by Prashila Naik
The radio in the living room blared on aimlessly. On the center table, an almost emptied glass of whiskey stood out morosely through a jungle of old bills, promotional pamphlets and a whole bunch of assorted computer printouts. A maroon colored striped handkerchief hung limply over the edge of the adjacent futon.
She watched the dimly lit room with a quiet disinterest before walking towards the bedroom. He looked up for a second to see her come in and then promptly got back to reading another one of those Hindi paperbacks he often picked up from the railway station’s bookstall. She put her handbag on the side table and walked to the closet to pick up a fresh set of night clothes.
“Your mom had called,” he said suddenly.
“I know. She called me on my cell phone a while back.”
Not waiting for his response, simply because there wasn’t going to be any, she picked up the once bright red, but now faded-in-patches nightgown and stepped into the bathroom. The dried- up shower head greeted her in all its non-functional grandeur. She clicked her tongue, annoyed that he had not called in the plumber yet again; but the annoyance, like every other time, lasted for just a few seconds. The shower had been inoperable for so long, she hardly missed using it anymore.
He had already left the bedroom by the time she got out of the washroom. The paperback, though, still lay on the bed. She picked it up and spent a good minute staring at the picture on its cover, a young woman, fairly pretty, with kohl rimmed eyes that seemed to stare blankly into her own eyes. She glanced through some of its initial pages and gently put it back on the bed. She had always found it hard to think of even one reason as to why he was so obsessed with these paperbacks. They had many a heated debates on their stories, characters, even the cover pictures and the short teasers on the back covers, in the past when they were just best friends. She looked at the cover picture once again, trying hard to come up with some potential topic for a debate, even if with her own self; but her mind drew a huge blank. She put the book down, minus all the earlier gentleness and walked to the kitchen.
“I am making egg fried rice”, she announced to no one in particular and yet loud enough for him to hear.
“Okay. I already had dinner,” he responded from the living room. She glanced in the direction of his voice and then ignoring it completely, got busy with her own preparations.
He was still in the living room, watching a talk show on a Hindi news channel, when she got there with a serving of her horribly turned-out fried rice.
“Do you want to watch that serial on Sony, what’s its name… the one with those conjoined twins?” he asked, without turning to look at her.
“No, carry on. I stopped watching that serial after its 3rd episode.”
“Really? I thought you followed it for quite some time.”
“Hmm…”
They stayed silent through the rest of her dinner, even as he aimlessly flicked through all the channels.
“I think I will go for a walk. Had a little too much to eat today,” he said a few minutes later and stretched both his arms lazily. She watched him with a vague fascination as he stood up from the sofa and stretched his arms some more, and then picking up the house keys and not bothering to change out of the smelly pajamas and T shirt he had been wearing, left from there.
She picked up her plate, switched off the TV and walked back to the kitchen a couple of minutes later. For a few seconds, images of him stretching out those long arms, refused to get out of her head. Those arms and the rest of him had been so much slimmer when she had seen him for the first time. She struggled to assign a date to that day in the past but failed miserably. Agitated for no reason, she hurriedly washed all the soiled dishes and put them back in their place, her aching feet, already beginning to demand their resting time for the day. Switching the lights off with the air of an expert, she got back to the bedroom.
The paperback caught her attention yet again. She picked it up and turned to its first page. The scene began with a lengthy description of a girl’s wedding preparations. She patiently read through the narration and stopped when she realised through a very obvious pointer that this wedding would never see the light of that day. The bride would be deserted by her greedy, prospective in-laws and that abandonment probably explained the sadness in the bride’s eyes. She closed the book as if she had made a startling discovery and lay down on the bed, letting the room lights stay on. He would switch them off.
The image of him stretching his arms flashed in front of her eyes yet again and on an impulse, she turned to the other side. A lot of his hair strands evenly spread themselves out on his pillow. She watched them and mulled silently over the fact that he too had to deal with hair fall issues of his own. She passed her fingers over the pillow and then turned back to the other side, thinking of the conversation she had had with her sister, just that morning.
A conversation that had harmlessly begun with a short discussion on whether gray looks better with white or black, moved on to a visceral analysis of her marriage, or her ‘crumbling’ marriage, as her sister liked to call it. She closed her eyes, not wanting to remember the abrupt and inconclusive end to that conversation, and instead began thinking of the new Business Development Head in her office. The man was undoubtedly fine, even though he would be at least a decade and a half older than her. She remembered the flashy and slightly flirty smile he would cast in her direction when they both stood near the coffee vending machine at office. No one had smiled at her in that manner, ever since she had given up her tight fitting T-shirts for loose-fitting kurtas and her once thick and lushly long hair was cut down to stop just a little below her shoulders. She pictured that smile again and felt a strange flutter form inside the pits of her stomach.
The door lock grumbled and unexpectedly tore through her thoughts. The Business Development Head and his smile were pushed back to the dark corners of her mind, possibly to be rekindled sometime later. He walked in, pleasantly panting and humming an old Lata Mangeshkar, Madan Mohan classic.
“Sorry,” he mumbled as if he were apologizing to himself and switched the lights off. She had no idea what exactly he had done in the five minutes that he had taken to lie down next to her.
“Sing that song again,” she said softly.
“Which one?”
“Naino mein badra chhaaye….”
He sang a couple of lines and then stopped when he felt her reach out to him, her fingers clumsily brushing against his shoulder. He caught those fingers and pulled her into his arms. She did nothing to stop him and placing her head against his chest, let herself feel the rhythms of his beating heart, as he continued to sing the song from where he had stopped.
Prashila Naik dreams of retiring into the idyllic landscapes of Ladakh and longs for a day when every child in India will have two full meals to eat and a permanent school to attend to. When not dreaming or longing, she continues to extend her repertoire as a veteran IT professional who loves to dabble with words and discover new genres of music. Prashila is a community member of the Bangalore Writers Workshop, an unique, effective, and interactive method of bringing a group of writers together and allowing them to study the craft of writing while receiving constructive feedback on their own work.
