One day…..

He turned the key in the lock and opened the door. To his horror, the house was still, as if a frozen scene from a chain of moving pictures. The lounge was unusually sombre today, the flowerpots at the shelf carried motionless moneyplants, the pages of the newspaper at the table didn’t flutter in the breeze, the smell of air hung around like a ghost-invisible and scary. There was no sound, not even a faint one, no whirrs, no whistles, no hums, no squeaks, no creaks.

He’d expected one, almost inherently, after all that’s what the last twelve years at opening the door had been- the buzz of refrigerator, the irksome whir of the ceiling fan, the rustle of the pages of daily to welcome him everyday. Sometimes he would even hear the taps at the washbowl at the corner, rhythmic and continuous, and wonder when she will develop the good habit of turning the faucet off properly, and then his mind would start debating with him-maybe he should call a plumber.

Today was something different from the last twelve years. He stepped inside and paused, to breathe and browse through the walls, the corners, the furniture and every other thing that was lifeless, and for a tiny fraction of second he couldn’t differentiate himself from the inanimate articles. He held the strap of his bag and slid it down his shoulder. He felt a twinge as the pressure was off. Had it been one of the last twelve years, he would have smiled and exhaled.

Today he couldn’t. He pulled out his handkerchief, the one with the pink designs, which she had made two years ago, wiped the sweatbeads on his forehead and wondered why he had never changed the hanky all that time. It wasn’t even that beautiful, the flowers  were coloured with wrong concepts, the green tubes from beneath could have been curved more artistically, the blue bubbles didn’t exactly match, even so, he could never understand why it held his gaze. Atleast he could have changed it for one day!

He moved to the window and turned the latch. As he pushed it open he noticed a bed of dust resting on the pans. He would have ignored it, for household job was never his department, but today, he made a mental note to himself.
Cleaning to be done tomorrow, he said to himself.

There was a light breeze flowing in, fresher and cooler than the air inside. As it stroked his body, he realized he had been burning for the last few minutes. He unbuttoned his collar and shook it for some time.

With the gentle caresses against his body, his mind drifted back to a few minutes ago, to the moment he had pushed the door open and he pondered why he felt a pang of horror.

Sneha, his wife till ten am yesterday, was once everything that mattered. He married her after three years of courting in Dwarka, the place they worked at. She was a doctor, he was general manager in Asphylanx, a company that manufactured painkillers. They met at a medical event, shared their views about the matters discussed by the guests on stage, and separated like strangers do. None of them hoped to meet again, but destiny-is something he marvels at-had other plans. They ran into each other, once more and then too often, their conversations gradually shifting to casual, their friendship growing and turning into something more beautiful. Even though he believes Sneha wouldn’t have rebuffed him had he asked earlier, he decided to wait. He had a plot registered in his name, it was a gift from his father which he was never proud of.

Around the time they were close, he decided to build a house. He remembers how he used to show her the rough plans, and finalise them after her approval. She had even visited a few times while the construction was under way. Then one day, out of the blue, while she was checking the sink and pantry, he proposed her. He remembers everything, to the minutest details, and even though these memories once filled him with bliss, at the moment, they were serrated daggers through his chest.

The house was not just a shelter, it was something more, it was his story. His love story. The story once he could sacrifice heavens for, the story that’s dead now. The drawings on the wall below the counter, which she had scratched when the plaster was soft, still made him bend and gaze intently everytime he entered the kitchen alone. She loved to draw on unusual surfaces, her works in the kitchen an extempore. They moved in together, and that’s when the shelter became the house.

As he moved his eyes around, he realized it was no more a house.

As she held his hand while they placed their feet together inside, he was sure that they will be happily married to each other for the rest of their lives. He had imagined both of them growing old together, and sitting in the sofa with their grandchildren on their laps. That’s the reason he had purchased a big sofa set, with three armchairs; he was planning a big family. She used to drag him to the market a million times, sometimes to buy flowerpots, sometimes chimes, sometimes photo frames. Her list would never end, and even though he hated going to the market to buy tapestries, he always ended up nodding while his wife bargained with the shopkeeper. She had always been the frank one, he only knew how to give power point presentations, and make her happy by nodding when she’s serious.

Life was good.

He shrugged himself away from the memories and tried to concentrate on something else, what, he had no idea of. He moved to the shelf and his hands reached for the faux fishbowl, however, he paused and then let them drop. The fishbowl, he recollected, was bought in Sophia market three years ago. They were watching tv soap together, there was a scene where they showed a fishbowl, and all of a sudden, Sneha wanted one. He frowned, but he didn’t have a choice.

The memory brought a brief smile at his face, and as he realized this, his lips grew straight again. On the wall, there were twelve photo frames, one from each year of their married life together. The last two photographs were painful to look at, as they were incomplete and they turned back the pages of his life he never wanted to go through. The remembrance of loss still blocks his throat, and for a second, he wishes he could go back to the time and change things, but he knows it won’t happen. He shut his eyes, his mind flipping through the darkest pages.

Varun was their only child. They would have loved a few more, but destiny had other plans. Sneha developed complications, and the report eventually crashed the dreams of having a big family. But that didn’t hurt them for long, for Varun was the most beautiful child they had ever seen, and he magically nullified the need of other kids. His nose was similar to Sneha and though Mr. General Manager swore on himself that the kid’s eyes matched with his father’s, she never believed it. They were the happiest family, and they believed it would always be the same.

Years smoothed from one to the next, Varun was enrolled in the neighborhood school. Sneha went back to practice. He was proud of being a parent, more than anything else. And even though Varun was too small to be judged, he knew he had the best son in the world. Every result day would only inflate his chest with pride. The boy could draw, and unlike his mother his drawings were good. Even though both of them worked, they never forgot spending enough time with their kid.

Then, it happened. One day, Varun didn’t return from the school. He tried to console himself and Sneha, however, as the day extinguished into night his own heart started pounding. Around 7:40 pm, there was a call.
‘We have your child. Get 10 lakhs. And don’t involve the police. ‘ he heard a harsh voice as he held his cellphone trembling inside his grip.

He remembers the devastated look at his wife’s face, out of colour, as if someone had sucked life out of her. She couldn’t move, and the next second she fell on the floor, as if something non-living. She’d got 10 lakhs ready in the same day, it wasn’t a big amount for their child, however, he was too stubborn to let the kidnappers go away like this. He contacted police.

They never called again.

Varun’s room is still as it used to be two years ago, everything like he had left, the water bottle on the window sill, the drawing book on the bed, the books and toys piled in his shelf together. The way it was messed up, no one would believe Varun was a topper, the one under the crown for years. At times, he would stealthily follow Sneha entering the room at midnight and as he would peek at her from behind the curtain, his lungs would get deoxygenated; Sneha sobbed and choked alone, holding the photograph of her child close to her chest. Her quiet mourns were too painful to witness, and at times he would find himself wiping streaks of tears at his cheeks. He tried to make her smile, which somehow only bittered her feelings for him.

She changed. She talked less, she didn’t laugh, she didn’t care like she used to. She didn’t frown and snort if he didn’t help in the kitchen, she stopped fighting for tv remote, she stopped watching tv as well, and she stopped looking at him and flash that mischievous smile, a mixture of mystery and pleasure, as they sat across the table with their plates. He knew that deep down, she blamed him for everything and he also knew, only to feel crunched up inside, that she hated him now.

Soon, his patience gave away. They fought, they argued and they stopped talking. Nobody said sorry and even though, he had considered it a few times, he knew that it won’t do. And he didn’t have much left in himself. It wasn’t only Sneha whose breaths stopped at Varun’s slightest memory, his own throat felt jammed and squeezed. Even though he never showed it, he knew how tears ran from his otherwise tearless eyes as he turned the pages of his drawing book and paused at one of the sketches. There’s a kid holding each of his parents’ hand, and below the picture is scribbled in his cute, loopy handwriting, ‘we will be together, always. ‘

He felt suffocated. He moved away from those twelve photographs, the last two without their little part, Varun, hoping that he could run away from the memories as well. He was wrong, the memories followed him and penetrated through his head, wriggling everything inside.

The last part of their marriage was a quiet one, she exhausted herself at her clinic, working fifteen hours a day, sometimes leaving even before he woke up. She would return home around afternoon, when he would be at his office most of the time. When he didn’t go to office some day, she never asked him the reason. That churned his heart almost like the horrible accident did months ago. She would cook and leave. She returned home late and the expression on her face suggested she wasn’t interested in conversations. It dawned upon him, the relationship had died.

Then one day, while she stood in the kitchen, her eyes at the sink but mind lost in gloomy thoughts, he said the words he never wanted to, but always saw floating in her eyes.
‘I think we should end it. ‘

No one spoke. His organs stopped working for a second as he felt his world explode into fragments, burnt and dead, she stood impassively.

And as they signed on the divorce paper, it became a truth, they were no more a couple. She asked him if she could stay in his house for a day, to pack things. He managed to hold his tears back and nod. She thanked him, formally, as she did when they first met as strangers. Today morning, before he left for the office, she made him Gajar ka halwa, his favourite. It took all his energy to swallow the food.

At 1:00 pm, she called him, probably for the last time, to say that she had left.

Somehow, while he turned the key in his lock and opened the door, it slipped off his mind that he was no longer a married man, a broken father and a lonely soul. He had expected remote control cars scattered carelessly, the counter at the kitchen loaded with casseroles and a note,’ eat slowly’ accompanied with a smiley as cute as his wife’s, a house with those non living things smiling at him as he entered. He had expected life.

The inanimateness froze him, and for a tiny moment his heart was filled with horror, unable to take the change. But moments are tiny, they pass too soon. As realization flashed on him, he heaved a sigh, a mixture of disappointment, frustration, emptiness, sorrow, nostalgia.

And as he trudged himself to the counter, he bent to take a look at the drawing. A couple holding a big heart. He looked at the empty counter.
Loneliness, he felt.

__END__