Posted:
Part 30: Story of her life
There hadn't been much talk ever since they started and he took it on himself to make the decision of needing a layover before they crossed into US again. She'd cried a bit, but soon she turned silent looking away at the cluster of night that hung outside her window and eventually fell asleep.
He stopped by a vista point to enliven his senses, his eyes two swells away from coming to a full close. After convincing himself that she was indeed swept into the surges of slumber, he slept for an hour or so reclining as far back as his car seat allowed.
But, when he woke shortly after, there was a symphony in orange on the sky from the morning star and he let himself out, feeling the untouched breeze of dawn pour life back into his body.
Meera had been brewing her anger in the backseat through the drive, her anger churned to the point of having gathered the momentum of a tempest and yet she couldn't bring herself to awaken a sleeping Geet in the passenger seat while she would have killed to have her legs stretched.
She was coiled on the front seat with her head against the door jamb and her hands balled into fists rested under chin. Her lips in a slight parting, her brows drawn together a sliver, reminded him of the time they had thrust a bundled little Anshu into his arms, if only for a few seconds, and he'd gone cold from panic; from fear that he would drop the baby head down; scared even that it would wake up a screaming banshee if it didn't find its mom around. But seconds later, he'd heard a wee of a coo, witnessed a rustle of a yawn at its red lips and quietened down to a pulse that was nearly impossible to achieve, if he were ever to find himself at a zen retreat. That had been two years ago, but not much had changed as of that day and he still didn't think he could handle a one year old, let alone a twenty something woman in need of rescuing.
The sound of the car door being shut got his attention and he twisted around to catch her step outside, followed by Meera.
Her hair blew into the wind, as a black halo around her head and when in the process of putting them into order, Meera caught her by the elbow and jerked her with impassion.
"You ran from the apartment without so much as 100 dollars in your purse," Meera said with a staunch sense of judgement and she looked on unwavering, "You ran without having anyone at your side. Fine, I will forgive you for that. But we drive this far and goddammit! you come back without speaking to him, when all the while it was exactly the same thing I have been screaming at you word for word"
She closed her eyes and her brows raised high into her forehead, showing the great awash of pain she was feeling then.
Realizing it wasn't his place to be there, he straightened from the bonnet to go for a walk, when Meera asked him to stay put.
"No, MK, don't leave," she ordered as if she was speaking for him too and ground out her words like he deserved to know her reasons, "Dammit! answer me,"
"It was the closed window, Meera." A stream of tears ran the side of her cheek while her eyes remained shut, her voice free of the molten queers and seemed to come from a dull lifeless place, steadied by the pain that must have crystallized her insides.
But when she would speak no more, Meera's hold nudged her again, "Is that all you have to say? Explain..."
"I don't know how." She breathed in a whisper, shaking her head, "I don't know Meera..."
Meera gave her a long look, one that of forced understanding which began at the wake of her anger and started to walk in the other direction along the rails that ran parallel to the river below.
He waited shifting his glance between Meera's retreating form and her and when she didn't call out to Meera, he moved, albeit hesitant, to go behind Meera.
"Don't worry, Maan, she will come back," he heard her say before he took a step, "When certain people in my life will give up no matter what, which is their problem, she will never give up and that is her problem."
"And your problem, Geet?" he asked without stopping a beat and she smiled sardonically.
"That I have been blind all along, I guess." Tucking away her hair that seem to come in the way of her eyes, she walked to where he was and leaned on the bonnet too,"Caught in a dilemma of not knowing when or whom to give up on...Me or him?"
"Until yesterday, giving up on him also meant that you were giving up on you in some ways," he spoke when a few seconds of silence had settled between them, their eyes fixed on the golden radiance that gleamed across the horizon, "But after that clean snap, he just made that decision a lot easier for you. And I'm going to quote the cliche at this point by saying, there is so much more for you in life."
She nodded in agreement. They remained still for a while, doused with the early hour's untouched peace and quiet until she spoke again, telling him her life's tale that had led her to that moment.
"I married young, Maan," she said with her gaze taken captive by the sliver of orange crescent behind the clouds, as though the view ahead of them was the bewitchment making her speak, "Even before I could be in my prime 20s. It was really a proposal for my sister, but when Channi left home for the love of another man, I sat down in the mandap in her place."
He couldn't help but turn his eyes to her looking for any trace of bitterness and there weren't any as she continued to talk with a deep set languor in her tone, "One day I was worried about two months of summer vacations that with being Channi gone, I would be left fending boredom on my own and the next day I was crying about the same two months and more, packing my bags to a distant foreign country"
With the personal details she added, she surprised him, as much as her voice had, speaking in a manner that paralleled a mild enchantment which came from narrating forgotten old memories, however poignant they may be, when it must have only been impersonal.
"I wrote long letters to my people back home. About the 2 mile walk from my apartment to the grocery store, carrying loaded bags of vegetables that were so heavy that at times I thought my hands would fall off. Of flooded kitchens because I used the wrong detergent in the dishwasher," She said and a pitiful smile for her former ignorant self came on, "About the fire alarms that made me run and hide under the bed and the summers that were too bright and the winters that were too white and cold. And they were only proud telltales because those foibles were still being made by their daughter on a strange land that was novel and far above their reach"
The short lived smile was gone by the time he faced her again. Interrupting her then, to him, seemed almost unthinkable, when there was a small doubt left in him that she might not return to this place of airy, unposed state and he listened absorbing the hoarse calm of her voice.
"When your people are stuck in that illusion about your happiness and all you have is four walls, a mother-in-law who visits your twice a year and one man to live with," she scoffed in near silence, "Be it autumn or spring. Or a fight or a moment of shared delight, then that one man fuses with your own self like if it were only another part of you and you fall into a habit for him, if nothing else. Especially, when he provides for you and paid for that discontinued dream of education which would have never materialized otherwise."
"Was it Unamuno, who said, To fall into a habit is when you cease to exist? Or something along those lines..." he asked and she turned to him this time, however her eyes wouldn't stay on him for long and wandered back to the thin line of the wafting river that was visible beyond the rails. "The good thing about a habit is that it can be broken. You can rebuild yourself, your days and everything else."
"Of course, there is always forgiving and forgetting, but we can always cross that bridge when we come to it," he ended, thinking that was enough said.
It was also then he took cursory notice that they both had leaned back on their hands, with their palms against the bonnet and that the tip of her fingers had slipped into the L that his hand had formed. For a beat he had an inexplicable urge to run his thumb over her fingers, which was what would have been allowed without having to change their positions. He looked away without another thought.
"You know mom used to say," she said after a while, facing him "that women grew habits at our birth home and take that to our second homes for comeuppance." Her voice broke and a sob rose in her throat. "Now that I been have passed over from both of them, I wonder, if there are others too?"
"Hush now," he said shaking his head, shifting on his feet, he folded his arms and stood close to her side, "You have the people who can make any four walls into a home, Geet," she looked up at him, her eyes withholding a fight from keeping the tears spilling into her cheeks, "Meera, Yash and every one else. Can't we start with that?"
He held her eyes until her gaze fell to the ground and she ambled to the rails, standing there as a dark silhouette against the light.
Sometimes it was the small trivialities that gave people their big revelations; the window being hers which in aftereffect had taken away the blush of her personality. As much as her quirks had amused him, he'd seen it as being one with what made her whole and he didn't know when or how that side of her would return.
It was a strange longing he sensed then, to see her face scrunch with heightened chagrin, a silly pout and its transition to a relenting smile that implied assent to her having cornered.One week. One month or a year. But he knew for certain by instinct, that the shadow she'd become would not remain with her forever. In short, he reckoned, that was the true story of her life.
Note: Will be doing buddy list clean up shortly. 😊 No offense meant, but will have to remove all those who are not actively involved.
Cricket
Real Estate
Cryptocurrency
Financial markets and global economy
Book Talk
1.1k