The Talisman - Part 3

And so began Ritvik’s trial by fire. It was excruciating, nail-pulling agony. It was like walking on nails that he had individually sharpened painstakingly himself. Sitting across from Ananya and Kabir, watching them together was worse in some ways than the time he spent sitting in his sofa, staring at the television wondering what would have happened had he chosen to have that chat with Ananya that evening instead of taking her back to Kabir. The devil on his shoulder was working full time while the angel was off on an extended holiday. There was never a moment when he was not cursing his own good intentions.

And then there was the swamp of guilt. Ritvik was at the root of it, as good natured as they came. He had never found himself in a position like this where his good intentions seem to have deserted him and the voice in his head kept cursing what he had come to believe was his naiveté. He looked at Ananya who had anyway taken his heart away and how she was with Kabir and wondered why his greater goodness couldn’t allow him to feel happy about their happiness and why did he have a barbed wire that was winding tighter around his heart each time he looked at them together.

That evening was no different. Actually it was different. It was exquisitely painful that evening. He was sitting across Ananya and Kabir at the pub that used to be his and Ananya’s favourite haunt and had now become a regular watering hole for all three of them. That evening Ananya had come in slightly high strung after an argument at her office and had downed her first two cocktails really fast. Ritvik had tried cautioning her and telling her that one was her limit and that she wouldn’t be able to handle it. But Kabir had put his arm around her and had said it was ok and that was that. Ritvik retreated deeper into his chair and watched them. Ananya was high enough to need Kabir to hold her down and was leaning her head on his shoulder and staring up at him with loving eyes.

Ritvik started out the evening with that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, convinced that the evening was not going to end well. Ananya had been looking exceptionally lovely that evening, her curl falling across her face and hiding her eyes in a way that made him want to reach out and brush it away, just to be able to see her beautiful eyes. Watching her lean on Kabir, their holding hands and her resting her head on his shoulder and his kissing the top of her head – all of this was burning a hole in his gut like a slow acid eating away at it. He was hardly able to keep up with the conversation and seemed to be in a world of his own, a hell of his own making. And Kabir, ever the gentleman, was covering up the absence of conversation admirably. He kept trying to draw Ritvik into the conversation, in fact at one time, provoking him with something that Ananya had said. Ritvik just laughed it off and stared harder at his drink.

He excused himself and went to the restroom where he spent most of the time staring back at his own self in the mirror and telling his reflection to calm down. After washing his face for what seemed to be the hundredth time, he breathed deeply and stepped back into his private hell where Ananya and Kabir were waiting for him. As he weaved across the floor, past couples dancing in sync and others who were jerking to the beat like marionettes, he could see the back of Kabir’s head and his hand protectively across Ananya’s shoulders. Suddenly he saw Ananya lift her head and stare into Kabir’s eyes and then kiss him softly on his lips. The gesture was completely natural and yet shockingly intimate. It stopped Ritvik in his tracks, his calm deserting him like a rag blown away in the face of a sandstorm. He stood rooted at the spot for god knows how long until he suddenly felt someone bump into him and drench the entire front of his shirt with something that was more than just water. That woke him up and before he could think, he had automatically started walking out of the place.

Hailing a taxi, he collapsed inside and sat with his head in his hands until the driver asked him where he wanted to go. As he told the cabbie the address, some amount of common sense prevailed and he took out his phone and messaged Ananya and Kabir that he had developed an upset stomach and therefore wanted to go home in a hurry and had left. Kabir called back immediately to enquire what happened and after an unconvincing explanation that sounded false even as he was making it, he lay back against the seat and wondered how he had ever gotten himself into this situation.

He woke up next morning and saw a series of messages and calls from Ananya which had stopped off at about 2 AM in the morning. He debated calling her back or at least answering her messages, knew that Kabir would have told her what had happened and then just left his phone by the bedside and went to make his coffee. A single coffee didn’t help and he had to make another in quick succession. The coffee cleared his head a bit and he started thinking more rationally about his current situation. There were only two options as he could see them – one to continue the way he was trying to make it work and hope to god that he succeeded and the other was to stop and exit Ananya and Kabir’s life. He had not even considered the second option because not being around Ananya was something that he could not even think about, so deeply was his mental balance linked to her. And yet it was being around her and naturally Kabir that was killing him slowly and painfully.

As these thoughts crystallized like a jig saw puzzle falling into place in his head, he could see more and more clearly what he should do. And with that clarity, came a certainty and also a quick call to action. His thoughts were rudely interrupted by the phone and he was certain that it was Ananya. He decided to not answer the phone and waited for it to die down. When the second call immediately came in on the heels of the first one, he knew that if he did not answer the call, she would soon be there at his doorstep. And he was as ready to face her as a trainee matador without his short sword in front of a raging bull. So he walked to his bedside and picked up the phone, pretending to have come in from the rest room. Ananya’s concern was evident in her questions and his vague answers seemed to make her more worried. She offered to come and help him, asking Kabir whether that was OK and Kabir immediately assuring her that it was fine. To Ritvik, that permission was the death that he had been waiting for.

His voice became just that little firmer and his conviction just that stronger for him to be able to convince Ananya that he was fine and that he didn’t need any help. When he finally got off the phone ten odd minutes later, he had not only managed to avoid her banging on his door but had also told her that he had to leave town for a few days as a relative was not well and he needed to go and help. What would have normally raised Ananya’s eyebrows well into her hairline and made them meet down the middle; went by unnoticed in her relief over his being okay. Kabir even asked him if he needed help to get to the airport to leave town. Every such gesture of Kabir’s made Ritvik’s guilt over his feelings double. He started empathising with Atlas. That god of Green mythology was an inspiration that was becoming real by the day, by the hour and by the minute.

He spent another half hour figuring out where he wanted to go and finally settled on Coorg. It was always his comfort place, a place which could soothe him like no other could. The hills and the winding roads, walking amongst the clouds and the sun playing hide and seek with them and the chess game of light and shade across hill and dale were parts of the place that made it almost like home. He had been there several times over the years and knew the place intimately. He booked a flight out to Bangalore and booked a taxi to get there and called up the home stay where he usually preferred to stay. An hour and a half later, he was at the airport, waiting to board his flight. His frenzy of activity had driven all thought of Ananya out of his head temporarily but the waiting at the airport brought it all back.

Landing at Bangalore sometime later, he got into the taxi that was waiting outside the airport and decided to go straight ahead to Coorg without stopping. Sitting in the passenger’s seat was discomforting and also let him have the head space to continue thinking about Ananya and what she would be doing at that very moment. He stopped the driver and asked him if he could drive instead. Taking the wheel and rolling down the window, he let the wind in his face blow his thoughts away as he sped towards the hills. He stopped at a couple of places for coffee en-route and reached the estate towards evening, just as the setting sun created a golden orange halo around the hills and the tall trees that lined the road on both sides seemed to create the familiar arch that welcomed him. His spirits lifted and he was happy for the moment.

As he settled down for the evening, Dr. Bopanna and his wife who owned the estate joined him at the camp fire outside. They were early sleepers and after the usual bits of conversation, they fell silent. He encouraged them to have dinner and retire for the night as he wasn’t sleepy. Finally alone, he looked around, the crickets settling in the dark and the sounds quietening over time, the strange shapes of shadows that the fire threw seemingly alive with every movement of the flames. He stared down at the glass in his hand and wondered what Ananya would be doing and then caught himself. He was here to try and figure out a solution to that very same problem that seemed to be plaguing him and he was succumbing to it without even realising. He drove all thought of her out of his mind and started pacing around the fire. Finally tiredness overcame him and he settled back into his chair and stared at the embers as they died down, every now and then a spark flying up in the air. The occasional bat that flew overhead seemed to sense his tension and flew away without a second glance as the night wore on.

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At that very moment, Ananya was at dinner with Kabir. Something had gone wrong with her all day. After a nerve jangling accident of the taxi that she was in, she somehow managed to escape the blistering row between the two drivers. At office, she somehow went scatter brained and forgot her client meeting itself, landing up late and causing herself heartburn. She forgot that she was supposed to meet Kabir at 7 and ended up working till later, her silent phone not warning her of his calls or messages until it was too late. Finally she was here at dinner with him and it seemed to be OK. The mood wasn’t the usual cosy comfort that it was with him but that was alright. She couldn’t expect him to be okay after he had been kept waiting for over an hour now could she?

She discovered that she had been leaning forward all the while and had developed an ache in the small of her back and decided to scoot back in her chair. She did that and went right back into the waiter who had been standing just at her side and holding the salver on one hand while setting up her soup bowl with the other. Crash went everything and the soup landed half on her and half on the floor. The waiter was as profusely apologetic as she was but the damage was done. Cleaning herself up as best as she could in front of the mirror in the restroom, she decided that being outside home seemed to be an adventure that was best avoided for now. Grabbing her bag, she took Kabir by the hand and dragged him out of the restaurant. After reaching home, she ordered in dinner and settled down to watch her favourite soap on television only to hear a loud explosion and a blackout the next instant. They had to eat the food in darkness as the transformer that had tripped couldn’t be repaired until morning according to the manager and soon retired for the night in the face of undefeatable odds.

                   *                             *                             *                             *                             *

Morning found Ritvik sleeping in an extremely uncomfortable position in the chair as a thin wisp of smoke rose from the remnants of the fire. The Bopanna’s dog had made itself comfortable at his feet sometime along the night. He woke to the sound of the birds as dawn was just about starting to make its presence felt, that spray of gentle soft light that brushed the curtain of darkness aside in the moments before day breaks. Stiff from his posture in the chair, he stretched and was rewarded with an irritated growl from the dog who didn’t want to be disturbed. He chose to just sit there and stare at the sky, white puffs of clouds moving along in gentle winds that couldn’t be felt. With the brightening dawn, he realised that he was finally at peace, alone by himself, in a situation where his emotions were not linked to Ananya in any way. With the first piercing ray of light that lit up the top of the trees like they were on fire, his mind cleared up and he knew what he needed to do.

The Talisman - Part 2

Ritvik stood outside on his balcony drinking in the grey black sky with streaks of yellow and orange as the traffic and the smoke lent an unnatural underbelly to the evening. He held the cup of coffee in his hand, long gone cold, the thick film on top equally covering the sides of the cup and the dregs of liquid inside. He abruptly felt like throwing the cup far far away into the gloom and had to turn away physically to hold himself back. Normally a happy and lively chap, he found himself sullen and irritable most of the time nowadays, sort of like he was perpetually sucking on a lemon. And he was beginning to realise that it was mostly because of Ananya.

He had developed feelings for her. Feelings that he was so sure he wouldn’t have, feelings that he was afraid to label. He was too young now for anything that serious wasn’t he. But that in itself was only part of the problem. Sort of like a twin bullet hole to the head. Because while he was busy analysing his feelings and what they meant, like interpreting a Rorschach ink blot, Ananya had gone and got a boyfriend. It was like adding insult to injury for him to realise that he was finally admitting that he had some kind of feelings for her only to have her flaunting her boyfriend like the new accessory that she had bought at the mall store.

Not that much had changed between them. They still met on the train, in the evenings at the market, went out for the odd coffee, dinner and talked like they had been waiting to tell each other something all their lives. In the middle of all that, Ritvik suddenly found himself noticing the quaintest things about her, like the way that her eyebrows almost met down the centre when she was concentrating on something simple like even her coffee, about the way she blew that persistent curl off her right cheek from the corner of her mouth, the dimple that stole into her cheek when she really smiled, the soft down on her neck when she bent down to eat. He suddenly discovered a million and one things about her, like a subtitle had suddenly come up on the screen to explain things clearly.

And then Ananya had met Kabir, a simple hulk of a guy who appeared to have a great sense of humour and was also intelligent up there to boot. Ritvik had suddenly found that he saw less and less of Ananya except for the meetings on the train and even that went down as she sometimes took a cab home. One evening, she called him from office and asked if he could meet for a coffee. Arriving early, Ritvik had seen her with a guy who made the whole table that they were sitting at, appear small in size. He looked huge but had an easy smile that lit up his face quite so often. More than that, it was the way that Ananya was looking up at him that made Ritvik squirm in his seat. He was getting angrier by the minute as they sat there and chose to remain silent through the conversation and simply shook hands with them and left.

But it wasn’t so easy. Kabir was a difficult person to not like. His easy familiarity and gentle geniality and a certain genuineness drew out Ritvik over a period of time. Even though he had no clue how to react to Ananya’s statement about wanting Ritvik’s feedback on Kabir before they got serious. What exactly did she mean by that - get serious? In the last 6 months or so, Ritvik felt that he had gone from the time when he mentally felt he was sharing Ananya with Kabir to the time when he now felt Kabir was sharing Ananya with him. And while he had grudged and gimped about it, Kabir was every bit the gentleman who never lifted an eyebrow when Ananya told him that she wanted to go home with Ritvik. How was it so easy for him to do that when Ritvik still felt like he was losing ground every time Ananya didn’t show up on the train? How was it that Kabir greeted him with a gentle bear hug when all Ritvik could bring himself to do was shake Kabir’s hand?

It was all Ananya’s fault was what Ritvik decided. She shouldn’t have behaved so openly and friendly with him, he thought. And then caught himself as he realised that she had just been friendly with him. They were close, quite close. But there was nothing more that she had indicated or even had led him to believe. If he had fallen in love with her, it was his own damn fault. And he had no one to blame for all this but himself. Even though he kept telling himself this, it never helped him feel any better. This constant reminder of his condition over the past month or so had gotten to the point where he had now started feeling like the angel and the devil were both riding on his shoulders and tormenting him by turn.  

And this evening, as he stood on the balcony, staring outside, he was particularly reminded of both of them dancing a merry tune on the balcony railing. A sudden drop on his cheek woke him from his thoughts. He looked upward and caught the flash of light on a few drops as a drizzle started. He stood there letting the drops wash down his face, hoping they would wash his mind clear of the confusion that reigned. After a long while of standing with eyes closed and face upturned to the rain, suddenly, it was like a bolt of lightning struck. The only solution was to tell Ananya how he felt. Then it would be OK. She would understand and then by some miracle, would find a way to make it alright and be back with him again. His eyes opened with a start and lit up. He went back indoors like a man possessed. He couldn’t wait to meet Ananya and talk to her, feeling somehow that the whole thing was sorted now. He had to reign in his enthusiasm and could hardly sleep through the night. He was up before dawn and was raring to go.

He was at the station waiting for it to be 7:30 so that she would come. He had first thought about messaging her and asking her to meet him. But then that would not be normal and so he had stopped and decided to just act normal. As the clock seemed to be moving in slow motion, each minute seemingly taking an hour, he realised he was holding his breath each time as he waited. Forcing himself to relax, he got a cup of coffee and checked the time. It was only 10 minutes past seven as yet. The coffee seemed lukewarm and tasteless as he soon finished the cup and paced up and down, attracting curious looks from bystanders. He decided to slow down and stop walking around and stood at a pillar in the hope that the solidity of the pillar would give his mind strength. As he stood there, his back to the pillar and one leg braced back against it, the events of the last few months rolled through his mind’s eye. The realisation that it all might finally fall into place brought a smile to his face and he felt himself relaxing like the tension had suddenly gone out of a coiled spring.

The sound of the train brought him back to earth and he looked around for Ananya. Not catching sight of her, his smile transitioned into a frown and he walked forward towards the train, all the while desperately searching. The train left the station and he was still standing there, a frown on his face and a feeling that something had gone wrong, a feeling like that piece of china was falling all the way to the floor. He decided against going into office and went to Ananya’s apartment to check on her. He waited outside her door ringing the bell twice and then gave up on debating ad called her phone. After three tries, he gave up and decided to go down and ask the Security about her. He found that she had left home the previous night with Kabir and hadn’t come back till then. He decided to message her asking her to call him as soon as she could. The day drew on; long and dreary as he found he could not concentrate on anything at all and was biting the head off anyone who even cared to talk to him. Taking the train back in the evening, he gave up on the day and decided to go and get drunk. While leaving for the bar, he checked his phone for the 7 millionth, 24 thousandth 3 hundred and 49^th time and then just decided to leave his phone at home and put himself out of his anxiety misery.

Walking back woozily from the cab that he got off from about six hours later, he decided that drinking was hardly the cure for what he had - that deep sickness of the mind when his heart felt like a bottomless pit from which all kinds of nightmarish thoughts were creeping out. Turning the corridor to his apartment door, he fumbled for his keys and instantly dropped them as he saw someone sitting outside his door, head with hair just like Ananya’s buried in between hands just like hers and which were framing knees that ended in a pair of blue sneakers just like the ones that she wore. Falling to his knees before her, he suddenly regretted having drunk so much and needing to focus so badly. His “hey” got no response and he sat down on suddenly shaky knees and his legs shot out from underneath him and bumped into hers. The sudden move woke her up and she lifted what appeared to be a puffy face with bloodshot eyes to look at him. That did it.

He quickly hustled her into his apartment. A cup of tea and a toast later, she appeared to come back from the zombie zone into the world of the living. He decided not to push her and just waited it out. She asked to have something strong and he brought out the only bottle of untouched spirits in the house – a bottle of Glen Morangie that he had been saving up for an occasion. Well this occasion was as good as any other, he thought as he poured a healthy portion into a glass filled with ice. She drank her first one like she had travelled a desert for the past few weeks. Into her third one, he noticed that she slowed down and got that distant, far-away look in her eyes. A suspicious looking tear slid down her cheek and soon her sniffles gave her away. He waited with a patience that he had learnt being around her. And soon, it all spilled out in bits and pieces in between snorts and wails and hiccups. It appeared that Kabir had taken her out on a trip and she had assumed that he was going to propose to her and when it did not happen, she blew up and had a rip roaring fight with him and had run away.

Ritvik felt all of his plans to tell her what he wanted to, running away into the gutter like a patch of oil being carried away by a driving rain that it had no chance of outstaying. He turned away to the sink to hide the sudden flush of tears in his eyes and put away the glasses and busied himself with something to bide time. When he finally turned around, he had made up his mind on what he would do. He had to do it, for her sake, for the sake of what he felt for her. He went into his room and got her a flat knit to keep warm and then called a cab. Seating her in it, he got in next to her and asked her to tell the driver the way to the resort where she had been staying with Kabir. A startled look in her eyes was met by a calm reassuring one in his and she gave the cabbie the address and off they went. As the cab wound its way through the night time roads, he told her what she needed to do and when she finally gave up and rested her head on his shoulder, he just held her. It was all he could do to not bury his face in her hair and hug her as hard as his heart was telling him to.

He reached his apartment at dawn feeling at once like his life had ended and that he had done the right thing. They had spoken to Kabir who had been waiting, ashen faced and completely at a loss to understand. As Ananya and Kabir had hugged each other, words falling over each other in the eagerness to explain them; Ritvik had silently let himself out of the room. The cab that had been waiting had brought him back to the apartment. He changed and got into bed wishing he would never wake up. The loud and insistent ringing of his phone woke him up in what seemed to be like 5 minutes time. He glared out of half an open eye at his phone which told him that Kabir was calling and that it had been nearly 4 hours since he had gone to sleep.

He held the phone up to his ear only to hold it away, wincing in pain as he heard Ananya shrieking that Kabir had proposed and that she had accepted. He tried to bring up his best cheerful voice and keep even the slightest pain from showing in his voice as Ananya was obviously jumping around in joy. They were planning on going meeting his parents that evening. It was all decided. When they were hanging up around half an hour of details later, Ritvik knew he had done the right thing and healed the cracks in their lives. The devil on his shoulder though, was digging the pitchfork right in and he felt like he was cracking down the middle, most horribly painfully. As they were hanging up, Ananya’s final words nailed the coffin shut “All this would have never happened without you Ritvik. You made everything right. You know I love you, right?”

The Talisman - Part 1

Ananya hadn’t always been like this. She had been a free spirit who had just flown where she wanted to and done what she wanted to, ever smiling like the sun that came out every morning and as colorful as the rainbow. Then life had started to change around her when her parents were taken away from her in a car crash. Life then started disintegrating, one crack at a time, spreading and widening like the aircraft window one sees in movies cracking up at high altitude. Until it finally resembled an intricate spider’s web where there was nothing other than the crazed windshield through which she could hardly see the life she was driving through.

Now she read the daily horoscope to decide what she would wear, passed everyone through a Linda Goodman security check and crossed her fingers and toes when she wanted something to happen, apart from avoiding elevators and cats. She had grown used to blaming herself for most things that went wrong and invariably the bread would fall and when it did, it would fall on the buttered side wouldn’t it? Her life was full of the expectation of the next thing that would go wrong and how she always knew it was going to happen and why she couldn’t have stopped it because it was written in the stars.

That bright summer morning was no different. She stubbed her toe on the bed as she walked to the bathroom and then chipped her coffee cup as she set it down in a hurry, couldn’t get her hair dryer to work and ended up walking out the front door with her hair feeling like straw and having a sneaky suspicion that she looked like a scarecrow. A minor scrape with an auto and two stumbles on the pavement brought her to the train station where she usually caught the 7:30 morning local to work. As with every morning, she stood apart from the early crowd that was coming onto the platform, in her own corner, back to a pillar and her earphones piping her favorite John Mayer acoustic version of Free Fallin’.

It was then that the gaggle of college girls landed on the platform like a swarm of bees and buzzed around as badly. A few elbows and legs later, she gave up trying to hold onto her position and backed into a corner. The train blared its horn as it swished into the station platform, the doors sliding open. She tried to avoid the swarm of bees and then started following them into the train. She saw the doors starting to slide shut and hurriedly took a step to get in, only to step onto someone else’s raised heel. Arms and legs flailing like the windmills that Don Quixote battled against in vain, she fell, hoping to land inside the train but glanced back and saw the platform rising to meet her. Fully expecting her luck or lack of it to hold good, she closed her eyes, only to be jerked to a stop by a pair of hands that caught her around the waist.

The wind driven out of her like a pair of bellows on full squeeze, her eyes opened with a start. She was pulled back up from behind and she used her hands and legs to good use to get herself back into a standing position. She turned around and met a pair of smiling eyes, and a mouth full of teeth. A voice from somewhere below the eyes said, “Are you OK?” But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the eyes enough to answer. Finally, she woke from her hypnotic trance and blabbed a yes. The crowd was a little too thickly packed and she found that she had no room to move away from the stranger. She muttered a thank you to the stranger who was dressed in a suit and looked like he worked in a bank.

He got lost almost immediately in what appeared to be a wall of clothes with hands, legs and an occasional face holding it up. The brief exchange left her completely unnerved and very shaky. She hardly got her bearings when she realised that the next train was coming in. She felt sure that she was going to miss this one too and get late for work. However, as the train pulled in, everyone seemed to be keen to get in through one of the other doors of the train, leaving the one that she was standing opposite, quite empty. She almost strolled in and then nearly stepped off when the same pair of smiling eyes greeted her on the train. Managing to hold onto a hand rail like it was a buoy that kept her afloat in a stormy sea; she tried to turn her back to him.

She soon found that staring into the face of the man standing opposite was distinctly less pleasing than looking at those smiling eyes. Turning back, she was greeted with a look that almost said, “I told you so”. He was talkative to the dozen while she could barely make the right noises and soon she learnt that his name was Ritvik, he lived close to where she did and worked at a multinational bank in the central business district. Despite his repeated attempts to learn something about her, she remained a closed book, refusing to give off even dust from its covers.

She got off the train at her usual stop and he waved bye from inside, the familiarity coming easily to him. She nodded her head and smiled and walked towards the escalator. It was then that it hit her – she had actually not fallen that morning when usually she would have been picking herself and her things off the floor. She thanked her lucky stars and the stranger a little more fervently and walked the short distance to work. Caught as she was in the threads of her thoughts about the morning and her escape as she wove and unwove them, she didn’t even notice that she had walked onto the road in front of the cab but miraculously didn’t get hurt. The elevator was waiting for her just as she walked in and the coffee in her cup didn’t splash on her like it usually did. It was a great morning after all!

Towards evening, her luck went back to normal. Her hard disk crashed and the pitch she was making to the client disappeared along with it. A few hasty chart paper hand outs and a near disaster with a half empty cup of coffee later, her head was pounding like some prison inmates were on hard labour inside her head. Taking a couple of dispirins, she walked out of office. A near claustrophobic death trap of an elevator and a scraped elbow from saying hello to the curb at close quarters later, she found herself on the train back home. The train ride itself was uneventful, thank goodness and she walked back to her apartment. As she reached the front door, she remembered that she had left her bag on the train.

Cursing her luck, she almost gave up, breaking down in tears in sheer frustration. She trudged down the stairs of her apartment with no hope of ever finding her bag again, thinking of all the calls she would need to make to cancel her cards and her phone and everything else. As she walked back in slow defeated steps towards the train station, she had a feeling it was going to be a long night. The tears of frustration seeped out of her in small bursts as she rounded the bend in the road towards the station.

Then she saw Ritvik sitting on the steps, doing something on his phone and for some insane reason, her anger peaked and she wanted to hit out blindly at him. Walking up, she said in her best sarcastic tone, “So, you had no place to go and nothing to do, so you’re sitting here and catching up on work?”  He looked up, the initial smile in his eyes disappearing at her words like a curtain that just drew shut. He said nothing, just handing her something. She saw that it was her bag and wanted to eat her words, slowly, painfully, letter by letter. She stood there, clutching her bag in her hand as he just stood up and walked away. Half of her screamed to run after him and apologize and the other half was still chewing cud at her words. As she stood there feeling like the lowest of the low, the icing on the cake just appeared and it started to rain.

The next few days went by as disastrously as ever, everything seeming to go wrong in every possible way. The zodiac predictions foretold a turbulent week ahead as if she didn’t know. She searched for Ritvik every morning and evening on the train but could find no trace of him. It was almost as if he disappeared from the face of the earth after that one fateful day when he saved her - twice. Life seemed to go from bad to worse as her sister fell sick and she had to leave town. She spent over a week back at her home town nursing her back to health. Somehow, life took a whole different shape when she was at home, in her own world, her comfort zone. The routines were easy to get into, the comfort of the normal and the lack of expectations. The simple life overtook her, laying all her anxieties and worries to rest. The peace and quiet of it all lulled her into thinking that it was all fine.

She returned to her normal schedule after the 2 week break, coming in on the weekend to clean up her apartment and set it right. And the jinx came back again, painfully intense. First the plumbing at home had stopped up. And the electricity was off; she had forgotten to pay her bill before she left. The stuff in the fridge had gone completely rotten and to boot, the maid did a disappearing act. She spent most of the day chasing the electrician and the plumber and what was left of it cleaning out the fridge and the rest of the house. She ordered in some Chinese and was eating it sitting on the floor of her balcony, gazing out at the stars. As she walked back indoors, her foot struck something that went half flying across the room and she realized it was her bag, the one that Ritvik had rescued. The thought of him brought a sigh to her lips, as she wished for the millionth time that she had not said what she had.

She wandered down to the nearby hypermarket to fill up on supplies and escaped with a minor mishap in the ketchup section and a split 5 kg sack of wheat flour that was partly on the floor and partly on her. As she waited her turn at the cash counter which seemed to have miraculously filled up just as she had come to it, she suddenly saw Ritvik enter the store. She first did what she usually did, turning her face away and ignoring him, letting her discomfort at meeting him rule over everything else. Then, her better sense prevailed and she walked out of the queue, hearing the murmur about “mad woman” behind her and not caring. She caught up with him at the fruits section. She stood waiting for him to finish selecting bananas. He seemed to be taking an inordinately long time over it, examining them from every angle and smelling them only to drop them back. After a couple of minutes of waiting for his expert selection, her patience ran out and she called out “Ritvik”.

The bunch of bananas dropped to the floor with a soft plop as he turned towards her, his eyes showing that he expected something similar to last time, guarded, like the gates would close in an instant at the slightest sign of trouble. Her tentative “Hi” did nothing to make it any better. Finally, she offered to help him out and after initially refusing, he agreed and they walked in silence, picking the bananas, then the tomatoes and then the yoghurt. He picked his coffee and she asked him how he managed to like percolator coffee. That got him opened up a little bit and the explanation came out a little shaky but did come out nonetheless. When they finally got to the cash counter, it was idle and they checked out quicker than she could have believed possible. As they walked out, bags in hand, the evening had turned from the muggy heat blanket that it had been to a cool, moist breezy interlude with a growing twilight peppered with bright twinkles. He asked if she lived close by and when she told him, they decided to just walk back. There wasn’t any conversation for a while; just the silence and the company of stars.

He walked her home and then smiled at her and said goodbye and left. And that was just it. It was just right. No words said, no gestures, nothing required. She found a lady waiting outside the door and on enquiring, found that she wanted to offer her services as a maid. Deciding to hire her from the next day, she let herself in and breathed a sigh of pure unadulterated relief as the lights came on with the flick of the switch. Making herself a quick fix dinner of noodles, she caught herself humming a strange tune and smiled at herself. Dinner was distracted, her thoughts wandering and scattered like a flight of doves at feed time. Even her favourite show on TV failed to hold her interest. Sleep was difficult to come as an unnamed anxiety held her captive and she kept waking up.

Rising early after giving up on her attempts to sleep, she held her tea cupped in both hands as if she were offering it to the Sun God who was just making his presence felt on the horizon. The cool morning breeze calmed her down and she breathed in deep and unhurriedly. As she got ready for work that morning, she felt light and unburdened, as if some weight had been lifted off her and she was now free. She reached the train station in time and she stood there, her eyes searching. As much as she hated to admit to herself, she was looking forward to seeing Ritvik that morning. Not having seen him anywhere along the way, she was getting impatient. The 7:30 was just pulling into the platform when a tug at her hand made her turn and she caught those smiling eyes again and despite herself, began smiling back.

Valentine at Sunset

He woke up with a start, his heart filled with a nameless fear, almost kicking out to free himself from the clutches of whatever it had been that had been pulling him into the dark pool. Gasping for breath, he could smell her and moved closer, nuzzling her neck and the soft hair there, her smell like a balm that soothed him instantly. Instantly, almost instinctively, she reached back and pulled his hand into hers and clutched it close to her cheek like always. His hand lay there, entwined in hers, her warm breath breezing onto his skin, breathing life into him. She moved even closer to him if that was possible, their bodies a perfect fit. Slowly, a smile curved his lips and he closed his eyes, drifting off into sleep, lulled by her warmth.

The alarm went off and he woke with his nose right in the curve of her neck. Kissing her soft skin, he tried to remove his hand from hers but she only clutched him harder. He just laid there, her grayish white hair brushing his cheek. From this close, he could see the fine lines in her skin, the only evidence of her age. She shifted in her sleep, her breath escaping in a gasp from her lips and his fingers were loosened in her clasp. He slowly withdrew them from her, stiffening an instant as she shifted in her sleep and slowly rose out of bed. Walking to the bathroom, he stared at himself in the mirror. Dark eyes, still a semblance of sharpness in them, stared back at him. Eye lashes now completely silver and his chin peppered in white, his hairline now far back from his forehead, hair all pure white and scanty. Crow’s feet lined his eyes and a series of wrinkle dimples lined his cheeks from the corners of his mouth to his ears, dancing in series when he smiled.

He made his own coffee, a ritual for the past lifetime of his, and made his way past the living room and opened the door to a brilliant sunrise. Their house was the one that they had always dreamed about, on a hill, facing the sun rise and surrounded by a plantation and a farm. The best thing about it was the mornings when he could sit on his doorstep and see the sun come up over the hill. Everything about the house was still and silent, sleeping waiting for the dawn. He sat on the top step as always, legs spread and holding the coffee cup in both hands, letting the warmth seep into him. As he drank the first sip, the rush overtook him as always and he settled down into his absent minded stare as the sun peeped over the hill. Halfway through his cup, he heard her light footsteps behind him and then smelt her presence. She came around and took her position on the step just below the one that he sat on, between his legs, her head resting as always on his right knee. He leaned forward and kissed her hair and they just sat there staring at the sunrise. The town came alive below them in a while and soon after, the maid came home as their daily routine started.

The plantation work started thereafter, the head stayed at the farm in a small building some way away from their home while the farm hands came in every morning. They reviewed the progress on the crops and she spent time with their cattle, brushing them and taking care of their feed. It was immensely satisfying, the life they led. It had always been their dream to give up the big city life that they each had, their successful careers and simply come away to the back of beyond where they had only each other and the life they built for themselves. There was nothing material about the life they led, a far cry from what they once had. But there was nowhere that they would rather be now.

In a couple of hours, they made their way down, hand in hand, walking down the trail towards the town. Towards the small building that housed the other part of their dream. The building was divided into two parts, one where there was an open floor and a number of mats for sitting and another where there was a black board and study tables. The open floor was hers, where she taught boys and girls a variety of craft and art ranging from simple sketching to pottery and candle making. The class room was his, where he taught the children basic subjects like English, Science and Math. He opened the gate and they made their way into their areas and prepared for the day ahead. Shortly, they heard the gaggle of the children as they made their way to the building and then settled down to their routine. Breaking for lunch, they had the usual quick lunch where they talked about how the kids were coming along and specific problems they were facing.

Winding down in the late afternoon, they both walked down to the park. It was another daily routine of theirs to spend the evening at the park, their bench as always saved for them. They sat there as the tea vendor brought them hot cups of ginger tea, sipping and watching the sun go down. Words were not always required. Their silent understanding was born from the numerous fights and battles they had had, learning about each other from every one of them. Their life together had never been easy, the ups and downs far more than the plateaus of happiness. And every such up or down had brought them closer to each other, to a level of shared understanding that didn’t need words or gestures.

And they wound the evening walking back to their home, up the hills past the sheep and goats that were getting back to their pasture. The glow of the sunset lit up everything in an orange halo, even the dust from their feet showing orange yellow. Dinner was always simple, the routine set to music of her choice. It was always in the living room, with both of them sitting on the floor, legs tucked under or crossed, talking to each other. They had always been able to talk to each other, sometimes for hours on end, about anything at all under the sun. Post dinner, the ritual was a walk in the garden, hand in hand, listening to the crickets chirp and go silent at their arrival and start again once they passed.  She stopped often to spread out a flower or to smell it, lifting a leaf or sometimes just brushing them with her fingers. He was content just to walk with her, holding her hand, smiling at her gestures and answering her questions at times. They retired to the patio where he would sit against the pillar and read while she would listen to the music, her head in his lap as they lazily talked their way into the night.

And thus their life went, not much of a variation in it unless they travelled, which they did once in a half year. They had looked forward to this life so much that they wanted to live each day of it to the fullest. Their lives together had not always been this peaceful and easy, they had not always been this understanding of each other. But the need for each other and the realization of this had come with each time that they had nearly walked away from each other or had broken apart. The bond had grown stronger and what had been two strong separate pillars had slowly broken down to become a beautiful arch whose both ends supported and strengthened each other.

But it looked like the gods weren’t happy with their peace and trouble came into paradise a few weeks later. It was just another morning when he woke up, his face buried in her hair and his nose nuzzling the back of her neck, his fingers clutched in hers, right next to her cheek. The only difference was that his fingers were cold, clammy cold, like he had dipped them in a bucket full of ice water that had stayed out in the freezing cold over night. He woke with a start and tried shaking her awake. Her heart was beating like an express train going crazy. She didn’t come awake and he dialed the town’s only doctor who came by on his scooter, rasping and groaning up the hill. An injection brought her around and the doctor got her sitting up in bed in a short while. He told them it was nothing, just a weakness induced fainting episode. She felt ravenously hungry after that, like she could eat a whole horse and they pigged out for breakfast, forgetting about it completely. But the cloud had appeared and started to move over the sun. She couldn’t walk that day and so they didn’t go down to the school or for the sunset. She recovered though in a couple of days but he could feel that she had slowed down, the springiness in her walk a little less, the smile in her face a little slow, the brightness in her eyes a little dull.

Monsoon came in a few months, the hills drenched in rain that poured in like a giant tap had opened in the sky and someone had forgotten to close it. The sheets of rain ran down like new rivers finding their way down to the sea, sometimes taking with them entire plants that had got washed loose. New rivulets and new creeks came up every day. He hated it when it was like this, dull and grey and cloudy. Like someone had forgotten to turn on the lights in the evening. The constant rain made it worse, even the furniture felt damp. Everything smelt wet or felt wet, like a kid having left it’s hand and foot prints all over the place. Everything seemed to slow down just like you found it difficult to move in a pool of water. And so it was on that particular day, it started later than normal with his coffee on the verandah disrupted by a particularly heavy shower which left him in a bad grouchy mood. She couldn’t get out of bed that day, feeling particularly like “sleeping in” as she called it. The day went by, slow and sticky. Towards afternoon, she got irritable, in a way that reminded him of their big fights years ago. He tried reasoning with her but couldn’t get through to her at all and finally just settled down to hold her close and calm her, comfort her. Suddenly, he felt her tears, hot and wet on his shirt front. Holding her face in his hands, searching for the reason for her tears, he was stopped short by her words, “Don’t leave me alone”. He kissed her quiet and they just sat there silently like that.

Night came quickly then, the rain a steady downpour that beat an unsteady rhythm that didn’t disappear but kept intruding into their togetherness, causing a discomfort that wouldn’t fade away. He held her close that night, a nameless fear that gnawed at his heart and made a hole in the pit of his stomach. He kept checking on her through the night, unable to sleep himself until the early hours of the morning when he could see the gray in the sky as light made its way across the sky. It was then that he dropped off, out of sheer exhaustion. He woke up to the sun streaming in through the window, cutting sharply like a blade through the dull darkness of the room. It fell across her face, diagonally, from one temple down her front to her hip, like a sharp blade that had sliced her and revealed an inner core of light. It was then that he noticed that her lips weren’t parted like she usually slept but were pinched shut as if by force. His eyes widened in alarm as he moved close to her, only to feel that her chest wasn’t moving at all. The blade of light caught a strand of her hair as it lifted up in a breeze and settled down over her eyes and across her nostril. He sat there for what seemed like forever, willing the strand to move with her breathing, his heart waiting with his held in breath.

The doctor came sometime later and told him that it was something about her heart that had gone weak, something to do with age. He was numb then, unfeeling like a piece of wood that had gone dead inside and didn’t show outside. He just sat there on the verandah, his back to the pillar, having forgotten everything and everybody there. The whole town came to pay their respects, all the children that they had taught came with sadness in their eyes that they didn’t quite understand. The day passed on with rituals of some sort or the other. He felt quite removed from it all, like he was standing and watching it happen to someone else. When it was finally over, she had gone and he couldn’t quite understand how. He went for days without sleeping or eating, unable to follow the routines that he was so used to but without her.

He came together like a new man three days after she had passed. Got out of bed where he had spent the night not sleeping, and showered and dressed, walked out of the door to the farm. He spent the morning talking to the farm hands and the chief about the damage that the rains had done and what repair they could do. He then went down to the school and spent the day with the children, who couldn’t quite understand why he was so normal that day after not having appeared for the past three. He finished up school as usual and walked down to the park. He sat down at a different bench that day, on the side of the pond, not facing the hills. He felt tired, like he had been on a long journey and now, at the end of it, was exhausted to the bone. But there seemed to be no one that could help him with it, he had to make this journey alone. And he realized that he couldn’t do it at all, not even for one more day.

It was there that they found him the next morning, a dove sitting on the bench next to him, the dew drops clinging to his lashes and his hair like pearls, reflecting the sun that was just coming out. His eyes were shut but there was a faint smile on his face and a sense of peace as if he had found something. His right hand clutched a red rose, from one of the bushes in the park, its thorn having pricked his hand. But the bleeding had long stopped, long before his heart had. He had gone to join her they said, for he couldn’t live without her and that was why he was smiling, because he was going to her, where his rightful place was.