28-11-2018, 04:38 AM
Chapter 56
When Meera finally opened the door, she had a towel turbaned around her head. Forced to finish bath in a rush; her face still looked divine. She was standing there staring at me until she moved aside as if to let me in.
No words. No gestures. No clues.
Is this how is it going to be? I wondered. I felt a pang of disappointment.
I wanted to talk to her. I wanted her to listen.
“Come in!” She said earnestly, her eyes wide in surprise wondering why I was still standing there.
“I came to talk to you.”
I still not moved.
“Are you gonna talk it all standing here?”
“I am not sure if you’d listen to me.”
She stared at me for a moment, her mind searching for words. As if she found nothing, she leaned forward to grab my hand and graciously pulled me in. As I moved in, a scintillating fragrance from her freshly bathed body filled my nose. It reminded me of my Meera. I inhaled it, again and again, hoping it would take me back to my past; to the very beginning.
She closed the door and engaged the door latch. Its sound brought back me to the reality.
Suddenly I was at loss for words. I sat on the couch but barely managed to speak.
“Last night, where were you? I... I had come here to meet you.”
I had to correct my throat to finish my line.
“You did? When?”
She was really surprised, unsurprisingly.
“At around 2 O’clock.”
She began to say something and swallowed it. I felt a strange feeling. I felt the air between us was suddenly choking me. There was something in it that made me feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t keep my eyes on her face for more than two seconds. Something was missing between us. It was suddenly getting awkward. Perhaps we both knew what we were to say. Perhaps we both had no idea. She was awkwardly standing there.
“Meera,” I began to speak.
“I had seen your missed call alerts this morning. My mobile was off throughout the night. And...and I wasn't here... I got back here only at six in the morning...”
She interrupted me with an explanation I didn't seek. At that moment I learnt she would confess me anything I wanted. But I had no idea what I should ask her. I had gone blank.
“Did Das call you this morning?”
“Half an hour ago. He said you are coming here. I was sleeping, so I was getting ready...”
She touched the towel turbaned around her head as she talked, oblivious to doing so.
“You can sit down, Meera.”
I gestured to my right side and she sat down. I looked straight into her eyes now.
“You are acting so nervous like I came here to make you confess.”
“I am sorry for that night, Krish. I am so sorry.”
She said in a flash and closed her eyes, and let the tears break loose from them, and it soon formed a stream that ran down her cheeks. She sat still and wept. Her facial muscles tightened and face down. Hands clung to each other seeking support in vain. I sat there watching and letting her cry herself out. I saw a lonely woman and I felt pity for her. She wasn’t the stunningly beautiful woman who could command a lot of attention from the opposite sex anymore. She was a pale shadow of herself. If I wasn’t expecting some of it somehow, I would have been shocked to death. What had her life done to her?
When she finally brought her under control, she pulled the towel off her head and wiped her face with it. Whatever was left in her that looked cute and fresh until then now looked messy and ruined.
From her hair to eyes. Nose to cheeks.
Now she was confessing.
“Why are you sorry for that night, Meera?”
I asked.
“I shouldn't have humiliated you like that.”
“Why do you think I was humiliated? I could have enjoyed it; watching you with another man. It was my fantasy, wasn't it?”
“No. You didn't enjoy...”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I saw it.”
“You saw what?”
“I... I saw it in the end...when we finished. Your face said it. You didn't enjoy it... when I saw your face...”
“But when you gave me that tiny cloth, you had got me aroused, hadn't you?”
I was beginning to be sarcastic. But I didn't care. I was moving on. I was moving on with my life.
You will be a free man. I heard someone telling me from inside. Though a part of my heart was fighting against it, I had begun to believe that I was going to follow it; as if it was the inevitable. I was not here to mend our differences.
“Please don't make me remember...”
“Meera,” I interrupted.
“I didn't come here to torture you. And I didn't come here expecting a confession. We have come a lot forward, beyond that point. I came here to see you off.”
She was hit by a sudden blow; she sat there with her eyes opened wide in shocked surprise.
“I came here to see you are okay. And I wanted to let you know that I am okay.”
“I am okay.”
She said in a painful voice. She was not okay.
“No. You don't look okay to me.”
“I will manage, Krish. Believe me.”
She said and her eyes started to rain again.
“This is what you wanted me to do; be gone. What happened now?”
I tried not to be sarcastic, even a bit. I wanted to be just me.
She shook her head hopelessly.
“No. I wanted me to be gone from your life. And I failed in it.”
“How?”
She wiped her face again with the wet towel.
“I know,” she took a deep breath. “Rejection is the biggest punishment. I know I am being punished and I deserve it. You just said you don't want to hear me confess. I am begging you, Krish. Please listen to me once, before you leave. I don't deserve to be stopping you. I know I can't. Please hear me once, because I don't want you to keep asking about it yourself.”
She extended her hand to touch me, but she stopped just there as if she didn't deserve to touch me.
“Okay.”
I said slowly, paying more attention to her actions than words. Whatever she would say wouldn't make a change in me. I was going to be a free man after this day.
“Do you remember a friend of you - his name was Sunny - whom you owed some cash? Two years back, when he was coming to see you often, he...he befriended me. There is something...about some incidents...that I wanted to tell you about him. Those days I was working at JayCee’s and my in-charge, Piyush was a real headache at the office; I mentioned about him to Sunny. Before that, one day when I was at the Star Mall, he had forcibly kissed me. I wanted to tell you about it, but it didn't seem much trouble to me because it wasn’t some kind of molestation. I didn't tell you. I was also scared if you’d ruin your relationship with him; he was a goon after all. Then I got his help to deal with Piyush and he was friendly since then. I had to accept Sunny’s friendship. And then one day he came to see you at our house. You weren't there. And...”
Meera rubbed her forehead slowly, trying to find words.
“And... that day I made a huge mistake. I couldn’t stop him when he...when he took me to our bedroom. And I enjoyed it. I couldn’t stop him. I didn't have sex with him but I would have. I had got myself prepared for it.”
She took a break and looked up at the ceiling, to gather words in her mind.
“For so long, I wanted to confess this incident to you. I had compromised on everything that made my values as a wife. I wanted to confess it from the moment it was over. Then I found you excited in bed; I understood the sudden change in you was merely a reflection of the changes in me. I was excited about it, about whatever that would have happened if I hadn’t stopped Sunny, so much that I was aroused in bed with you. When you were making love to me, I often used to imagine it was him, Sunny, that I was having sex with. I didn't love him, not even for a moment, but thinking about having sex with him excited me. My stupid mind was filled with fantasies.”
I wasn’t listening to her. I was just watching her in astonishment as the truth began to dance its brutality in front of my eyes, and I was the most helpless. A new vantage point was being unearthed, and I was soon wondering who was the most corrupt among us. Meera wasn’t confessing, but I was.
“Sunny had me almost undressed, and I had touched him provocatively; then I got a call from you that helped me stop him from doing it. He left, but I began to dream of what would have happened if I hadn’t had your call...”
“Did you regret stopping him?”
I couldn’t stop me from asking.
“No. Never. It was my fantasy only. I was actually ashamed of it. I would fantasise when you made love to me and then soon I would regret it. I never wanted my fantasy to be real. The thought of cheating on you would cringe me. And I knew I had done a big mistake that would have ruined everything. When I rejected advances of ...uh...of a guy from one of our office parties – Thomas- and, do you remember a guy I told you who had mistaken me as Shekhar’s wife – his name was Mohan; Thomas and Mohan, both had tried to hit on me very seriously. Mohan had even tried to kiss me once. But I had rejected them both. Those incidents helped me boost my confidence and made me believe that you’d forgive me when I confess about Sunny. But then it turned out, you too had same fantasies.”
Yes, I had.
I confessed in my mind.
“We shared, encouraged, and nurtured our fantasies and then the accident with Shekhar happened. If I remember, the first one happened so quickly that we both were ready to forget it. The damage was less perhaps, and our fantasies definitely helped us. We were perfectly in sync with each other, deeply in love. Then the second time with Shekhar; it was truly a setback to both of us. With that incident, I found out my chance to confess to you about Sunny shrinking too small, because I found a fact that I had enjoyed making love with Shekhar more than I would have with Sunny. Though we both tried to behave and make believe it was just another accident, I secretly cherished the experience of lying under someone other than you. I knew it was foolish as well as dangerous and I tried my best to resist it. Then you let me go with Armaan in Goa. Every time I made love to you since then, I fantasised and tried to imagine them - Sunny, Shekhar or Armaan - in you. I loved you always; I never stopped loving you. But my fantasies, they were like drugs to me. I couldn’t stop them. When I came to know you too had fantasies, I should have stopped you. But I didn't. I had once mentioned the way you made love to me to Ananya, and she... she told me she would like to have sex with you.”
Meera stopped and swallowed those memories with great difficulty. I was engrossed in her actions as well as words now.
“Then suddenly I was hit with my own insecurity. I feared that you too would fantasise with other women. I was selfish perhaps. I knew I didn't deserve to stop it and that killed me inside. I lived in fear that you would tell me about your fantasies one day and make me enjoy it because I had no choice. And then – I don't know what you think of me if I tell you this because I considered it as a fortunate incident – Shekhar was gone. I was not saddened by his death; for I had no love for him. I thought I was saved from my fantasies. I had clearly moved away from them. Then one day, Sheelu showed up. I was only to blame me. Because, because of me you had done the fatal mistake. And the worst part was, the worst part, she had seduced you. No, you had let yourself to be seduced because of me. I knew you. You would never do it on your own. But after that incident with Sheelu, I foresaw that you would never be able to defend yourself anymore and my confession about Sunny had no value by then. If I had told you that I had almost had sex with him, what effect would it have brought to you? Nothing. It wouldn’t have mattered even if I had sex with him. Or even with Thomas, or Mohan. Now, what does it make me? A whore?”
She looked away from me as if facing eternity and then shook her head.
“Yes. I was a whore. I was mortified that I had no right to be loved by you.”
She turned her eyes to me. They were cold and contemptuous.
“But how could I convince you with this? You were madly in love with me. I thought I would let you move on without me and then one day I would come and confess everything to you. But you were...you! Never letting me go. You know what stopped me from suicide was the fear that you’d follow me.”
Her words, in a second, transported my mind to the day at Sunshine Gardens’ suite. That day I had dared myself to suicidal thoughts. But deep inside I knew Meera still loved me so much that she would follow me.
We were sides of the same coin. We were the same inside, made of same thoughts and feelings, but we were never destined to face each other. We had the same world but never knew what each other saw. I sighed and looked up, and leaned back on the couch. I was tired than I ever was in my life.
“That is why I left you, Krish. There is nothing wrong with you that I can quote as a reason to leave you. All I wanted to do was to tie me on to a stone and be punished.”
“Then making my life hard again, you brought up your fantasies in the form of Das. It was more like you were drawing me back into that world. I was trying to move on, from what I had realised what had proven disastrous to me. I even tried to go out with a man you don't know, to prove myself that I am not going to fall back to your fantasies, but I couldn’t go and please myself beyond a point. When I found my body enjoying him, my mind was filled with remorse. I had no life without you. Then one day you took me to Das and let him have sex with me. I would have stopped him but he said you were excited about it, and then I decided to live it. One after another, you pulled me back into your world until I found myself getting aroused knowing that you are standing behind that door listening to my lovemaking with a man you chose. But every time it would end with more regret that I was failing you. I was beating the purpose of my departure. I was becoming a failure.
I tried to help you by forcing you with Meghna. But it backfired as I found myself aroused and...and that night I saw you so persistent with me that I was left with nothing but play with you. If I had stayed a little more in front of you, I would have made out with you.
When you claimed that I am enjoying your fantasies, I deliberately wanted to prove you wrong. But in the end, you again let me fall into darkness by letting yourself be seduced by another woman. If you had seduced her on your own, it would be on you. But it happened to be me at fault again. I was frustrated. I never wanted someone to seduce you. It hurts me. It kills me, Krish. And out of wrath over me, I did really stupid things that turned out to be really humiliating to you. I thought it would turn you on like it did with Shekhar. But then I saw you, shocked and wounded. I learnt you would never tolerate what I did and I broke up with Das after that, because he took advantage of the situation. I don't want to forgive him but I don't know what to do with him; just like I don't know what to do with me.”
She was about to get lost in her own memories. I felt. She was though better composed now, having said it all. Well, I hope.
More than what she had done in her life, her interpretations had surprised me. I wanted to dig a bit more.
“Have you forgiven me for what I did with Ananya?”
She stared at me as if she didn't expect me to ask it.
“I don't have the right to forgive you, Krish. That’s what makes my life more miserable now. It mortifies me.”
She had assumed her fall.
We sat together, lost in our own distinctive worlds. Our worlds were same. But I felt we were standing and staring at it from a hell of a distance that I couldn't imagine myself capable to cover.
There was a void in my mind. I didn't feel like I had anything to say. Whatever I had come to tell her, it didn't matter anymore.
“So that's it.”
I got up. Through the corner of my eyes, I saw panic spreading over her face.
“Are you leaving?”
“Isn't that what you want me to do?”
She was speechless.
I walked to the aquarium. The lonely fish didn't recognise me.
“Hello Krish! How are you?”
I snapped my fingers to grab his attention, in vain.
“How do you know his name?”
Meera was right behind me. I smiled at her for the first time.
“I just guessed. He's lonely and seems happy.”
I said quietly.
“Are you happy, Krish?”
“What do you expect me to be? I have decided to move on. You wanted me to hear your confession, and I have done it. You can also behave normally. You can find a life now.”
“Life!”
She laughed with a sense of loss. I stared at her until I saw her eyes shining with tears in them.
“I'll make a coffee for you. Will you stay?”
She said quietly and walked to the kitchen without waiting for my response. I kept watching her walking with unsteady steps. She wasn't the woman I loved. It was a shadow. She had become the shadow of her old self. She was confused than I ever was. I slowly followed her to the kitchen and wondered what she would do when I leave.
I knew what was going to happen to her. When she would have me gone, she would walk into this kitchen again, and grab the sharpest of her knives and slash her wrists. She would die before I reached my home. I was never so sure about anything of the future.
And it was for I had made a choice.
Every choice we make out of our lives has its consequences. Some can be foreseen, some won't appear even in our nightmares.
‘Am I really going to move on?’
‘Am I ever prepared to move on?’
I heard questions.
‘No.’ I said in my mind.
‘I'm Krish and I belong to Meera.’
I felt I never knew this much about me in the past.
She was facing the stove and looked sideways to glance at me through the corner of her eyes.
“I'm still not able to decipher my past. Leaving you has proven to be a wrong choice, but I have never come across what could have been a right one. What was my mistake? It's easier to accept that I was the mistake. All I wanted was to save myself from becoming...," She paused as if the word dreaded her.
“Your mistake was that you sought no help from me.”
I said slowly. She turned to face me.
“I'm seeking help from you. Now... But it's too late. Too late, isn't it?”
That could be her finest confession. She wanted me. She was not ready to let me go.
There stood my wife Meera. She was not perfect. She could make mistakes. She could have wrong choices. One of them was me. If she had married a normal man she wouldn't have been encouraged to date another man. She wouldn't have been made to accidentally sleep with other men. She wouldn't have been made to question her own integrity.
I was the partner in anything and everything she found herself guilty of. I was the biggest choice she ever had. And I was destined to love not only her perfections but also her imperfections.
It was time to shake my own tail.
“Meera. Last night I slept with another woman - Das’ sister-in-law. We were at The Square when I got your phone call, and then I brought her home. Das had come to meet me there and he tried to stop me. I beat him up and threatened him and put him in the same chair and made him watch...”
Meera kept looking at me with shocked surprise. She was probably trying hard not to make a bad response, and I couldn’t see any. Probably she was just letting it sink into her.
“You made out with her like Das had done with me?”
She finally asked quietly.
“Exactly.”
“Did you do it to avenge Das?”
“No. I would have done it even if he wasn’t there. It was his bad luck that he happened to be there.”
“Then why...why are you telling me about this?”
“Do you feel I did that to avenge you?”
“What? No. No, you won’t. You wouldn’t do that.”
“Then how did you come to the conclusion that I let Ananya seduce me because of what you did to me?”
She was taken aback; her mouth was left open.
“I had reasons to believe so, apart from the faith I had in you. She had the habit of sleeping around, and when I moved out she used to joke about seducing you... She was the one who would try to hit on you, not the other way around. I thought she took advantage of what I told her about my submission to Das. I was a fool to believe her as a friend and...”
“She never had doubts about you. She used to tell me you'd never sleep with Das. When you told her, she was very disappointed.”
Her body became weak and I feared she would collapse.
I wanted to make a lot of confessions. Maybe later. I thought.
All we needed to do was to speak to each other. Listen to each other. There was nothing left to decide. We were merely two people who were dying to embrace each other and worry about nothing.
I felt it coming back all of a sudden. No more analysis on what's right and what's wrong was required.
“Meera.”
She looked up into my eyes and I wasted no time to have her in my arms.
“Let's go home, Meera.”
I said and I kissed her.
It was that simple. It had always been. But I never knew.
The tears that had run down her cheeks had turned her lips salty. It had the power to melt all of our hardest differences and make us look beyond them. I saw our future. It was bright.
She was suddenly the innocent girl I had married a long ago.
“Oh my God...!”
I heard her say and I felt her arms tighten around me. She was warm and soft. She was bright and colourful. She was a flower. She was delicate. She was love.
“Krish I have one more thing to say.”
She said when we parted slightly.
I showed two fingers across her lips.
“Not now. I'm done with your confessions. I don't want to change anything I've already decided; no matter what you were to say. Forget it all and just look at me. Look at your husband and tell me what do you see?”
I watched her eyes slowly bringing back its old charm slowly yet strikingly.
“I see it's coming back. It's all coming back.”
Her face was now the most beautiful thing I would cherish forever. We embraced each other tightly.
It was that simple. It had always been. I knew it.
The milk on the stove was over-boiled and spilt; grabbing our attention.
“Oops.”
She began to turn but then stopped, and hugged me again.
“No, I don't want to leave you... I...”
“It’s okay; I am not going anyway...”
I smiled and she tried to smile through her tears.
She replaced the milk and we stood watching it boil, with our hand in hand. She turned to look at me many times and smiled every time.
“I now believe in miracles.”
She made coffee and we sat together on the couch. We chatted silly things because now we could.
It was a miracle. She was true. I feared there was something terrible happening to my heart because it was beating normal now.
I felt proud.
She later told me about her decision to resign from her job. I urged her to reconsider it.
“No. I want to put his office into just an old memory.”
“The old memory is still a memory. I suppose you live around it. So that you can replace them with good ones; so that it wouldn't bother your new memories.”
She smiled.
“I've never thought about it. You're right.”
We sat together on the couch for long, my hand around her genuinely gentle and protective. Every moment I spent sitting with her, I felt my hand was closing in and drawing her close to me until I felt her breath on my neck.
“You know, these moments, this happiness, so content, I never thought it'd come back.”
She said and kissed me lightly on my chin.
“Me too. It is a miracle like you said.”
I said lovingly playing on her cheek and ear, looking into her beautiful eyes.
“When are you taking me home?”
“Right now.”
“Now?”
“No?”
“I mean, I want to shift permanently with you. And there's a lot of packing. Can we move tomorrow?”
I had no problem to nod a yes. At that moment, we heard the doorbell.
She made a disapproving gesture of being disturbed, and it pleased me.
“Let me check.”
She got up and walked to the door.
My eyes followed her and fell for the seductive rhythm in which she walked.
She will come back soon. I said myself.
She opened the door and I saw a man standing there. He stared at her face and then saw me.
“Sorry. It's a wrong address, I suppose.”
The man said politely yet with a straight face. He walked away and Meera shut the door immediately.
“Who was that?”
I asked her.
“I don't know. Wrong address – he said.”
She replied.
It took her just a couple of seconds to join me on the couch. But this time my hand didn't hurry itself to embrace her.
Because I knew who the man was.
It was Vivek. The pet shop owner.
When Meera finally opened the door, she had a towel turbaned around her head. Forced to finish bath in a rush; her face still looked divine. She was standing there staring at me until she moved aside as if to let me in.
No words. No gestures. No clues.
Is this how is it going to be? I wondered. I felt a pang of disappointment.
I wanted to talk to her. I wanted her to listen.
“Come in!” She said earnestly, her eyes wide in surprise wondering why I was still standing there.
“I came to talk to you.”
I still not moved.
“Are you gonna talk it all standing here?”
“I am not sure if you’d listen to me.”
She stared at me for a moment, her mind searching for words. As if she found nothing, she leaned forward to grab my hand and graciously pulled me in. As I moved in, a scintillating fragrance from her freshly bathed body filled my nose. It reminded me of my Meera. I inhaled it, again and again, hoping it would take me back to my past; to the very beginning.
She closed the door and engaged the door latch. Its sound brought back me to the reality.
Suddenly I was at loss for words. I sat on the couch but barely managed to speak.
“Last night, where were you? I... I had come here to meet you.”
I had to correct my throat to finish my line.
“You did? When?”
She was really surprised, unsurprisingly.
“At around 2 O’clock.”
She began to say something and swallowed it. I felt a strange feeling. I felt the air between us was suddenly choking me. There was something in it that made me feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t keep my eyes on her face for more than two seconds. Something was missing between us. It was suddenly getting awkward. Perhaps we both knew what we were to say. Perhaps we both had no idea. She was awkwardly standing there.
“Meera,” I began to speak.
“I had seen your missed call alerts this morning. My mobile was off throughout the night. And...and I wasn't here... I got back here only at six in the morning...”
She interrupted me with an explanation I didn't seek. At that moment I learnt she would confess me anything I wanted. But I had no idea what I should ask her. I had gone blank.
“Did Das call you this morning?”
“Half an hour ago. He said you are coming here. I was sleeping, so I was getting ready...”
She touched the towel turbaned around her head as she talked, oblivious to doing so.
“You can sit down, Meera.”
I gestured to my right side and she sat down. I looked straight into her eyes now.
“You are acting so nervous like I came here to make you confess.”
“I am sorry for that night, Krish. I am so sorry.”
She said in a flash and closed her eyes, and let the tears break loose from them, and it soon formed a stream that ran down her cheeks. She sat still and wept. Her facial muscles tightened and face down. Hands clung to each other seeking support in vain. I sat there watching and letting her cry herself out. I saw a lonely woman and I felt pity for her. She wasn’t the stunningly beautiful woman who could command a lot of attention from the opposite sex anymore. She was a pale shadow of herself. If I wasn’t expecting some of it somehow, I would have been shocked to death. What had her life done to her?
When she finally brought her under control, she pulled the towel off her head and wiped her face with it. Whatever was left in her that looked cute and fresh until then now looked messy and ruined.
From her hair to eyes. Nose to cheeks.
Now she was confessing.
“Why are you sorry for that night, Meera?”
I asked.
“I shouldn't have humiliated you like that.”
“Why do you think I was humiliated? I could have enjoyed it; watching you with another man. It was my fantasy, wasn't it?”
“No. You didn't enjoy...”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I saw it.”
“You saw what?”
“I... I saw it in the end...when we finished. Your face said it. You didn't enjoy it... when I saw your face...”
“But when you gave me that tiny cloth, you had got me aroused, hadn't you?”
I was beginning to be sarcastic. But I didn't care. I was moving on. I was moving on with my life.
You will be a free man. I heard someone telling me from inside. Though a part of my heart was fighting against it, I had begun to believe that I was going to follow it; as if it was the inevitable. I was not here to mend our differences.
“Please don't make me remember...”
“Meera,” I interrupted.
“I didn't come here to torture you. And I didn't come here expecting a confession. We have come a lot forward, beyond that point. I came here to see you off.”
She was hit by a sudden blow; she sat there with her eyes opened wide in shocked surprise.
“I came here to see you are okay. And I wanted to let you know that I am okay.”
“I am okay.”
She said in a painful voice. She was not okay.
“No. You don't look okay to me.”
“I will manage, Krish. Believe me.”
She said and her eyes started to rain again.
“This is what you wanted me to do; be gone. What happened now?”
I tried not to be sarcastic, even a bit. I wanted to be just me.
She shook her head hopelessly.
“No. I wanted me to be gone from your life. And I failed in it.”
“How?”
She wiped her face again with the wet towel.
“I know,” she took a deep breath. “Rejection is the biggest punishment. I know I am being punished and I deserve it. You just said you don't want to hear me confess. I am begging you, Krish. Please listen to me once, before you leave. I don't deserve to be stopping you. I know I can't. Please hear me once, because I don't want you to keep asking about it yourself.”
She extended her hand to touch me, but she stopped just there as if she didn't deserve to touch me.
“Okay.”
I said slowly, paying more attention to her actions than words. Whatever she would say wouldn't make a change in me. I was going to be a free man after this day.
“Do you remember a friend of you - his name was Sunny - whom you owed some cash? Two years back, when he was coming to see you often, he...he befriended me. There is something...about some incidents...that I wanted to tell you about him. Those days I was working at JayCee’s and my in-charge, Piyush was a real headache at the office; I mentioned about him to Sunny. Before that, one day when I was at the Star Mall, he had forcibly kissed me. I wanted to tell you about it, but it didn't seem much trouble to me because it wasn’t some kind of molestation. I didn't tell you. I was also scared if you’d ruin your relationship with him; he was a goon after all. Then I got his help to deal with Piyush and he was friendly since then. I had to accept Sunny’s friendship. And then one day he came to see you at our house. You weren't there. And...”
Meera rubbed her forehead slowly, trying to find words.
“And... that day I made a huge mistake. I couldn’t stop him when he...when he took me to our bedroom. And I enjoyed it. I couldn’t stop him. I didn't have sex with him but I would have. I had got myself prepared for it.”
She took a break and looked up at the ceiling, to gather words in her mind.
“For so long, I wanted to confess this incident to you. I had compromised on everything that made my values as a wife. I wanted to confess it from the moment it was over. Then I found you excited in bed; I understood the sudden change in you was merely a reflection of the changes in me. I was excited about it, about whatever that would have happened if I hadn’t stopped Sunny, so much that I was aroused in bed with you. When you were making love to me, I often used to imagine it was him, Sunny, that I was having sex with. I didn't love him, not even for a moment, but thinking about having sex with him excited me. My stupid mind was filled with fantasies.”
I wasn’t listening to her. I was just watching her in astonishment as the truth began to dance its brutality in front of my eyes, and I was the most helpless. A new vantage point was being unearthed, and I was soon wondering who was the most corrupt among us. Meera wasn’t confessing, but I was.
“Sunny had me almost undressed, and I had touched him provocatively; then I got a call from you that helped me stop him from doing it. He left, but I began to dream of what would have happened if I hadn’t had your call...”
“Did you regret stopping him?”
I couldn’t stop me from asking.
“No. Never. It was my fantasy only. I was actually ashamed of it. I would fantasise when you made love to me and then soon I would regret it. I never wanted my fantasy to be real. The thought of cheating on you would cringe me. And I knew I had done a big mistake that would have ruined everything. When I rejected advances of ...uh...of a guy from one of our office parties – Thomas- and, do you remember a guy I told you who had mistaken me as Shekhar’s wife – his name was Mohan; Thomas and Mohan, both had tried to hit on me very seriously. Mohan had even tried to kiss me once. But I had rejected them both. Those incidents helped me boost my confidence and made me believe that you’d forgive me when I confess about Sunny. But then it turned out, you too had same fantasies.”
Yes, I had.
I confessed in my mind.
“We shared, encouraged, and nurtured our fantasies and then the accident with Shekhar happened. If I remember, the first one happened so quickly that we both were ready to forget it. The damage was less perhaps, and our fantasies definitely helped us. We were perfectly in sync with each other, deeply in love. Then the second time with Shekhar; it was truly a setback to both of us. With that incident, I found out my chance to confess to you about Sunny shrinking too small, because I found a fact that I had enjoyed making love with Shekhar more than I would have with Sunny. Though we both tried to behave and make believe it was just another accident, I secretly cherished the experience of lying under someone other than you. I knew it was foolish as well as dangerous and I tried my best to resist it. Then you let me go with Armaan in Goa. Every time I made love to you since then, I fantasised and tried to imagine them - Sunny, Shekhar or Armaan - in you. I loved you always; I never stopped loving you. But my fantasies, they were like drugs to me. I couldn’t stop them. When I came to know you too had fantasies, I should have stopped you. But I didn't. I had once mentioned the way you made love to me to Ananya, and she... she told me she would like to have sex with you.”
Meera stopped and swallowed those memories with great difficulty. I was engrossed in her actions as well as words now.
“Then suddenly I was hit with my own insecurity. I feared that you too would fantasise with other women. I was selfish perhaps. I knew I didn't deserve to stop it and that killed me inside. I lived in fear that you would tell me about your fantasies one day and make me enjoy it because I had no choice. And then – I don't know what you think of me if I tell you this because I considered it as a fortunate incident – Shekhar was gone. I was not saddened by his death; for I had no love for him. I thought I was saved from my fantasies. I had clearly moved away from them. Then one day, Sheelu showed up. I was only to blame me. Because, because of me you had done the fatal mistake. And the worst part was, the worst part, she had seduced you. No, you had let yourself to be seduced because of me. I knew you. You would never do it on your own. But after that incident with Sheelu, I foresaw that you would never be able to defend yourself anymore and my confession about Sunny had no value by then. If I had told you that I had almost had sex with him, what effect would it have brought to you? Nothing. It wouldn’t have mattered even if I had sex with him. Or even with Thomas, or Mohan. Now, what does it make me? A whore?”
She looked away from me as if facing eternity and then shook her head.
“Yes. I was a whore. I was mortified that I had no right to be loved by you.”
She turned her eyes to me. They were cold and contemptuous.
“But how could I convince you with this? You were madly in love with me. I thought I would let you move on without me and then one day I would come and confess everything to you. But you were...you! Never letting me go. You know what stopped me from suicide was the fear that you’d follow me.”
Her words, in a second, transported my mind to the day at Sunshine Gardens’ suite. That day I had dared myself to suicidal thoughts. But deep inside I knew Meera still loved me so much that she would follow me.
We were sides of the same coin. We were the same inside, made of same thoughts and feelings, but we were never destined to face each other. We had the same world but never knew what each other saw. I sighed and looked up, and leaned back on the couch. I was tired than I ever was in my life.
“That is why I left you, Krish. There is nothing wrong with you that I can quote as a reason to leave you. All I wanted to do was to tie me on to a stone and be punished.”
“Then making my life hard again, you brought up your fantasies in the form of Das. It was more like you were drawing me back into that world. I was trying to move on, from what I had realised what had proven disastrous to me. I even tried to go out with a man you don't know, to prove myself that I am not going to fall back to your fantasies, but I couldn’t go and please myself beyond a point. When I found my body enjoying him, my mind was filled with remorse. I had no life without you. Then one day you took me to Das and let him have sex with me. I would have stopped him but he said you were excited about it, and then I decided to live it. One after another, you pulled me back into your world until I found myself getting aroused knowing that you are standing behind that door listening to my lovemaking with a man you chose. But every time it would end with more regret that I was failing you. I was beating the purpose of my departure. I was becoming a failure.
I tried to help you by forcing you with Meghna. But it backfired as I found myself aroused and...and that night I saw you so persistent with me that I was left with nothing but play with you. If I had stayed a little more in front of you, I would have made out with you.
When you claimed that I am enjoying your fantasies, I deliberately wanted to prove you wrong. But in the end, you again let me fall into darkness by letting yourself be seduced by another woman. If you had seduced her on your own, it would be on you. But it happened to be me at fault again. I was frustrated. I never wanted someone to seduce you. It hurts me. It kills me, Krish. And out of wrath over me, I did really stupid things that turned out to be really humiliating to you. I thought it would turn you on like it did with Shekhar. But then I saw you, shocked and wounded. I learnt you would never tolerate what I did and I broke up with Das after that, because he took advantage of the situation. I don't want to forgive him but I don't know what to do with him; just like I don't know what to do with me.”
She was about to get lost in her own memories. I felt. She was though better composed now, having said it all. Well, I hope.
More than what she had done in her life, her interpretations had surprised me. I wanted to dig a bit more.
“Have you forgiven me for what I did with Ananya?”
She stared at me as if she didn't expect me to ask it.
“I don't have the right to forgive you, Krish. That’s what makes my life more miserable now. It mortifies me.”
She had assumed her fall.
We sat together, lost in our own distinctive worlds. Our worlds were same. But I felt we were standing and staring at it from a hell of a distance that I couldn't imagine myself capable to cover.
There was a void in my mind. I didn't feel like I had anything to say. Whatever I had come to tell her, it didn't matter anymore.
“So that's it.”
I got up. Through the corner of my eyes, I saw panic spreading over her face.
“Are you leaving?”
“Isn't that what you want me to do?”
She was speechless.
I walked to the aquarium. The lonely fish didn't recognise me.
“Hello Krish! How are you?”
I snapped my fingers to grab his attention, in vain.
“How do you know his name?”
Meera was right behind me. I smiled at her for the first time.
“I just guessed. He's lonely and seems happy.”
I said quietly.
“Are you happy, Krish?”
“What do you expect me to be? I have decided to move on. You wanted me to hear your confession, and I have done it. You can also behave normally. You can find a life now.”
“Life!”
She laughed with a sense of loss. I stared at her until I saw her eyes shining with tears in them.
“I'll make a coffee for you. Will you stay?”
She said quietly and walked to the kitchen without waiting for my response. I kept watching her walking with unsteady steps. She wasn't the woman I loved. It was a shadow. She had become the shadow of her old self. She was confused than I ever was. I slowly followed her to the kitchen and wondered what she would do when I leave.
I knew what was going to happen to her. When she would have me gone, she would walk into this kitchen again, and grab the sharpest of her knives and slash her wrists. She would die before I reached my home. I was never so sure about anything of the future.
And it was for I had made a choice.
Every choice we make out of our lives has its consequences. Some can be foreseen, some won't appear even in our nightmares.
‘Am I really going to move on?’
‘Am I ever prepared to move on?’
I heard questions.
‘No.’ I said in my mind.
‘I'm Krish and I belong to Meera.’
I felt I never knew this much about me in the past.
She was facing the stove and looked sideways to glance at me through the corner of her eyes.
“I'm still not able to decipher my past. Leaving you has proven to be a wrong choice, but I have never come across what could have been a right one. What was my mistake? It's easier to accept that I was the mistake. All I wanted was to save myself from becoming...," She paused as if the word dreaded her.
“Your mistake was that you sought no help from me.”
I said slowly. She turned to face me.
“I'm seeking help from you. Now... But it's too late. Too late, isn't it?”
That could be her finest confession. She wanted me. She was not ready to let me go.
There stood my wife Meera. She was not perfect. She could make mistakes. She could have wrong choices. One of them was me. If she had married a normal man she wouldn't have been encouraged to date another man. She wouldn't have been made to accidentally sleep with other men. She wouldn't have been made to question her own integrity.
I was the partner in anything and everything she found herself guilty of. I was the biggest choice she ever had. And I was destined to love not only her perfections but also her imperfections.
It was time to shake my own tail.
“Meera. Last night I slept with another woman - Das’ sister-in-law. We were at The Square when I got your phone call, and then I brought her home. Das had come to meet me there and he tried to stop me. I beat him up and threatened him and put him in the same chair and made him watch...”
Meera kept looking at me with shocked surprise. She was probably trying hard not to make a bad response, and I couldn’t see any. Probably she was just letting it sink into her.
“You made out with her like Das had done with me?”
She finally asked quietly.
“Exactly.”
“Did you do it to avenge Das?”
“No. I would have done it even if he wasn’t there. It was his bad luck that he happened to be there.”
“Then why...why are you telling me about this?”
“Do you feel I did that to avenge you?”
“What? No. No, you won’t. You wouldn’t do that.”
“Then how did you come to the conclusion that I let Ananya seduce me because of what you did to me?”
She was taken aback; her mouth was left open.
“I had reasons to believe so, apart from the faith I had in you. She had the habit of sleeping around, and when I moved out she used to joke about seducing you... She was the one who would try to hit on you, not the other way around. I thought she took advantage of what I told her about my submission to Das. I was a fool to believe her as a friend and...”
“She never had doubts about you. She used to tell me you'd never sleep with Das. When you told her, she was very disappointed.”
Her body became weak and I feared she would collapse.
I wanted to make a lot of confessions. Maybe later. I thought.
All we needed to do was to speak to each other. Listen to each other. There was nothing left to decide. We were merely two people who were dying to embrace each other and worry about nothing.
I felt it coming back all of a sudden. No more analysis on what's right and what's wrong was required.
“Meera.”
She looked up into my eyes and I wasted no time to have her in my arms.
“Let's go home, Meera.”
I said and I kissed her.
It was that simple. It had always been. But I never knew.
The tears that had run down her cheeks had turned her lips salty. It had the power to melt all of our hardest differences and make us look beyond them. I saw our future. It was bright.
She was suddenly the innocent girl I had married a long ago.
“Oh my God...!”
I heard her say and I felt her arms tighten around me. She was warm and soft. She was bright and colourful. She was a flower. She was delicate. She was love.
“Krish I have one more thing to say.”
She said when we parted slightly.
I showed two fingers across her lips.
“Not now. I'm done with your confessions. I don't want to change anything I've already decided; no matter what you were to say. Forget it all and just look at me. Look at your husband and tell me what do you see?”
I watched her eyes slowly bringing back its old charm slowly yet strikingly.
“I see it's coming back. It's all coming back.”
Her face was now the most beautiful thing I would cherish forever. We embraced each other tightly.
It was that simple. It had always been. I knew it.
The milk on the stove was over-boiled and spilt; grabbing our attention.
“Oops.”
She began to turn but then stopped, and hugged me again.
“No, I don't want to leave you... I...”
“It’s okay; I am not going anyway...”
I smiled and she tried to smile through her tears.
She replaced the milk and we stood watching it boil, with our hand in hand. She turned to look at me many times and smiled every time.
“I now believe in miracles.”
She made coffee and we sat together on the couch. We chatted silly things because now we could.
It was a miracle. She was true. I feared there was something terrible happening to my heart because it was beating normal now.
I felt proud.
She later told me about her decision to resign from her job. I urged her to reconsider it.
“No. I want to put his office into just an old memory.”
“The old memory is still a memory. I suppose you live around it. So that you can replace them with good ones; so that it wouldn't bother your new memories.”
She smiled.
“I've never thought about it. You're right.”
We sat together on the couch for long, my hand around her genuinely gentle and protective. Every moment I spent sitting with her, I felt my hand was closing in and drawing her close to me until I felt her breath on my neck.
“You know, these moments, this happiness, so content, I never thought it'd come back.”
She said and kissed me lightly on my chin.
“Me too. It is a miracle like you said.”
I said lovingly playing on her cheek and ear, looking into her beautiful eyes.
“When are you taking me home?”
“Right now.”
“Now?”
“No?”
“I mean, I want to shift permanently with you. And there's a lot of packing. Can we move tomorrow?”
I had no problem to nod a yes. At that moment, we heard the doorbell.
She made a disapproving gesture of being disturbed, and it pleased me.
“Let me check.”
She got up and walked to the door.
My eyes followed her and fell for the seductive rhythm in which she walked.
She will come back soon. I said myself.
She opened the door and I saw a man standing there. He stared at her face and then saw me.
“Sorry. It's a wrong address, I suppose.”
The man said politely yet with a straight face. He walked away and Meera shut the door immediately.
“Who was that?”
I asked her.
“I don't know. Wrong address – he said.”
She replied.
It took her just a couple of seconds to join me on the couch. But this time my hand didn't hurry itself to embrace her.
Because I knew who the man was.
It was Vivek. The pet shop owner.
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