At some point in her life, she decided not to marry. No! That is not true. It was not like she decided not to marry, she decided not to go in search of marriage. If the said event came to her on its own, she would have accepted it. Reaching the decision helped her. Every time she met a married couple, she did not think "Oh! I wish I was married". As time went by, her thoughts traveled in the opposite direction and she thanked her stars for not having married. One evening she was dining with a relative whose relation to her was tough to define. She, like millions of other Indians, referred to him as a distant relative. As the evening proceeded, she started noticing something amiss between him and his wife. She realized that through the dinner they did not communicate with each other. When she talked he seemed distant and cold and the reverse when he talked. Each waited for the other to stop talking and started talking about something unrelated soon after. At times, they talked to each other about some mundane functional topic.
"Oh! I forgot to tell you that I am travelling on Tuesday."
"Tuesday! But that is the day of Seeta mami's daughter's wedding."
"I will be off for two days."
"They came home to invite us. Remember?"
"Yes, I do. I will send an apology and a congratulatory message."
"Can't we visit them tomorrow?"
"They will be busy with the arrangements."
"I will call them. We should drop in for a few minutes at least."
"Tomorrow is tough but we will see."
"We should visit them."
"Hmmm. We will see."
The wife sat quietly looking out of window while the husband looked at his smartphone. She did not know what to do and so scrolled down her Instagram page studying stale posts seriously. A few minutes later he started talking about air travel and hotels. The wife continued staring out of the window. After a few minutes she turned around and looked at her with a smile. When he stopped talking, she started talking to her regarding her work.
She felt sadness surge through her. She used to meet the couple regularly and was fond of the time they spent together. But something had changed in the last two years. She could not identify the two of them sitting on the other side of the table. They had turned distant and cold to each other and to others too. Other than the perfunctory "how are you?", "how is Amma?" and "how is work?" they had not bothered to ask her anything about her life. She had responded with a "good" and a couple of "fine"s as response for these questions and they had not even bothered to hear her.
She had the opportunity to observe other married-for-many-years couples over the next few days and found them to be similar. The two people sat next to each other but their minds seemed to be many miles apart. They seemed so distant that they did not even bother to hurt each other. After one such meeting, she found it difficult to sleep. She got out of her bed and walked to her balcony. It was a dark night. The sky was moonless and the neighbourhood was dark. She looked up at the stars. The beauty of the stars and night sky did not capture her attention. She looked from one spot of the sky to another without noticing anything. Her mind was racing from one topic to another.
Twenty three minutes later she turned around and walked back into her bedroom. She opened the door and walked towards the kitchen. She boiled some milk and water and made herself a hot drink. She picked the cup and sat down on the floor. She took the cup of hot liquid in the cup and said "Men at best are only as good as a cup of hot dark chocolate".
No comments:
Post a Comment