "I miss those days..."
"What?" He turned to lay on his side, his brows narrowing with confusion, "Me beating up boys half my size..."
He was right about having overshot most boys his age equally in the height and the weight category. Lord! she would never forget the day they had met in prep school and she had been doubly impressed with both his brawn and his brains. He had been 17 going on 25 in those days, except, perhaps, emotionally he'd been a shy thirteen year old and she'd taken it upon herself to ask him out for group studies and an ice cream treat later that night.
"No...when we would talk for hours on the phone and crib about everything under the sun..."
"For the record" He pointed his index finger at her, his brow raised mockingly and said, "You cribbed and I listened..."
"You ass..." She threw a small decorative pillow at him and he deflected it with his elbow, making it roll over the bed and fall to the ground.
"Whatever happened to us, Ashu?" Her voice dropped in tone and there was a measured seriousness that told him of her guilt more than her words could have.
"No one has called me that in ages..." As if it was too unbearable to admit to her face, he turned to lay flat on his back and started into the din of the night, "There is some strange comfort in still being treated to my boyish nick name..."
"No one ever uses Rithi either..." Unknowingly they had begun the confession hour and her heart pulsed with a descending heaviness ready to let go of all that she had held onto without him.
"How did we walk out of each others lives? Do you think it was for our own good?" She asked, before she could catch herself on that subject.
"You want me to be honest with you?" Again, she felt her regret lash out on having asked the question without guard, fearing he'd secretly wished her away too.
"I think it was for my best, but I can't speak for you" Her insides turned into crushed gravel, but he quickly spoke again to alleviate much of her imagined dread, "For all the goodness that Arpita was an exemplary of, she never was quite comfortable about us...You made her nervous..."
"What nonsense?" She made a face, questioning Arpita's sanity that instant for it could only be preposterous to have considered her any threat to their relationship.
"She said that you were the wild side of me. That I was never serious with you and that it was as natural as reading a book for you to figure me out...It was as if she had to put everything that she had to take a guess at what I was thinking..."
"Go figure..." She rolled her eyes.
"Exactly...I told her that it was your innate ability to irritate me that made me wild, but she never bought that..." He smiled turning to her.
"As I said, What an ass you still are?" Another pillow hit him, only to join the other one on the floor.
They both held their smiles for a while, but soon his smile faded and his eyes darted off to a spot at the bottom of the bed.
"I'm sorry..." His gaze shot back to her surprised at her apology, "I never called you after I heard about her demise..."
"I'm sorry Yash..." She reached out to the hand he'd tucked inside his pillow.
"Its ok..." This time, he removed his hand to place on top of hers, "I never did call you either when you would have needed a friend"
"What happened? If you don't mind sharing that is..." Her eyes lowered and tears pricked from behind, as a wall ready to fall.
"Common..." She managed, brushing off his formal tone and took a deep breath as if she needed to prepare herself to go through that day's events.
"I met Alan when I was living in Jersey city. He was one of my roommates in the three bedroom that I shared with two other people..." She spoke with an occasional pause to muster all the strength she needed from breaking in front of him, "We slowly fell for each other and after a year he proposed marriage. But that was also when my colleague moved in with me. She was older than me; a lazy assumption on my part that age mattered to men just as looks did...but that had only blinded me to their attraction"
"Of course, they acted on it" He pressed her hand to comfort, but instead it invoked a reaction so opposite that he moved closer without thinking; she began crying freely without a care for her mascara or the kohl that lined her eyes, her thick sobs shook her as though she was having a fit, "While I was busy fighting my way with Aai and papa to have them accept a phirang as their son-in-law. The wedding was planned at a temple in Jersey and Aai and papa finally came two days before the big day, only to find the wedding called off"
Her crying seem to give her no relief, however speaking to him did and ashamed that she'd taken solace in him first without having inquired on Arpita, she tried to pull her hand from his to cover her face, but his clasp was so tight, that it came with the force she yanked it back "I found them on my bed, under my sheets kissing and making out..."
"I'm sorry..." He said, as he placed his other hand over the side of her face.
"I came back to India with my parents. Got a job here" Oddly, his frequent gesture of smoothing her hair had quietened her sobs, "Felt the full force of humiliation from relatives and friends when my groom chose an older woman over me"
For a second, she fell into a contemplation, trying to recollect if he had ever consoled her in the manner in which he was doing then. But she was glad that he could, when it felt like all that she'd needed ever since the turbulence had shaken her core. Somehow the society's senseless judgement over her choices had been more of a blow to her than Alan's rejection had been.
"What else?" She couldn't have sounded more resigned then as she added, "After that I wouldn't have been taken back if the raddhi wala who frequented my street proposed marriage to me. For god sake, even men of my father's age came running to my doorstep when no dignified family would ask for my hand, considering me as an omen of bad luck, given how I was abandoned quite literally days before my wedding..."
When it seemed she was going to sob her sheets wet, he said "Hush now..."
Removing his hand from her hold, he raised himself on his elbow to pull the sheets over her, "Sleep this off. I'm not going to apologize that I made you cry..."
"No...you are right" Her voice sounded normal again, quietly amazed at the rise and ebbing of her emotions within a matter of minutes, just as his presence did to her all those bygone times, "I needed to get this off my chest"
"We will work everything out. Even get you off this house, if need be..." She heard him hesitate for a beat, "Perhaps a job in a different city will do you good" He got up to open the windows and a fresh gust of the night breeze came rushing in to put out the candles nearby, "But I can only get started on that after I come back from Bangkok..."
"Ok..." Her weariness showed.
"Just promise me one thing..." He said as he slid back into bed and her face scrunched with a question, "That you won't bond with Payal in the time I'm gone. She will miss you after you will leave here..."
She nodded in agreement, but something about that request felt grossly unfair though it was needed. True, she hadn't thought much about the little girl's expectations when she'd married him, not knowing if she would welcome another woman in her mother's place. Although, upon having noticed an entire evening of the child's wary, reluctant steps she took towards her and the sweet coy smiles Payal gave her, it made her question if she had more hopes from her than he ever did.
There wasn't one thought in her head that rejoiced in the offer he had place before her. As easy as it must have been to make that decision, it felt utterly unfaithful to disregard the vows she'd taken that evening, more so than she'd felt when breaking the bonds of their friendship.
Lord! What was this bridge she was trying to cross? Or who was she leaving behind?
And thus, her questions confirmed all the more that her loyalties hung in a balance...
Music Corner
