Daastan [#MissionDesi]

Chapter 16

Sujatha's father consoled me while her mother looked on, dark shadows circling her eyes, as if she hadn't slept a wink since Sujatha left. Sujatha was one thing which had binded us together but since she had left, moved on, grief was our guest that gloomy afternoon, sipping tea, mocking me 'I'm back!', as we sat outside in the veranda.

Not that in any corner of my mind did I never imagine her to leave me but she didn't even try is what bothered me the most.

As I got up to leave, her father joined the palms of his hands as if in a prayer and asked for forgiveness. I steeled myself, laying a wall of strength around my broken heart. It was all I could do to stop my emotions from bursting forth. I had come to Kerala thinking I could convince her to come back but she had left already. Next day, I did try once again in Bangalore but instead was handed a pen to sign divorce papers. She had already signed them, her mother's aunt tried to talk her out of it but to no avail. As I looked at the papers through a blurred vision, a tiny tear plopped on the sheet, stretching, dissolving and merging with the ink which carried her name 'Sujatha Arvind'. The smudged portion reflected the darkness of her soul.

'How can someone be so cruel? What if one day she woke up, all her memories back, would she forgive me for having given in to her selfish demands? Or was it me who had been selfish to hope against all hopes and kept her tied to me?

She was a caterpillar come out of the cocoon, ready to stretch out her wings and flutter around like a butterfly. Was I willing to give her a taste of a new life sans my existence?'

"Arvind," she had said, "Please let me go."

"I can't."

"Why not?" She had yelled.

"Because I love you."

I guess the words didn't mean anything to her since for her, they must have been just random words uttered by a stranger. I didn't know how to get through to her heart. In that moment, she felt like an entirely different planet that I wasn't sure how to navigate.

I took a flight back to Mumbai, segueing from one moment to another, like a dead man walking, talking, smiling, doing things that needed to be done. Those papers lay untouched, coming alive at night like a ghost.

I had asked her for some time to think it over. She didn't call me or never visited me asking about the papers. It didn't matter anymore to her I guess, about the institution of marriage, not caring if it was still intact or broken. She had moved on, I hated to think of her having given up on me.

Still, God knows, there was a miniscule part of me which believed she would return, heart and soul, back to me.This I wished everytime I looked at the yellowed, wrinkled papers, sitting in my drawer, solemnly looking at me, sorry that it had to be this way.

Slowly I moved on in life physically and mentally but my heart lay stagnant in the same place like the ring which had come knocking at my doorstep early morning through a courier, which sat cocooned in a red velvet box, in a drawer, waiting to be rescued out of the darkness.

Amma would be left alone because of my constant business travels, so she had gone to stay with Muthassi for few months on my insistence only to return again within few days.

She said she couldn't leave me alone to fend for myself when I could hardly cook a decent meal. She never mentioned her name again. She felt anger over what Sujatha had done to me and couldn't understand why I was still holding on to the papers when the best move would be for me to sign her off my life and re-marry.

I thought it'd be best to keep my intentions to myself, not worrying anyone with my decisions.