Readers Write In #718: Short story: Awakenings

By G Waugh

There was a thud. A strong one landing on my right cheek bone, which woke me up to a giant arm and a simultaneous, gentle scream. Needless to say, that I was frightened and taken aback to find where I lay. It was the empty room ventilated by a slowly rotating fan that made grinding noises. I tried to recollect how I had reached there and how long I had been lying there. But before the recollection began, the arm slapped me again on the centre of my nose that I rose from my lying position immediately brimming with irrepressible anger. The arm belonged to my son. The recollection now came instantly.

I had been asleep for the past four hours and it was 8 PM when I awoke. I had returned from Frankfurt that morning after completing my onsite assignment in Charlotte. I was seeing my ten-month-old son only for the second time in my life when I awoke from my day slumber. (The Skype chats we had thrice a year do not count). The first time was during that early morning in the airport lobby, when I called out to my wife who was carrying my son in her arms. Frankly, I never expected that he would jump out of his mother’s arms, at the very instant of his recognition of me. I usually felt nice whenever a stranger’s child pays me unusual attention. Even though it was my son, I did not feel any different or closer to him. Maybe I should have seen him come out of his mother’s body so as to feel appropriately. Or maybe his mother should have expressed happy surprise in ample measure at his extraordinary intelligence in recognizing his father whom he had not seen before in person.

Back in the room, I could hear the sweet sounds of anklets in incomplete rhythms from the adjacent hall. It belonged to Ashwini, my wife. My son sitting with his open legs didn’t notice the anger in my face and kept patting my knee.

‘Did you let Jawahar wake me up?’

I had a terrible headache after my trip and I had told her not to disturb my sleep till 9 pm at least.

‘I didn’t ask him to wake you up. He was sleeping all this time and woke up only now. When I lifted him out of his cradle and let him on the floor he crawled quickly to your room and woke you up’

I was no longer angry with him because thankfully, the headache had vanished somehow.

My son tried to trace the path of the white track on my running shorts with his little finger, drooling all the while on my knee. I lifted him up above my head with his hands wringing with one another. He looked at me just like how old people look at strangers with his toothless mouth open and a slightly elevated face.

I observed his features in detail and couldn’t find any resemblances to me. He was fair and proportionately fat. His curly hair could have been from me if my guess was right.

I wanted to make faces at him to make him smile but didn’t because I didn’t want to look artificial. But he screamed once and smiled at me all of a sudden.

‘Who is screaming out there? Does the screamer know that he is going to get nicely from me if he doesn’t drink milk now?’

The voice was from the hall, obviously from Ashwini.

I made an effort to stand up, holding my son in both hands when Ashwini rushed into the room and collected him from me. She put him on her lap and made some giggling noises esoteric to only her and him. I left the room to wash my face and answer nature’s call.

I got a phone call from my Chennai manager when I was done refreshing and was speaking for at least an hour, in the hall. Meanwhile, my wife had made my reluctant son drink all the milk in the bottle and had washed him up. He came back in supposedly new clothes crawling under the dining chairs, cooing all the while. He stopped suddenly close to the wall under the dining table. The line of busy ants bordering the wall had probably caught his attention. He sat gazing at the line for some time before interrupting it with his index finger. When I was done with the manager’s call, I turned to my right to find my wife busy in the kitchen. I walked up to her and wanted to hug her plump body from behind. I felt strange doing that but I did. What I didn’t do was to kiss her on the tempting nape of her neck which I had to resist with much difficulty.

She didn’t react much to my hug and asked me what I wanted to have for dinner. I was not in a mood to choose and I told her that I was ready to eat anything prepared by ‘my Ashwini’. I felt a strange jerk inside me after uttering those words because my mind caught me lying.

I smelt her hair and neck once deeply. I tightened my hug on her with sudden intensity when she, in the course of her work, poured something into the pan thatmade a disgusting sound with a lot of smoke. I knew it was not to turn me off. I withdrew my hands from her and walked a few steps backward, only to notice that she had grown broader in the past two years of my absence. Her disproportionate size was one of the biggest reasons why I could never love her right from the days of ourmarriage.

I chose a place to sit near the kitchen sink with my back to the kitchen cabinet that stored all her spices and vessels. I wanted to tease her whenever she would turn towards the cabinet to reach for the jugs or containers, by blocking her way. She took a look at my son from the kitchen opening and then did something to the fumingpan. I waited for her but she didn’t come towards the cabinet for quite a while. I too checked what my son was doing from the kitchen only to find that he had not moved from his place under the table.

She turned to move past me when I blocked her path with my left leg. She tried to brave me, but chose to look at me, turning left. I used both my dangling legs retaining my sitting position to trap her, firming my grip on her hips wrapping them up with my knees and pulled her close to me. She was surprised at my move. My head was barely an inch away from hers. Her face had not aged but in fact she looked more radiant than before.

She concealed her surprise at my sudden pull and looked stone-faced at me. I was sure that she was indignant at me for not involving in her affairs, ever since we were married. I didn’t want to start the topic myself.

‘I am doing chapati for the night. Fine?’

I held her face for a while with both my hands and moved my fingers over to her studded ears. I was trying to turn her on.

There was some noise from the hall and Ashwini withdrew from my hold, moving away from me to check. She peeped out and having ascertained normalcy in the hall, came back towards me voluntarily. She stared deeply into me and noticed a minor scar above my brows.

‘Are you not applying that ointment properly? See, the scar is still visible and fresh’

The scar was due to a wound that I sustained on our first Diwali together after marriage when one of the Zamin Chakkars exploded when I was lighting it. She was excessively concerned about it then and used to remind me about the ointment during each of her calls when I was abroad.

‘Ashwini you look younger than before. I wish you looked like this before our wedding’

I expected her typical blush but she tried to open the cabinet door behind me. I stopped her right hand and started playing with her turquoise bangles. She did not pull her hand out but said,

‘Jawahar would soon feel hungry. Leave me for now’

I released her hand and signaled her to move. I got down on the floor and started examining the closed doors in the kitchen cabinet. The doors had alternate colors of white and red with square glasses fitted in their centres. The containers were neatly arranged inside and there was even a box full of snacks.

‘Ash, you eat a lot of junk food and probably that’s why you look bigger than before’

‘I don’t consume snacks. I bought them yesterday for you. Your favourite corn puffs are there. Take them if you want to’, she replied without turning.

I tried to open the container but felt something pulling my leg. It was my son. I lifted him with both hands, wiped the drool off his mouth. He opened his mouth a bit when I noticed that he had swallowed a couple of ants.

‘Hey see he has swallowed some ants’. I told her with a bit of panic.

She turned immediately and pulled him away from me. She looked very angry suddenly and I couldn’t understand why.

She inserted her finger into his mouth and removed one of the ants. Jawahar closed his mouth again but she sent out a tune to make him open again. Jawahar didn’t open this time. She offered her finger to his mouth from a distance which he came forward to bite. She sent her finger inside his mouth this time, with force when he responded with a shriek at her. She then removed her finger and checked it for the other ant. It was full of his saliva and some white patches of food. She sent it again, this time with even more force and picked out the ant delicately.

‘Take him to the hall’ she said peremptorily.

I took him with me all the while thinking about how Jawahar remained largely unprovoked during his mother’s efforts to nab the ants. They both probably had a compact.

Jawahar moved his feet while being seated on my left hand and I looked at him.

‘Dei, what?’

He wanted to get down and I let him down on the floor of the hall. I turned to check my phone on the table and within seconds, he pulled my leg again.

‘Dei, what do you want?’

He signaled for me to lift him up which I promptly obliged. I decided to take him to the balcony when he again moved in my left-hand seat. I got angry but he smiled at me with a sound. I found out that he was playing a prank.

I showed him the road from the balcony. He took a glance at it and turned towards me. I was reminded of my adolescence when I used to blow air over the eyes of babies that were given to me for temporary supervision by neighboring aunties. The babies loved it then and used to laugh at me which, in turn, gave me great happiness.

I blew wind over his eyes which closed his eyelids just like how a light breeze entering from outside caresses curtains hung over windows. Once he opened his eyelids, he gave a clueless look as though trying to find why he saw darkness for a while. I tried blowing again and he started enjoying it. I did the same thing ten times and each time he responded with greater excitement than before. I was beginning to get a feeling that he somehow knew and understood that I was his ‘father’. I was trying to figure out what he understood by that word.

Suddenly he started pinching my nose and tried to pull it from my facial arrangement altogether. It hurt slightly but I didn’t make any effort to withdraw myself from his hold. When he removed his hand from my nose, he checked his empty palm and kept gazing at it for a while, looking baffled as to why my nose had not come off. His expression of bafflement was so much like a grown up that it amazes me even now when I think about it.

But more than that I was trying hard to come to terms with the realization that I had a ‘son’ and I was holding him in my hands. When I was informed a couple of years back that I was about to become a father, I had felt no emotion at all. I had been anticipating Ashwini’s delivery for quite a while, in fact, with a lot of dread. I sometimes, when immersed in deep thought, used to unconsciously wish for a safe miscarriage. After all, you may be surprised to learn that I had wanted my marriage to fail.

My son lifted his left hand with a sound signaling me to take him to the hall. I did not budge, already neck deep in thoughts about the night. It was not merely the gravity of my situation that kept me wallowed in thoughts, but also a deep calmness that had overcome me, as a result of the sound daytime siesta. The sleep seemed to have given me strength to resolve all my problems even if it amounted to settling scores with Ashwini. Or did I really want to settle scores? What if Ashwini surrenders and demands a peaceful resolution of our conflict? And once I enter into a treaty with her, do I have to behave normally just like a good husband? And if my dad sees that we are at last a happy couple, wouldn’t his ambition succeed? How can I allow that? What will happen to my long-drawn-out revenge on him? Why did I have to work for close to two years abroad, leaving my wife alone, soon after marriage, in places where I hated to live? A peaceful resolution with Ashwini would be tantamount to surrendering on my mission.

Ashwini walked into the bedroom behind the balcony with a bowl of Cerelac stirring it with a spoon rapidly.

‘Gullu, come here. Let’s have mammu’.

I took and gave him to her and left the bedroom immediately. I wanted to do a lot of thinking. I raced to the empty terrace on the next floor and started walking back and forth in the darkness. As long as I was in Charlotte, even though I hated my job and managers and clients, I had no one else to satisfy other than me. Every month I used to spend not less than two thousand dollars on cinema, baseball and food. I had finished reading close to thirty novels in two years. My independence had been intact.

When it was announced to me all of a sudden, that my assignment was over, just two weeks back, I was heartbroken. I was not ready for a family life at all. In fact, I dreaded meeting my son more than anything else. I felt I didn’t have it in me to be a father and I made efforts to get transferred to some other onsite assignment. But there was no such opening immediately.

Ashwini had not changed much at all over the two years. Apart from her rotundness there was no reason to hate Ashwini. She wasn’t an arrogant woman who would want to mold you in her pattern. She didn’t pine for frequent ‘I-love-you’s and rarely made attempts to garner attention to herself. She looked stronger after these two years of separation and more on her own. And more than anything else, she looked content in her solitude.

I sat on the floor of the terrace leaning against one of the wall corners. The moon was trying to pierce the clouds and illuminate some parts of the neighborhood. The breeze was mild and I closed my eyes for a while to stop myself from thinking. The calm that the sleep had given me remained inside and continued to sooth my mind.

When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to find the floor of the terrace drenched in silver white. The moon had managed to dispel all the clouds and bath the whole terrace with its radiance. It took me a while to realize that I had slept there for some time. I got up and went down.

Ashwini was in the other bedroom where she had suspended her saree cradle. She put Jawahar into it making some noises. She started rocking the cradle and tried to sing some pleasant verses without a rhythm, to make him sleep. Her face didn’t make any attempt to convey the meaning of what she was singing. She sang for some time and stopped rocking the cradle, once she ensured that Jawahar had slept.

*****

It was 11 pm and I had finished dinner with Ashwini an hour back. She did not talk during dinner as much as I had expected. Once dinner was done, she switched the TV on and started watching one of her favourite comedy shows. I had retired to the empty bedroom, shutting the door behind me, picking up a copy of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ from my old bookshelf.

I was feeling very fresh and it was becoming a very rewarding read even though I had read those chapters a few years back.  Suddenly, there was a knock on the door and I asked her to come in.

‘I am feeling sleepy. Good night,’ she said with a blank face near the door that was ajar.

She was in her blue cotton saree and her pallu was sliding down, giving me a partial glimpse of one of her breasts. She immediately collected it and shut the door.

I shoved the book to my left and opened the door. It was dark in the hall and Ashwini was moving to the other bedroom where Jawahar was sleeping. I ran into the bedroom and hugged her from behind. I squeezed her hips and started smelling both sides of her neck. She did not make sounds as though she was expecting it. I went on to remove her pallu altogether.

I pushed her to the bed and I assumed in the darkness that she fell on it with both her hands, balancing her weight from behind. I could not correctly figure her place in the bed, in the near total darkness. I climbed on the bed and managed to find her love handles, started caressing them with both my hands, kissing her lips ferociously all the time. I expected her to relieve me of my t-shirt as she used to do, but in vain. I stopped kissing her to remove my t-shirt, when I noticed that the window curtains had moved suddenly responding to the haphazard wind blowing from the fan’s blades, allowing moonlight from outside to fall upon us. I turned to have a look at her without the pallu, facilitated by the intervention of the moonlight. She had a smooth belly but I found that her navel no longer looked attractive. I realized that it must have been distorted during Jawahar’s delivery. I could see some thin, swollen veins originating from her navel running downwards towards her pelvis. But she managed to present a tempting sight with her bulging breasts struggling against her inadequate yellow jacket. I removed my t-shirt, stopped touching her and fell on the bed beside her, breaking the session abruptly to her dismay.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

I saw that the curtain continued to stay at the same position and allowed the moonlight to stay focused on her. I lay beside her and pulled her on to the surface of my chest. She leaned on my dense chest hair and looked at my face. I could feel the warmth of her breasts on my cold stomach which impelled me to tighten my hold on her.

‘You are not angry with me, right?’ I asked.

‘No’

‘I love you Ashwini’

No response from her.

I kissed her lips strongly and tasted her hot saliva on my mouth.

‘Your saliva tastes different now’

‘You remember the taste of my saliva? Seriously?’

‘I missed you immensely. And you would not believe me if I said that’ I spoke feigning sincerity this time.

‘Your dad will come early tomorrow morning to see you. I cannot afford to stay awake for a long time. Let us finish it and sleep as soon as possible’. Her tone was firm like a teacher.

‘Finish what?’

‘Ok Good night’. She tried to pull away from me but I forced her back. Beep. She had somehow fallen on the AC remote that lay somewhere on the bed and had turned it on.

‘Don’t you really want to make love? Didn’t you miss me? I don’t understand how unfeeling you have become. You are treating it like some sort of a ritual’ I protested in a very angry tone.

‘I am not in a mood to talk about it. Please talk something else or let me sleep’.

‘Ashwini, it is fine that you have hardened being a single parent but you cannot remain hard on me. I have come after two years and you don’t show any signs of delight’.

I spoke with more vigor this time and pulled her right love handle and gently caressed it.

‘Why do you have to come? You could have stayed there’.

I moved away from her and switched off the ceiling fan, shutting the bedroom door subsequently.

‘Soyou want me to go back? What are you, a single mother who braves all odds to bring up her son all alone in this big bad world?’ I retorted sharply.

‘I am nothing. Ok? I am nothing to nobody’. This was certainly an unexpected remark.

‘I don’t understand. What is wrong now?’

‘Jeeva, please don’t start this. I don’t want to sit and re-examine my life now’

I sat still on the bed looking into the moonlight that the curtains had revealed. The light managed to illuminate almost the whole of the huge bed, in spite of the darkness.  The windowswere marked by iron grills molded like flowers and these designs threw huge shadows on the bed.

I remained silent for some time. I was confused whether to discuss and settle this topic once and for all or to prioritize making love to her, postponing the discussion to some distant day in the future. It would be great if the topic never came up till, I left for the next onsite trip.

By this time, Ashwini had moved to the right side of the bed and was pulling the blanket over her, preparing to sleep. I raced again to snatch the blanket and fell over her. I thrust my hands beneath her head and started kissing her fiercely once again. She pulled more breath from my mouth this time and rose along with my hands, getting up slowly, gaining balance to sit without disturbing the kissing.

I finished the kiss, kneeled in front of her on the mattress and signaled her to follow suit. When she rose to kneel from the sitting position, I circled her hips with my hands and buried my head in the gulf between her head and breasts. I hugged her warm body with the whole of my torso when suddenly something struck me. After nearly two years of a solitary life, the possession of a woman’s submissive body was doing something to me. The heat of her breasts and abdomen started entering my muscles and bones. As I tightened my hold on her, she slowly moved her hands over the back of my head, accommodating it in the gulf properly and guiding it in concert with my movement.

Within a few seconds, our bodies had turned moist in spite of the cold in the room, yet we did not move from our position. As she kept caressing my hair with one of her hands, moving the other over my bare back, I felt as though I was transferring all my command to her, bit by bit, and succumbing to the charm of her disarming body.

But soon, I felt something cold piercing the skin of my bare back. It took me a while to realize that there were some droplets of water rolling down my back and I withdrew immediately from her to check. I was dismayed to find that they were Ashwini’s tears.

‘Hey what is happening? What did I do?’ I was alarmed.

She continued to cry and mumbled a few words that were drowned by her mild, irrepressible groans.

‘I don’t get what you say, Ashwini kutty’.

‘Why did you come back, Jeeva?’

‘What else am I supposed to do? Please be frank’ I did not want her to be frank but I had to say so.

She moved away from me and vacated the bed. She opened the door, probably to drink water as I sat leaning on the wall and began to stare into themoonlight entering from the window.

She came back, composed and her saree readjusted. She sat on the edge of the bed, near my legs with her back facing me.

I moved towards the edge of the bed, and sat encircling her from behind, letting my legs downwards in parallel with hers.

‘Tell me, Ash. What’s eating you?’

‘Nothing Jeeva. Nothing’ she spoke staring into the floor, as I followed the movement of her head close from behind. The voice had brave resignation.

‘Should I say a blank sorry to you or sign a set of blank papers to make you speak?’

‘Why weren’t you here during the delivery? Don’t tell me you did not have leave. Jawahar was born during December’.

‘I am sorry’ I replied coldly and tried to see how she reacted.

‘”Sorry”. What a reply!That is how much you value this relationship right?”

‘What difference would my coming have made, Ash?’

‘You are incorrigible, Jeeva. I can talk with a fool and make him accept his mistake. You are not one. You know what I am talking about but you pretend as though you don’t realize it. Maybe that’s how those who think they are intellectuals behave. They use their intellect to weave webs of defensive ideas around themselves and warn others not to disturb them. Well-read people like you excavate ideas from your books, twist and bend them into weapons and use them against people who come attacking at your weaknesses’.

Was I talking to Ashwini? I began to doubt. I was trying to find out from which TV serial she would have lifted all these words. But the tone of her intense voice reeked of so much earnestness that I was forced to address her accusations with seriousness and attention.

‘I am not an intellectual. Ok? I am a poor creature who can never be understood, leave alone being sympathized’.

‘Yes, you can never be understood. You speak of great ideals. Your literature, as you say supposedly, has given you so much empathy. You say you have the power to empathize with even the outcasts and the rejects and the scum of society. But you cannot empathize with someone as close as your wife. You do not have enough empathy to take time off your work and visit your wife even when she has delivered your son‘.

‘Ok I did not come. What difference would it have made? Answer me that. See you are happy with your life. But I am not. In fact, I was struggling with work out there. I was living in a world which was even more disgusting than the one here. Do you think I was wallowing in a pool of roses holding beer in one hand and a woman in the other?’ I felt odd sitting so close to her and speaking loudly with so much hostility.

‘Jeeva, I did not marry to live alone. Ok? Right from my childhood, I too had dreams. I wanted to work. I wanted to get married to a guy. Have children, live a great life with him for so many years. Most of them came true when I met you. The day of our marriage is still the best day of my life. I leaf through our wedding album even now at least once a month. Before our marriage, I assumed that you loved me but when I realized that you did not, you know, I felt cheated. But the sense of accomplishment that I had managed to marry a man of my choice prevailed over me and I continued to approach life with some optimism. But on the sixtieth day of our marriage, you told me that you were leaving for America.’

Her voice started breaking. I was feeling cold all over.  I looked over to find the AC remote but in vain. I remained in the same position.

‘I was broken. You did not know that I cried for two hours alone in my bathroom after I bade you goodbye in the airport’.

She started crying. I could not stand it. I wanted to console her. I delicately hugged her from behind but that was doing nothing to pacify her.

‘See Ash, I don’t understand why you came to the conclusion that I did not love you. In fact, we made love even the night before I left for America. Even today, I wanted to talk a lot with you but I was waiting for the right time’.

‘Jeeva, please don’t tell me that we made love. We never once have made love in our lives. In your words, to put it more precisely, we only had had sex.’

.’Try recounting Jeeva’, she continued.‘Tell me one occasion whenever I was fully dressed when you had felt like saying the words “I love you” to me’.

I was caught unawares. This was a startling accusation but an indisputably valid one at that.

‘But still, whenever we had sex, I used to get up the other day with a lot of satisfaction and delight. The nearness of your body to mine for almost a whole night, would fill me with a lot of pride and content for the next day’.

‘Ashwini, listen to me. Allow me to talk for some time. I don’t know how much you will buy my justification. Will you?’

She remained silent. She had risen from her place and turned towards me as I started talking.

‘See, I had badly wanted to be an English teacher, in school or college wherever. But I did not realize what I had wanted to become till I had completed engineering. Soon I was placed in Infosys. When I realized that this was not where I belong, the time had passed. I could no longer become a teacher or realize any of my dreams. Wait a minute’.

The cold of the room started sending shivers to my body that I moved away from her to locate the missing remote.

She, to my surprise, had found it from somewhere and set the temperature to 24 degrees. I was moved that she still remembered, even after two years, that 24 degrees was my comfortable temperature setting.

I moved to the other end of the bed that leant on the wall and continued.

‘My career was gone, finished. For the rest of my life, I would have to live and work at a pIace which would not respect me and which I would not respect either. I told dad about my disillusionment. He could not understand me at all. He replied that he too does not like his desk job. But he added that he was happy to find my mom. He recalled my childhood when I used to crawl towards him with so much excitement the moment I saw him at the gate, returning from office, every day. He said that that was enough to complete his world. It gave him purpose. He started ‘living’ his life. He told me that this is how I should live too. But strangely that was the moment I realized that I could not talk to him any further. I had it in me to be a writer. But I did not have the confidence to quit my job and go my own way. And this lack of confidence made me obedient to him. I could not rebel at all, at any time. As days went by, I trusted him to find me at least a good wife so that I would balance my unsatisfying work life with a rewarding love life. I had not fallen in love during college because I was fooled into believing that a strong career would fetch me my dream girl easily.

‘I expected a wife who would help me fit into the system. I wanted a girl who would make my career struggles worthwhile. If I was writing code and grappling with stultifying technical stuff, it should have had a purpose. It had to satisfy someone even if it was not me. I wanted to delight in the delight of my loved one. For someone who was a teetotaler, who followed all his parents’ instructions throughout his life, who never fell for any woman till his late twenties, who landed a job that was respectable, was that too much to ask?’

I had raised the pitch of my voice higher without realizing that I would wake Jawahar who was sleeping a few feet away from me.

‘But, you know, dad and mom had horoscopes, castes, sub-castes and dowry to deal with. Whichever girl I chose, they rejected her with the help of an astrologer or a relative. And whomever they preferred I simply couldn’t come to like’.

I was growing conscious of the effect the next sentence would have on Ashwini. To my surprise, I was not afraid of speaking it out. Frankly, this sentence was something that I should have told her when we had first met each other before our wedding.

‘And when they showed you, pardon me, I agreed only because I was fed up with others.’

‘You really were not my kind of a girl.’ I spoke in a slow yet measured tone.

I paused to see how she reacted. But she remained standing, staring at the floor all the while.

‘Are you listening, Ash?’ She nodded.

‘Go on’.

‘I still remember the moment I was tying the knot on you. I looked up to see dad’s face, amid the clamour and the celebration. He was reveling in the moment. He was shaking hands with his friends as though he had won an award. He was delighting in my agony. He became my foe right from that moment. He started looking like an unforgivable sadist to me. I wanted to avenge him for that.

‘You know, when I was small, I used to play a lot of cricket. Every time I did, he used to reprimand me for wasting time and I still remember him saying these words to me. “Once you finish your studies, you can live life the way you want to. Concentrate on nothing but studies right now”. ‘

‘What a brutal liar he was!!’ I couldn’t stop raising my voice. ‘I did not have a career that I wanted. I did not have a girl of my liking. What was I supposed to do? Love a girl like you and live life that would please him?’

‘You are done talking?’ Ashwini interrupted.

‘Do you think I did not know all these things? The moment you announced your decision to leave me for two years, I nearly went mad. I called my friend Ranjit and lamented for two hours. I knew that you would be allowed to take me with you with a dependent visa but you would not.

‘You know how crippling that knowledge was to me? I even thought of fighting with you. After you left, when I realized that I was pregnant, I first thought of aborting it. I even informed your dad of my idea. He was thoroughly shaken. Only your mother understood and begged me not to proceed with the idea. Only after a week I knew that I was pregnant and only after all this drama came to a close, we conveyed the news to you’.

She paused and checked how I responded, but all the while, I was staring into the window.

Frankly, I was relieved that the subject that I had been running away from all these years had finally been broached and the storm had blown over.

‘Jeeva, you had your dreams. Even I had mine. My dreams too had almost been destroyed. I did not have books like you to derive joy from. There was no other source of happiness for me, but somehow Jawahar came to my rescue’.

I did not realize when I had started looking at her. I could not pay attention to whatever she was speaking. The iron flowers on the window sillstarted looming large over my vision. She continued speaking like a school principal to an incorrigible child. In the light that came from the window and fell on her, one vertical half of her plump body uncovered by her pallu, her huge right breast and the glistening love handle were in full view. But my vision had started to blur.

‘Jawahar is a terrific child, Jeeva. He knows my moods and feelings more than you do. Whenever he smiles at my prank, I would somehow feel like having impressed you. Whenever he is seated on my lap, I would feel proud of having a part of you with me. Every time someone lifts Jawahar, he would not stay with them for one moment. He will pounce to come back to me. But look at how he is with you. He hasn’t known you much apart from our Skype calls but how well he clings on to you! Had you not given me Jawahar, who knows I would have killed you the moment you landed back in India.’

She adjusted her pallu, switched off the AC and turned the fan on. I was struggling to remain awake, leaning myself on the wall bordering the bed. The curtain responded to the sudden burst of air from the fan and proceeded to cover the window fully. The room plunged into darkness again and the moonlight had been overshadowed.

‘Ok let me cooperate in your mission to avenge your dad. You leave for abroad as soon as possible. How much ever you earn, your dad .. for ..cheated you. …sweet revenge. ..forget me. I.. live Jawahar.’

I did not know when I fell asleep.

***

There was a thud. A strong one landing on my right cheek bone that woke me up to a giant arm and a simultaneous, gentle scream. 

My son was crawling on my bare chest. I got up and lifted him up with me. I moved onto the edge of the bed. It was 7 AM. I could hear sounds of bell ringing and a mild smell of camphor emanating from the hall.

I positioned Jawahar in front of my face, stretching my arms fully forward. He was naked.

He had a small belly and a dark thread around his waist. His silver anklets had heavy beads and he started moving his dangling legs fast. He clearly did not like to be kept in that position and threatened to cry. So, I decided to stand up and carry him in my left arm as usual. But I found that my left leg had turned stiff somehow. I tried to stand up but I could not.

I did not want him to cry and disturb Ashwini. I did not know what to do. I made some ugly noises to amuse him. He started screaming more and his eyes began to water.

I suddenly was reminded of the trick I did the day before and began blowing wind over his eyes. His screams started subsiding slowly into milder squeals. He lowered his voice in phases and reduced his feet movement accordingly. By the fifth blow, his teary eyes had frozen and his frown had started turning into a widening smile. I was relieved and without my knowledge, I proceeded to kiss him on the forehead. I realize only now that it was my first kiss to him.

‘Karpooramthottukonga Mama’.

I was startled at the voice. I turned back towards the hall to check with whom Ashwini was speaking.

It was my father. When did he come home? A sense of stinging embarrassment came all over me, as I stared at him without motion.

He had been standing at the bedroom entrance, all the while looking at me and Jawahar. When my eyes met his, he immediately turned away from me to touch the flame Ashwini had been holding for long.

He touched the flame thrice directing the vapors towards his eyes and walked away from my sight into the hall.