OS - Not you and not me, only us!

As I walk towards my room, I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. And I don't have a soul but myself to blame for it. I have gone ahead and punished her for my deprived childhood, not understanding that she was a child of affluence.

Today, a lakh of rupees is hardly a matter to me. My bank balance can well take a hundred more hits like that without feeling the pinch. After all, what reason did I have to spend on all these years? My childhood had conditioned me to a spartan lifestyle where money was spent on absolute necessities rather than luxuries. I had not deprived myself of anything but did not see the need to indulge either. All my savings accrued over the decade or more since I had begun practising lay practically untouched in my bank account. There are the charities that I support and a couple of students whose education I sponsor but beyond that, I have no need for money except to satisfy my basic needs. Even my iphone is a gift from the KGH management, to commemorate my having completed a decade of service with them. So, her splurge seemed like a cardinal sin and I told her as much. Worse still, I pulled her up for spending money earned by another, without giving a thought to the fact that she was as much, if not more, entitled to my assets as me. When she owned me heart and soul, what were material assets after all? But good sense flies out of the window the minute rage takes control! And so mine had bid goodbye the minute I saw the SMS alert on my phone. She had indulged, she had splurged for sure but the poor girl had spent much of the money on me. Why couldn't I have hugged her tight and told her nobody had ever thought of my needs or put me ahead of themselves before? Granted, I could live without her gifts but I certainly couldn't live without her. She possibly saw my rejection of her gifts as a rejection of herself too.

Here I am now, spiting her by making my absence felt at her best friend's sangeet. I am mature enough to know that she must have fielded a hundred questions on my absence by now and yet, I am getting ready to crawl into my shell. Is it my ego? Or is it my feeling of not being wanted? Is it the fact that I am burning up with jealousy at the thought that she has a life, a family apart from me? I am still the emotional orphan while she is cocooned by familial warmth. Has she finally discovered that she has no need for me? That she is so happy with them that she has even forgotten my existence? Am I superfluous to her happiness now? Does she not need me as much as I do? A thousand doubts plague me and I feel a crushing pain in my chest.

I walk into my room and dump my coat on the chair, not knowing how to relieve the weariness of an aching heart! Then, as if some sixth sense warns me that the answer is not far, I look up and see a vision in blue. She stands still as if waiting to gauge my reaction. I have never been an eloquent speaker but today, I have lost even the few words that make up my vocabulary. I let my eyes do the talking.

( contd)

I am appalled at myself. It is my best friend's sangeet in less than an hour and here I am, waiting to fall into my husband's arms! What kind of a woman does this make me, what kind of a friend does this make me? I don't know and have ceased to care! A part of me is shocked at my selfishness and my inability to think beyond that man, to function independent of him. The worst part however is that it does not bother me as much as it should. That I had spent the whole day and the previous evening, pining away for my husband and waiting for that one call from him which would see me rushing back into his arms. The call had not come and yet, here I am!

My home, my family, my best friend, all that I was familiar with and all mattered to me for these twenty four years! It was all around me but I felt strangely restless! I felt alien, I did not belong! How could this be possible? How could one man come along and tilt your world on its axis, making all that was familiar suddenly alien, making you feel at home only in his arms? Yet he had and it did! I had tried hard to plaster a smile onto my face but it just refused to stick. A part of me recognized that I was not being fair to Anjie, I was messing up her most important day but I just couldn't help myself. I felt even smaller when I saw understanding in her eyes. She knew and she understood, choosing to remain silent rather than berate! She knew I wouldn't be this way if I could! Sending a silent prayer to the Gods to bless her with a love just like mine (even with all its pain, I wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world), I rushed away knowing that things could just not go on this way!

I walked into the house in time to hear him tell Kaka that he won't be going to the sangeet. He won't be, will he? We will see about that, I told myself as I tiptoed into our room, not wanting to alert him to my presence!

He walks into the room with an air of such weariness that I am hard pressed not to rush right over and take him into my arms, make him rest his head on my chest. I feel a strangely maternal love, wanting to soothe this hurt child more than anything else. I had been berating him in my mind all along the way, cursing him for his ego, his pigheadedness and what not! Now, all I want is to soothe his pain!

Why had I not realized that it was not the successful doctor who pulled me up for my splurging? Rather the lonely, deprived child that still lived within him. The child that had probably gone hungry many days, not had enough warm clothes to protect him against a harsh winter, not enough books to feed his mind's hunger with, until a good Samaritan had come along in the form of Baba! That child was still scared of experiencing that same deprivation all over again and wanted to hoard against that! He was scared to spend on himself; he was scared to learn to live in luxury lest it be taken away from him all over again! He was not a miser, just a deprived soul! He needed to be coaxed, to be taught that while you needed security for the future, you still had to live your today! It was not an easy lesson to learn but one that I was more than confident that I could teach him! After all, who better than me to teach him how to spend money? I had made a career out of it in all these years after all!

He looks up and spots me. I wait silently. I see myriad emotions on his face. I see pain, hurt, surprise and then great happiness. I see many questions, the answers to which he reads in my eyes. I read my answers in his! I know he did not come over not out of ego but because he was not sure if he was wanted. He was so used to living on the fringe that thrusting his way into a circle was still not easy for him. He thought that I would be so tightly encased in the circle of my family that there would be no space for him. Little did my idiot of a husband know that my world had now so shrunk that it found it impossible to accommodate any other but him.

I think he has read all of this now. We have both read the desperation, the hunger, the burning passion and the unstinting love in each other's eyes! He walks towards me, comes to a halt with just a few inches between us. We are not waiting for the other to make the first move. We are just feeding our hearts, our souls and our eyes with the presence of each other. We are breathing the essence of each other into our lungs, filling up the voids that had come into existence over the last couple of days. The voids that had left us choking and unable to live and breathe normally! My body moves of its own volition towards him, one arm resting on his heart and the other going around his waist. His arms go around me, I burrow into his chest and he rests his chin on my head. This is enough for now. All else can wait!

Part 3 on Page 3

Part 4 on page 6

Sujatha, yaar what a place to leave us hanging.

Awesome yaaar...Mind reading of Dr Ashu

Originally posted by: Libra

Sujatha, yaar what a place to leave us hanging.

Please complete. I am waiting impatiently.😳

Sorry Anu...hope it has been worth the wait!

Originally posted by: rabzonedge

Awesome yaaar...Mind reading of Dr Ashu

Thank you Rabz!

Wow you are awesome just loved it wish it would go on...

Originally posted by: shalini.malik72

Wow you are awesome just loved it wish it would go on...

Thank you, Shalini...par iske aage kya likhoon...some moments are so intense and personal that even as a writer and a reader, you don't want to intrude...even on the show, I would like to see the moment left rght there...I would like to see them resume with the dressing up part or whatever so we know they have had time together to assuage their pain and need!

Originally posted by: Sujatha.rao

Thank you, Shalini...par iske aage kya likhoon...some moments are so intense and personal that even as a writer and a reader, you don't want to intrude...even on the show, I would like to see the moment left rght there...I would like to see them resume with the dressing up part or whatever so we know they have had time together to assuage their pain and need!

This is so beautiful Sujatha! giving words to Ashni's thoughts. The scene was very touching and heartfelt, and your writing makes it even more endearing. I hope they show them talk about the " its easy to spend other's money", and I hope Ashu realizes what he said. Great piece of writing.👏