LOVE’S LABOURS FOUND

To eat the apple in the Garden of Eden was forbidden. Yet the half eaten apple as a symbol has entered our lives in a way that proves  man is more sinned against than sinning. By sins, we include them in every form and variations, including those of carnal nature.

Rahul Banerjee is no extraordinary guy. He is a professor of Semiotics at a reputed university in Kolkata. Moreover, he is very much a married man. Rahul married Aparna ( nee Sengupta) in 1995 and has a daughter, Aditi, who was born in 2000. Aditi is eleven years old now.

Rahul, being a scholarly sort, prefers to spend his evenings indoors, often with his favourite vodka with soda . His wife, Aparna, a homemaker in every way, likes socializing whenever opportunities crop up. She had done a brief stint as a school teacher, teaching History and Geography, at the primary section of a near-by school  for some time. But after their daughter was born, she was left with no other choice but to give up her vocation, though she had really enjoyed her teaching span . She had found it difficult to find helping hands or ‘maids’ as they are called, and so her teaching career had come to a complete stop.

“Aditi’s birthday is coming up. I would like to invite some of your colleagues ‘ children too along with her classmates”, Aparna informed Rahul as they got ready to go to bed.

“Don’t you think she’s old enough to come out of these b’thday bashes hangover?” Rahul gave a sideways glance at his wife.

Aparna was applying a moisturizing cream on her face and neck. At thirty-five, she was still an attractive woman.

“ Rahul, I had bewitched you on first sight”, Aparna unconsciously ruminated.

If it had not been the grueling pressure from Rahul’s parents and Rahul, himself, she could have been a working professional by now. Just like Anjum . Tomorrow, both Rahul and Aparna have been invited to the Seminar Hall of the University for a luncheon. The occasion is the celebration of Rahul’s successful teaching and a special dissertation paper on the French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas , which the latter had presented  at the Harvard University as a  visiting guest lecturer.

“Though Toulouse Lautrec gained more fame for his depiction of ballet dancers, it was Degas, with  his immense love for the stage, who first brought scenes if ballet  into painting”, Rahul was saying the other day to his  colleague and assistant researcher , Anjum Mehrotra.

Aparna, by now, is well aware of the fact that her husband and Anjum are a wee-bit more than mere associates. Rahul had full-stopped all discussions on the matter whenever she had delved on the topic. Rahul’s salary is not too large. But it is sufficient for the maintainence of their rented house on Iron Side road in south Kolkata, food, clothing, and the occasional whims of Aditi. It was the other  day that Aparna had bought a filigreed Kashmiri brocade saree (“the price you can pay in instalments , Aparnaji” ) and she noticed that her husband failed to give a second glance. This was hardly the case even after all these years of their wedding.

**

It was just the year before last, that on their anniversary , Rahul had presented her with a bottle of Charlie Blue, the imported one. And she? Aparna remembered fondly , that the day had just skipped her by.

“But Rahul, you had forgotten my b’thday last year?” Aparna had been vociferous to her better half’s sincere protests.

“Wouldn’t someone laugh at our circumstance   – the husband has remembered but the wife has forgotten their mutual wedding anniversary?” Rahul had added.

**

Such had been her husband.

“Aparna , would  you leave us alone for some time. Anjum and me have a paper to discuss”,

Rahul said one day when they ( all three of them ) were having hot steaming cups of tea with a plate  of brownies that Aparna had bought and brought from the newest and nearest confectionary outlet. That was rather cold, Rahul. But Aparna had decided to leave them  without making any further argument. It was better to leave than be addressed by  him , as he often called her now-a-days , a bozo.

She decided to go to their room and watch Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire  on the LG DVD  player that they had recently bought. There were Rahul’s , her’s and Aditi’s clothes, all piled up, waiting to be put into the washing machine standing on the adjoining space between the toilet and the living room.

Aparna , inwardly had labeled Anjum ( the similarity in their nomenclature was nothing if not coincidence),  and her husband, ‘the cognoscenti’, an elite duo from whom she was banished and banned.

For lunch, Aparna was preparing an item of chicken curry, dal, a cauliflower  and potato mixed curry, fried brinjal and a bowl of green salad  – of lettuces, cucumbers and raw pumpkins. She had been cooking and preparing the dishes behind the kitchen door. She had stopped playing the DVD player , even though the film was a favourite of hers.

She knew many considered the film to be too erudite and cerebral and beyond ordinary grasp. She had been an avid cinemaste right from her college days. Those were the days when all of her friends would go to see films , often bunking classes. Even now, Aparna  doesnot  lose an opportunity to watch a good film . She and Rahul had frequented the Kolkata Film Festival , which is a yearly and important event of the city. The KFF literally marks and heralds in the winter season in the city of historic and artistic excellence, which is held from the 10^th to 17^th November every year.

There was a gentle tap on Aparna’s world of seclusion and relaxation. Anjum had entered into her cosmos, both physically and metaphorically. “Meaow”, distantly, somewhere, a cat mewed in the distance. “Aparna!”, Rahul hollered from the other room.

‘One remembers one’s most loved ones , only when one is caught within a trap, or else, is at death’s door’, the old saying goes.

“I am sorry , Aparna. Rahul and me just had a fight regarding some of the finer points which I  thought could be rectified in his paper reading to be held next week. I  thought it fit to let you know”.

“You still standing? Get the hell out of here !”, Rahul had come out of their their sequestered study room.

The spite and malevolence in his looks took Aparna’s breath away. Her husband does regular treadmill exercises . Not to shed off excess fat and cellulite, but to keep himself fit and prim in order to face the pressure of everyday toils. Moreover, it’s the fad of modern times. Gymnasiums are doing businesses as no other . In the U.S. , these are for open to the public either for free or at a nominal charge, Aparna had read it in the papers. Here these gyms cost a hefty lumpsome and put an indelible dent in the monthly budget of the common man. But no one wants to be left behind in the rat race. At the moment, Aparna thought, Rahul’s resembled one just out of a treadmill timeout. All perspiration and quickened heartbeats.  She had never seen her husband this angry. Not that they did not have quarrels.

**

“But you promised that you would pick up Aditi today. She would be let off at five thirty after her stage  rehearsals for the upcoming school annual function”, Aparna said.

“Parna, you do know , don’t you, that my college’s admission advisory committee has called an urgent meeting today. The newly –elected Principal and teacher-in-charge has invited professors from all the departments of the college , in a sort of round-table conference, to decide on the guidelines to be followed with regards to admission procedures. So it would be so much nicer if you could just about manage to pick up Aditi from school.”

**

Anjum barging in on her kitchen door was the most unlikely thing to happen. Anjum Mehrotra was, in every sense of the term, a ‘no-nonsense’ woman. Aparna had her hunches that the relationship between her husband and Anjum had transcended that of being mere colleagues and co-workers to something on the more physical level. Rahul has been denying this relation whenever Aparna had happened to broach on the subject. But , as yet, she had no material proofs to supplement her theories and hunches.

That her husband forgets to compliment her now-a-days cannot really be considered  a proof. Besides, they are hardly newly-married ones either , Aparna consoled herself at times.  There was a time, Aparna fondly recalls, when Rahul used to just stare at her all the time. Well almost all the time. When they were newly wedded ones, her husband had insisted that they bathe together on their honeymoon. That was so long ago. These were not more than sepia tinted snapshots of human memory  to be recollected years later whenever loneliness and the sense of absence engulfs oneself.

On that eventful day at Rahul’s study, her husband and Anjum had parted ways. Aparna had never been a sulking sort at any moment in her entire lifetime. Even when her wedding was fixed , quite hurriedly at that, and she  was still doing her graduation , she had not sulked. She had considered her parents’  wishes to overrule her own emotions , as the most considerate and honourable thing to do at that time. So when her husband, Rahul’s, clandestine involvement with another woman became apparent to her, Aparna had taken it in her own stride. She  had not disclosed her predicament neither to her parents nor her in-laws.

“Parna, Anjum had found fault in my paper which I sincerely believe aren’t really there. And … I am sorry that I had behaved the way I did yesterday. You know and should’ve known by now that it is you and only you that I finally turn to. You have been my pillar of strength right from the day that we  got married. Aditi is the apple of my eye and I can go to any extent to give her a secure childhood and a glorious future. You do understand that, don’t you, Parna?”

I had stood by my understanding for all these years, Rahul. It was you who breached my trust in recent times. However, if it hadn’t been your row with Anjum , I wouldn’t have equivocally got you back as the same person , I had fallen in love with , years ago, against my intentions and wishes. A married life can hardly be based on false pretences. That you, Rahul, have been candid about your position , have saved our marriage from falling apart , Aparna ruminated when she was sitting alone.

Man was barred from the Garden of Eden , but the forbidden fruit had always held a special charm and attraction for him. The apple, thanks to a man called Steve Jobs, is the emblem of what modern technology is all about and also what zenith it can conquer. But the same fruit is also the emblem of passion, of forbidden love. One is always attracted to it, that one can conquer and finally defeat this underplaying alter-ego of our ‘unconscious’ (with due respect to Freud) is another matter altogether.

If one can differentiate between passion, desire and true love , then one’s life gets fulfilled. Aparna and Rahul  found  and embedded meaning unto their lives , after both of them had a bite off the forbidden fruit tree. If love’s labours were lost , in a Shakespearean manner, it would be a tragedy. But if love’s labours were found and explored in a new way which is novel and unique , it would constitute a more complicated  relationship, which is how LIFE  is structured. If we embrace life with all its toils, hardships, foibles and complications, it (life)  can be lived , enjoyed and cherished.

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