by Ajay Patri
As I brush my teeth, I see a solitary strand of Maya’s hair floating in the basin like a water snake. It curls and uncurls itself, fighting bravely against the current until it finally gives up and disappears down the gaping hole. I watch the space where it was a moment ago, as if waiting long enough will make it return. When it doesn’t, I spit out the minty toothpaste.
I enter the bedroom and blink my eyes a few times, adjusting to the soft glow of the yellow light and the deep shadows it throws. I see Maya look up at me from her book. She places it on her lap and opens her arms out wide. I gather her into my own arms. Her pointy bones bore into my torso but I don’t let go. I clasp my left forearm with my right hand behind her narrow back and feel her slow breathing on my neck.
“I am tired of reading this book. I just can’t seem to get through it.”
The tiny stubs of hair above her ears tickle my nose. She pulls apart and smiles at me.
“Did you see the time?”
I look at the clock on the bedside table and see that it is 12:30. When I turn to Maya, her smile is wider, the skin around her lips looking in danger of rupturing like thin paper.
“Forty years.”
As I keep looking at her, her smile falters by the slightest degree. Her eyes glaze over and she looks at the clock herself, like she is unsure of having registered it properly the first time.
“It’s our anniversary!”
There is a hint of annoyance in her voice and her nostrils flare like they always do when she is peeved. I run my thumbs down her face, from the deep pits below her eyes to the corners of her lips.
“I forgot! I’m so sorry, honey.”
She looks at me with narrowed eyes, deliberating on the sincerity of my apology. She finally smiles again.
“You don’t have to be sorry, silly. It’s been forty years and you are not getting any younger. I can’t expect you to be the smart young man you were.”
I cannot help but smile. Maya is not always this energetic these days. She sees my grin and reaches up a slender hand to ruffle my hair.
“You remember the day now, don’t you?”
I do remember the day. It was raining heavily from morning, the heavens pelting us with raindrops the size of lemons. We got home completely drenched.
“I remember the rain.”
Maya looks at me quizzically.
“Rain? What are you saying?”
Maya looks lost again, her confusion amplified by her frailty. I want to hit myself for being so callous. There was a time when we could have had proper conversations and that time is long gone now. These days, all I’m supposed to do is smile and agree with whatever she says. And now I have gone ahead and assumed that she remembers the rain.
“I’m sorry, dear. You know me, I keep forgetting. I think I’m confusing it with a different day.”
She is slow with her forgiveness this time. She looks at me warily, her face carrying the look of someone who has just been woken up from a deep sleep, a look that has become increasingly common on her delicate visage.
“It was a bright day, wasn’t it?”
She sounds like a child seeking my approval. Forcing myself to not break down, I nod.
“It was.”
Emboldened by my support, she ploughs on with her creation.
“The leaves were all falling from the trees then. And I remember the wind which kept sweeping all those leaves around all the time. Do you remember that?”
“I do, Maya.”
It couldn’t all be made up, I tell myself. These vivid details have their place in our collective memories and I need to associate them with the right events to better appreciate these little talks of ours. They can’t all be meaningless, conjured out of a movie she saw years ago or read in a book when she could still read books and not be stuck on the same page for five months in a row. It would be too cruel if our lives have been replaced in her mind by these images of feinted happiness.
“You were sweating so much that day, dear. I remember watching the sweat stains on your shirt grow larger and wishing we could just go home so I could help you take it off.”
Her smile is mischievous and for an instant, she looks like she did on our wedding day. Then her face contorts in concentration again at trying to remember imaginary details and I am struck anew by how much a struggle this is for her, even if she is unaware of it herself.
“And the flower. You gave me a flower.”
My heart skips a beat. How does she remember the flower when everything else about our wedding has been mutilated beyond recognition in her head?
For I did give her a flower on the day of our wedding. A yellow daffodil. Not the most romantic flower to present to your newlywed wife but then, it was a spurt of spontaneity that made me stay out in the rain when we finally made it to our home. Maya ran in and I stopped outside, my hair plastered over my skull and the rain beating a steady rhythm on my exposed body. I was distracted by the flower, a lone thing of colour and beauty on that gray day. The plant itself was bent, battered by the rain and burdened by the half bloomed flower. I walked up to the sidewalk where it grew and plucked it off the plant. Its sodden petals were thin and I could see the veins crisscrossing their length. It seemed like a blessing, a sign of something that I couldn’t wrap my head around. When Maya saw me enter, dripping wet and cradling the flower like a newborn child, she had a strange expression on her face. It felt like she was seeing me truly for the first time. It’s an expression that has stayed with me.
“You remember the flower?”
“Of course I do. How can I not?”
I realise my eyes are stinging with tears and I close them to keep them from her. She kisses me. It is meant to be a gentle gesture but her gossamer lips only manage to have her teeth bruise my own lips. I do not let her go until I feel the strength ebb away from her body with the effort of kissing me.
“It was the most romantic thing you ever did for me.”
I laugh at the quiet certainty with which she says those words. This was always the way my Maya made pronouncements that were meant to goad me into a mock battle of words. It was a cue for me to defend myself, say that I was still capable of springing romantic surprises. But now I contain myself, knowing that I cannot get carried away.
“There I was, wondering where you had gone. Leaving me unattended merely hours after we got married.”
She wrinkles her nose in pretend disgust and a small bottle of happiness inside me seems to have been opened after ages. She remembers the flower and she remembers that I did not follow her into the house.
She pulls me closer and whispers in my ear.
“How did you know that roses are my favourite?”
I look at those sunken eyes and am overcome by a familiar sense of dejection that accompanies my repeated attempts at making sense of our conversations, of reliving a profound sense of heartbreak over and over again. The truth is not good enough for her anymore and it should stop meaning so much for me.
I didn’t know, I tell her and finally break down crying.
Ajay Patri a twenty one year old law student, currently studying at National Law School of India University, Bangalore. He is painfully awkward in social situations, a rabid football fan, a fan of avant-garde European films and a terrible guitar player. He reads all the time, maintains his Goodreads account diligently and is fascinated by the writing of authors such as McEwan, Ishiguro, McCarthy and Coetzee.
Pic: https://www.flickr.com/photos/
