Chapter 8 of Stubs & Roses By Irene Dhar Malik, Mumbai, India

Posted by Team 4indianwoman at 27 October 2007, 2:52 AM and is filed under Serial Novel Stubs and Roses
RECAP


Ila used to be upset at the fact that Nihar left his mother alone at home for long periods, but he wouldn’t see her point of view about his mother’s loneliness.
Nihar lies in bed, knowing that Ila too is awake and that he will never know what is going on in her mind. Just as he will never know what happened that August day when the man who had loved Ila before he had, came back into her life. While that man had slept on their bed, Ila remembered...


Chapter 8


She remembered the last time she had seen him. She had been surprised when he hadn’t led her to one of the usual roadside tea shacks but a reasonably decent restaurant. Later she knew it was so that she could cry in relative privacy when he told her what he had to. They had finished their class twelve board examinations and he had got selected for an engineering college too while she was applying for Arts in various colleges.

After the two plates of masala dosa arrived, she broke a piece and was proceeding to take her first bite when he said he was going away. At first she thought he meant a holiday with his family or friends. But he wasn’t talking about a holiday or even about going abroad to study as his parents would have liked him to. He was talking about actually doing what he used to sometimes talk of doing, the way we all do, and then never actually try to. He wanted to go to the North-East and do social work in the states that were being torn apart by insurgents. Maybe Assam, where he had spent some childhood years in a tea estate, maybe Nagaland - a state he had traveled through and loved. He wasn’t yet sure where he was going but he knew he had to. He couldn’t spend his life in the pursuit of things that meant nothing to him.

“And I mean nothing too?”
“It’s not that I don’t love you Ila, I really do. I still have to go.”
“Why do you make it sound like forever? You could keep coming back. I could join you later-”
“Maybe I will come back, maybe I won’t, and maybe it will be years before I want to. But I don’t want to have to come back because of things unfinished, because of un-kept promises, promises that shouldn’t be made.”

She was weeping now. He held her hand.
“So I don’t matter enough.”
He squeezed her hand gently.
“You know you do, that leaving you will be the only regret.”

More tears. But she was trying to hold them back now. Something like indignation, a bit of hurt, a bit of pain, and a lot of emptiness was swallowing her.
“What if I came with you?”
“But that’s not the life you want.”
“I’m not going to get the life I want. At least I would be with you.”
“No, that would be a ridiculous reason.”
The word felt like a slap across her face.

“So, you’re just informing me.”
“Yes, in a way.”
“So, what do I say? Have a great life, find happiness, etcetera…”

She got up to leave, the masala dosa piece still ludicrously in her hand. She put it down in the plate.

“I guess we’ll not meet after this.”
He was quiet, not knowing what to do with her, with the masala dosa, his hands – it was quite ridiculous actually. She walked away.

She wondered now, after all these years, about the fate of those two masala dosas. It was strange to, but it was stranger that he was here, sleeping in her home, the home she had built with her husband Nihar.

“I’ve come to take you away.”

A quiet announcement, typically Dipta, like his going away seven years ago. He stood at the corridor leading from the guest room to the living room. If he had found her here, he obviously knew of her marriage. Even then he hadn’t bothered to ask whether she was happy as she was, if she would like to go away with him.

“If you would like to of course. I’ve always known that I had to get you some day… It hadn’t struck me that you might not be free to come with me. I’d wanted so much to show you what I do, to share the life I lead with you… maybe I didn’t realize how many years have gone by. If you can’t-”
“I’ll come with you. Let’s leave now.”
“If you come with me, you’ll be leaving everything behind. There’ll be no turning back.”
“I know.”

                                                                                                       To be continued ......

 

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