After a lapse of 30 years, her
sudden informal visit to my home made me feel thrilled and nonplussed. The
thrill was due to the lingering memories of the distant past that still haunted
my heart. I was wonder-struck as the expectancy of this visit had been lost a
long time ago in the whirlwind of the futile desolate wait. When she entered my
home, the wafture of the past fragrant moments filled every corner of my heart.
I introduced her to my wife and children.
“Listen,
she is Pushpa.”
But
when she became intimate with them within no time, my children started showing
to her their drawings. Now they were talking to their new auntie about their
school and complaining against their daddy. My wife beaconed me to the kitchen
and asked:
“Who
is she?”
“She
is my distant relation.”
“What
is the relationship?”
“Relationship…..
It is very remote….. If you like it, it is a relationship otherwise the
relation is insignificant.”
“But
still…..”
“My
uncle, who hailed from Kanpur….. Her mother was a distant cousin of his.
Whenever my uncle visited us, he would call on her as she was married in our
town. Since then mutual visits to our homes were a casual affair. I have known
her since her childhood.”
“What
a relationship…..”
“I
have already told you, you may or may not acknowledge such a relation.”
She mystiquely
smiled and got busy with her household chores and I returned to the
drawing-room where she was searching my childhood on the faces of my children.
For a moment I
thought that I had betrayed my wife. But it was not possible to share every
feeling surging in my heart and the thoughts prevailing in my mind. I myself
was not conscious if the waves rising every moment were to spray their water
far and wide on the shores or were to flow with the current and lose their
existence. How could I tell my wife that the same girl whom I loved like a mad
man 30 years ago had revisited my home as a middle-aged woman? How could I tell
her that my heart used to yearn to kiss her eyes in the days of my adolescence?
Every physical contact was susceptible to send amorous currents in my body. I
used to roam around her school in the scorching sun to steal a glimpse of her
face, to chat with her by encountering her on way back home. If I tell her all
that, what will she think? She may misconstrue or she may not. I will divulge
if I were sure that the past memories were still alive and vibrant with her.
After dinner, my
wife went on to the housetop with the children. But before going there, as
usual, she set the tea kettle on the gas stove and formally asked her if she
would like to have a cup of tea.
“Tea? At this
time? Anyway, never mind.”
I could make
nothing out of this casual acceptance of the offer. She was busy with looking
at the photographs in the heaps of albums lying at her knees. I could not make
out if she was interested more in having a look at the albums or enjoying my
company. After offering us cups of tea, my wife went upstairs to relax.
After a lapse of
a few moments of futile silence, I asked:
“Pushpa, time
flies at a great speed. Do you remember when did we meet last time? Thirty
years ago. Thirty years imply half of the average life-span of a human being.”
She closed the
albums and bowed her elbows on them and looked up towards my face.
“Do you remember
once you brought for me a ‘bhutta’ concealed in your schoolbag and you had
vowed before mother Kali to distribute ‘batashe’ worth five paisa if I met
you?”
She just smiled.
Her smile, it was quite evident, was artificial and dull. But her smile was so
winsome for me that I did not care for the artificiality and the dullness.
“And one day
when you were sitting on my bicycle, your dupatta was reduced to rags while it
was caught in the wheels. You entered your house stealthily and before your
mother could detect, you had hidden the torn dupatta under the wooden almirah
and covered yourself with a new one.”
I was confident
that this time her artificial smile would evaporate and she would laugh
heartily. But she became sober and her face was covered with a pall of gloom.
Raising her heavy eyelids, she said:
“Do you wish to
know the truth, Chetan I do not remember anything. All that I am conscious is
of the prolonged illness of my husband, studies of my children and problems of
my job. The rest vanished from my world of experience long time ago.”
My past
memories, which were surging out rapidly, started seething fast into
quietitude. All the romantic episodes of childhood days went helter-skelter
like a crowd at the slightest police firing. Finding me silent, she opened the
album again and, fixing her gaze over the photograph of my son, asked:
“isn’t he
Vaibhav?”
“………………………..”
“You were just
like that in your childhood.”
“I wished to
tell her that she had forgotten all her past memories, but I shifted the
thought and watched her face in silence. She was also watching me stealthily
while looking at the album but there was no conversation between us. Folding
the last page of the last album, she collected all the albums and put them in
the almirah.
“Let us go to
sleep. It is getting very late.”
My wife had
spread five instead of four cots on the housetop. At the far end, my wife was
sleeping and my children were lost in slumber in the middle. At this end the
two adjoining cots were for us. She covered herself from feet to neck with a
sheet. I, leaning towards her side, was curiously watching her. She had closed
her eyes. I saw her in the infiltrating shade of the streetlight. Her small
thick lips, narrow black eyes and unattractive features appeared to be
vehemently unromantic. I pondered over the flash thought – what was it that
made me restless to see this face? I yearned to have a stealing glance at her
face.
I closed my eyes
in bewilderness. Lo! Once again the colourful mist of the past memories filled
her face with enigmatic charm. Her eyes were deep like a lake and her lips were
sensually inviting for the divine nectar. I thought that I was hallucinated for
a moment. I opened my eyes and looked at her. She was staring at my face with a
fixed gaze. The moment I opened my eyes, she closed her eyelids. This time she
must have blushed but I could not detect the same in the dim light.
Both of us spent
the night on our different cots, facing each other. Before clearing the web of
distrust, I closed my eyes again. A single thought was disturbingly raising its
head in my head and I wished to give it a practical shape. I leaned further
towards her and laid my right hand on one of the arms of her cot. She continued
in the same position. After some time, I stretched my hand to her pillow. She
did not move. Then I started fondling her hair with my fingers. My eyes opened
with the creaking of the cot. She had a stoical glance at me and slipped to the
other side. I, too, changed the side out of confusion and covered my face with
the sheet of cloth which was already stretched upto neck. I felt as if the
light was infiltrating through the wall gratings was getting transformed into
pitch dark. A deep pall of gloom must have appeared on my face at that moment.
Now I was facing
the direction in which my wife and children were asleep. For a long time I was
diving the ocean and riding the surf of memories in the struggle for existence
till mother sleep lured me within her fold.
When I woke up
in the morning, everybody was still asleep. It was the early hour of dawn. The
mild sound of my wife’s snoring was audible. Perhaps she had not changed her
side during the whole night. She was still facing the wall in her slumber. The
children, as usual, were in deep sleep. I wished to look at Pushpa by leaning
towards her. With the slightest movement in changing my side, my ears touched
her delicate fingers. She was facing me and her hand was on my pillow. An open
hand….. I could not make out the symbolism of her stretched hand. What were its
expectations? Was it expecting that I should also forget the past or should I
give her a chance to relive the past which I had so delicately preserved?
My lips wished to
plant a kiss on her hand but she quickly withdrew the hand and stretched it in
the manner as if she was oscillating. Perhaps she had become conscious of my
being awake, and, may be, she couldn’t have even a wink of sleep the whole
night.
