by Parth Pandya
Her eyes were set on the whirring fan overhead. She fervently wished that watching the fan move around with manic regularity would hypnotize her. She wished the reality of her moment would be shunted out of her consciousness. Nishtha Shashtri lay on her bed, the same bed she first slept on when she got married and came to this house. Its creaks and groans mirrored that of her husband, who was furiously at work on top of her, performing his daily ritual with robotic monotony.
Since her husband rarely took her breath away with his daily exertions, Nishtha would willingly grab whatever chances she got to have some mental excursions of her own. She did the same every time her eyes were peeled away from the television. She allowed herself to be transported into the world behind the glass that she had come to love and adore. That world spoke to her in a way that the world around her didn’t. Her heart was a vessel of complex desires, far too complex for her monotone of a husband to fulfill. The same could not be said of Vikrant Kapoor. Or Vik, as she liked to call him inside her realm of thoughts.
Every day, her fantasies zoomed in on the cherubic face, much like the cameras that did from various angles in rapid succession. Vik was everything Nishtha ever wanted in a man. He waltzed into her heart the first day she had seen him on the grainy pixels of her old Videocon television. She was introduced to him as Vikrant, the scion of the Kapoor family. Vikrant, who spoke in a deep baritone. Vikrant, who would take over the reins of his father’s business when the ageing man dies of a sudden heart attack. Vikrant, the man who would be the one his family turned to in times of strife and who unfailingly bailed them out each time. Vikrant, a man like a man should be. Yes, a man, all blood and sinew and muscle and heart. A man who could arouse passion in a woman; whip her feelings up into a storm. She knew she was in a bind when these thoughts drove her to pound a lump of dough into submission far more aggressively than was necessary. This is what a real man could do, she thought. Not a man who left behind any traces of being one once the altar was crossed.
Days had morphed into weeks and the saga on the series ‘Ek Hi Raasta’ (There’s only one road) continued. Vik’s life had gone from that of a carefree youngster to the scion of the family, burdened with worries such young shoulders should not have had to bear. An episode had ended with Vik sitting on the edge of his bed, shedding silent tears. It was the first time Nishtha would speak to him, as if the transmission of those words to her on-screen beloved was an assured matter. She would console him and strengthen him with her love and support, as if the words would morph themselves into gentle strokes of her hand on his wide back. When Vik came back smiling the next day, she smiled contentedly to herself. There was a new spring in her step and new meaning to her life. Her husband noted that she was adding more sugar to his tea than usual.
But matters of the heart are never as simple as one would wish them to be. It was a Thursday, Nishtha remembers, when Vik was sitting in a coffee shop alone, sipping his favorite cappuccino. His eyes were pegged onto his laptop. She noted that his head tilted ever so slightly to the right. At that moment, violins filled the air and the world seemed to move at a slower pace than it used to. A vision in white walked past Vik’s table, whose gaze fell on her and did not leave her side. Vik was captivated by Ruchika, a girl who had no business being there, but who nonetheless, was transfixing Vik by her charms. This didn’t end there, and as Nishtha noted with growing alacrity over the coming weeks, there blossomed an easy romance between the two.
Nishtha went through a wide array of negative emotions. Betrayal, anger, sadness, frustration, revenge – she felt them all and expressed them with a coating of melodrama on her hapless husband. She knew she couldn’t let Vik be consumed by this infatuation. She had to rescue him; make him see the errors of his way; tell him that no one could love him like she could. That Sunday night, she paid attention to the end credits of ‘Ek Hi Raasta’. She noted the address of the company producing the show. Then she stretched herself on a stool to reach the bags that were kept in the attic. Her mind was made up and her will was strong. On Monday afternoon, she finished her chores, tidied her kitchen one last time, grabbed her bag and rushed towards the door.
She reached for the doorknob, clasping it firmly, as her determination willed her on to turn it. She pulled the door towards herself and propelled her right leg past the verandah, only to be hindered by a six-year-old boy hurtling towards the house like a meteor burning up. The bright flash of his aura arrested her in the place where she stood, which was neither here, nor there. Neither inside, nor outside. Neither home, nor the world. Nishtha was Trishanku, cursed forever to be in-between. Her progress arrested, Nishtha watched her son Rohan scream his way to the sofa before settling on it in a heap. She walked back along the path of destruction, picking up his school bag after him, and restoring the symmetry of the cushions. She sat down in stoic silence, taking a moment to gather herself. Her illusion and reality had collided and left her disbelieving everything. Then, taking in a deep breath, she reached out for the remote. The screen flickered to life and Vik smiled at her.
Parth Pandya is a passionate Tendulkar fan, diligent minion of the ‘evil empire’, persistent writer at http://parthp.blogspot.com, self-confessed Hindi movie geek, avid quizzer, awesome husband (for lack of a humbler adjective) and a thrilled father of two. He grew up in Mumbai and spent the last eleven years really growing up in the U.S. and is always looking to brighten up his day through good coffee and great puns.
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