A Little Too Late

Author: Rahul Biswas

Fledgling author. Pretends he can write. Assumes he regales fans and followers at http://randomrahul.blogspot.in. Still trying to learn the ropes. Eagerness is his only ammunition.

The Story:

Deepak

"Your wife is in her room, Mr. Shastri. She has not been doing well. Keep that in mind and..." The attendant left the sentence unfinished, shot a sympathetic glance at me, and then preceded me in.

"Mrs. Shastri," the nurse said gently, "your husband is here to visit you."

There was no acknowledgment, neither the slightest motion nor the softest syllable, from the figure in the room.

It had been three weeks since I had seen Sandhya and, though I had been expecting some deterioration, her present appearance made a frigid wave run down my back.

She sat huddled on the cot. She had angled her body sideways, facing away from the door. Her shoulders were hunched down, her head lowered; arms entwined in front, the nails on each hand digging into the opposite shoulder. Her body, too, was curled upon itself and her legs drawn up with knees glued together. She was absolutely still.

I went to her and put a hand gently on one shoulder. "Hullo, Sandhya. It's me I. I've been missing you."

She said, low voiced, her face a blank slate, "Yes." She did not move.

I increased the grip on the shoulder. "Can you please turn around to look at me? I have so much to tell you."

The only response was a perceptible stiffness, a tightening of the position in which Sandhya was huddled.

I swallowed hard. Her voice used to be rich and soft, yet strangely compelling, as were her eyes. Fathomless amber. Eyes that seemed able to look into me and through me at the same time. Five years ago they had cut through all pretence and put the cuffs on me in the space of a breath. They were just as striking now. Maybe even more.

"Has she been like this long?" I asked the nurse quietly.

"This whole week." The girl added with a business-like tone, "She feels more comfortable that way, so it's best if you take no notice, just sit down and talk."

I nodded. As I went to the single chair and settled myself, the nurse tiptoed out, closing the door gently.

“So Sandhya, how’ve you been feeling?” I forced a smile and asked.

Sandhya

Voices fleet into my ears. Like wisps of smoke. I think about touching them. But that dull pain in my head starts pounding again. Any effort at focussing, and immediately, there is the pain to admonish me. I let the voices fade away.

I see the man’s lips moving. It’s too distracting. Nothing he says matters, even though we shared something from the past. Unimportant today, probably. But like a stubborn stain, it clings on.

I feel a sound escape involuntarily from my own lips. It sounded like a ‘Yes’. What did I say yes to? I try to remember.

A touch on my shoulder. Slowly pressing deeper.

A question. Followed by another.

The details are too disjointed. A hazy mess. I tune them out.

He comes here now and then. I wish he would stop doing that. His face pops in and out of my memories. I wish that would stop too.

I remember the way he used to look at me. Especially on our reception night. I was draped in in a long, pale green chiffon sari; tiny sequins glittered on the fabric with reflected light. The way his eyes hung on to my body made a slow pallor spread beneath my warmly glowing skin.

But, life's fragile. Good times are brief. Endings are inevitable.

I used to be shy. Chronically. So shy that sometimes in a group I clung tightly to his arm. I remember him whispering. Into my ears. That he loved me because of my shyness. That he was proud of my reliance on him. Only long after, when I continued to be myself, his impatience surfaced. Anger followed.

His accusing eyes haunt me even now. His irate screams still ring in my ears sometimes.

So much for love!

Deepak

“You’re an embarrassment!” I had yelled at her out of sheer disgust. Three years ago.

“No! You’re just blind!!” She had replied between sobs.

“What the....” My voice could barely contain its annoyance.

Truth was- I had been blind. She hailed from a world poles apart from my own. I was the scion of an influential political family. She was the only child of withdrawn folks from a solitary suburban background.

“Your life...your friends...all this...I never asked for any of it.” Her sobs were uncontrollable now. “I hate all that. And no one knows it better than you!”

My active social and domestic life wasn’t something she had bargained for. It was all new and bewildering to Sandhya, at times alarming. Before Sandhya met me, she had had no responsibilities, her social experience was nil. Marriage increased her natural nervousness.

“That’s right!” I spat out my loathing. “Blame me! You’re awfully good at that, aren’t you??!”

With hindsight, I blamed myself. I could, I afterwards believed, have helped Sandhya so easily, could have given advice, eased tensions, offered reassurance. But when it mattered most I never had. I had been too thoughtless, busy, and ambitious.

Instead, I allowed her self-doubts and tensions to grow until...it was just too late.

Sandhya

A picture. It spoke a hundred words of betrayal. His lips. On someone else’s. I couldn’t recognise the woman in the photo. But the photo seemed recent. It slipped out of his appointment book when I was tidying his desk.

Deepak with another woman! I could feel my chest tighten.

Had I failed him so badly that...

That night, I remember myself wearing a revealing negligee. One of his favourites. When he walked into our room, I stood up a little straighter, arching my back, throwing out my chest, already anticipating the warm wetness of his mouth, the feel of his hands on my body. He was taken aback. But just for a moment. He didn't  waste  time,  pushing  me  back  hard against the wall and  kissing  me. 

His hand dipped under my negligee and I moaned against his lips as  he  caressed  my  inner  thigh,  stroking  me  as the bristles stood straight on my nape.  I slid my hands up and down  his  back,  feeling the tightness  of  his  muscles  under  his clothes. 

He  kissed  down  the  side  of  my neck,  hot,  wet  kisses, nibbling my skin, licking me like a mama kitty would clean one of her kittens, his stick  pressed  against  my leg like a hard-on.  My negligee gave him plenty of  bare  skin  to  kiss  and  he  did,  dipping  his  tongue between my breasts, his  murmur  of  approval  ensuring  I will  be  wearing  the  negligee  for  him  again  next day.   My nipples were hard points inside my blouse and he captured one between his lips, sucking it through my shirt.  I moaned softly.

My eyes fell on our reflection cast in the full size mirror in our bedroom. He was on me like an animal, but the face in the mirror wasn’t mine.

It belonged to the woman from the photo.

I sat up from my dream with a jerk. My throat felt parched. My head swam.

Only a couple of months left for our second anniversary. But the distances never felt any greater.

Something snapped inside me. And things were never the same.

Deepak

“So yesterday I went to see Jab Tak Hai Jaan, Sandhya, and it made me sorry we weren't seeing it together," I said to her, hoping desperately for some reaction. Sandhya used to be an ardent fan of Shah Rukh.

"Yes," Sandhya said tonelessly.

She had still not stirred from the huddled position, but evidently was listening, so I continued talking.

"I've been busy at the assembly lately, Sandhya."

Two months before our second anniversary, I was toiling away doggedly to win the polls from my constituency. I wanted to keep things clean. I made promises I really intended to keep. But that was when she started changing.

While Sandhya accepted my absences without objection, she also grew increasingly silent and unsociable. She buried herself in books. Often she looked indefinitely at the walls, as if wanting to bore through them with her gaze. Sometimes, she jolted herself out of her reticence without apparent reason and became animated, rambling incessantly and sometimes incoherently. Those fits and starts of boundless energy always took me by surprise. But then, equally abruptly, the energy would disappear, leaving her despondent and reticent once more. And all the while our love wore thin.

It was during that time, on one of my campaigns, that I found out that Sandhya used to be a patient at the mental home in a locality of my constituency. It was then the truth of her malady become clear. For a while, anguish and concern revived my love. But, by then, things had worsened too much. Far too much.

Perhaps I never did have a chance at saving her. Perhaps no greater love would have helped. But I would never know.

I could never know if I had done my best.

Sandhya

"The people at the assembly are all about power and influence. Using it. Abusing it. Little is being said or done about the public. A sad thing happened yesterday, though. Patelji, our party president, told us he was dying. I called a meeting and…"

He went on. But I had begun to tremble. I could feel my body rocking back and forth. A wail, a half moan, escaped me.

The party! He had committed himself totally to it. Drowning me in neglect. Widening the gulf between us. But there was something more.

Patelji. Deepak’s mentor. He would die soon.

How many years before I died?

Many, perhaps.

I could easily outlive Deepak, could live on like this.

Deepak

Like an animal!

She looked like a beast!

My pity evaporated. Fury shrouded my senses; the angry impatience which had maimed our marriage. "For god's sake, Sandhya, control yourself!"

Her trembling and the moans continued.

I hated her! She wasn't human any more, yet she remained the barrier between me and a full life.

Between me and Monica. My college heart-throb. Daughter of a media baron and my family’s first choice as my fiancée. But Sandhya happened and I got enchanted by her fragile vulnerability. But Monica didn’t give up. Even after my marriage, she tenaciously kept in touch with me. One thing led to another, my dissatisfaction with my wife grew, and very soon, I found myself seeking Monica’s company more and more.

However, with the full-blown public life I led, I couldn’t afford the risk of an extra-marital affair. So I kept a distance, just having a photo of her and myself in my appointment book as a reminder of happier times.

Getting up, I savagely strode to the door to leave.

And then I looked back. At my wife whom once I had loved; at what she had become; at the gulf between us we would never bridge. I paused, and wept.

Wept with compunction, remorse, lament, my momentary anger spent, the hatred washed away.

I returned to the cot and, on my knees before her, begged, "Sandhya, forgive me! Oh, God, forgive me."

I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder, heard the young nurse's voice. "Mr. Shastri, I think you should go now."

I left the room reluctantly and followed the nurse to the doctor’s room.

“Mr. Shastri, I should report to you first that your wife's schizophrenia is worsening,” the doctor announced gravely. “Catatonic type. I’m sure you remember."

"I remember all the discouraging diagnoses, yes," I replied with thinly veiled dejection.

"I wish there was something we could do." The doctor was sympathetic.

“How bad is she right now, exactly?”

"Incurable, I’m afraid.''

"There’s no hope?" I wailed.

“Maybe you should read this, Mr.Shastri.” The doctor brought out a neatly folded paper from his drawer and handed it to Deepak. “It’s by your wife. She wrote it a week back.”

Drawing a sharp breath in was all I could do to keep myself from snatching the letter out of the doctor’s hands. I unfolded the paper with eager hands and read the contents.

“Thanks for bringing me here, Deepak. It feels nice. Like home. Secure. No responsibilities. No need to relate to others. Happiness is relative, for all of us. This feels closest to being happy for me.”

I wasn’t done with the letter before I got interrupted by the doctor’s words.

“She is comfortable here, Mr.Shastri. I hope that’ll make you feel a little better."

I nodded briefly, almost in a trance, and continued reading the note.

“Deepak, I don’t want to be in your way anymore. I know you like someone else. Don’t let me come in between. I don’t know how long I have to live. But it would be too cruel to make you suffer because of my life. So don’t waste your time on stupid things like hope. Or guilt. Life’s too short. Time’s brief. Endings are inevitable. I don’t have anything against you. And you shouldn’t have anything against yourself. I’m at peace. So should you. Good bye!”

A silent tear rolled down my cheek. I looked out of the window of the doctor’s room at the lawn outside. The clinic was a modern building and had luxuriant gardens which were in stark contrast to the bleakness the inmates otherwise experienced. It was a private clinic. It was also horrendously expensive but I wanted Sandhya to have the best of care. It was the very least that I could do.

But it still wasn’t enough. Far from it.

“Can I just see her once more?” I asked.

“Sure!”

***

When Deepak entered her room, Sandhya was still sitting huddled in the same way. Deepak went to her cot and was on his knees again.

“Sandhya, I’m never going to give up on you,” he promised. “I’ll never let my own issues come between us again. I’m going to see you through this. You’re going to be ok. Just talk to me. Say something. Please. I beg you.”

It began with a twitch. The corners of her lips jerked almost imperceptibly. Slowly, the lips melted into a curve and then parted abruptly. Her mouth now gaping open, she started laughing uncontrollably.

Periods of impenetrable silence punctuated by sudden bursts of energy!

“Wh-what is so funny?” He asked taken aback.

“He he. Nothing.” A mischievous gleam twinkled in her eye.

“No. Tell me.” He insisted.

“I-I just remembered a joke.” Her laughter reduced and trickled into a chuckle now.

“What?” He asked incredulously.

She began to speak haltingly. “See, there was this couple in a lunatic asylum... and one night, one night they decide they don't like living in an asylum any more. They decide they're going to escape!”

She paused, appearing to wonder whether she should go on.

“And?” Deepak urged.

“So, like, they get up onto the roof,” she continued after a moment’s thought, “and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away in the moon light... stretching away to freedom.”

Sandhya stopped again and briefly stole a glance at the door through which Deepak had come in. She then looked away, locked her blank gaze on her curled toes and went on.

“Now, the man, he jumps right across with no problem. But the woman, the woman didn't dare make the leap. You see... Deepak, she was afraid of falling. So then, the man has an idea... He says 'Hey! I have my flashlight with me! I'll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk along the beam and join me!'”

She smiled and looked at Deepak in a weird way. He was just too stunned to reply.

“B-but the woman just shakes her head,” she spoke again. “She says... she says ‘What do you think I am? Crazy? You'd turn it off when I was half way across!’”

Sandhya started sniggering. And at the same time, Deepak’s eyes welled up with tears.

Seeing his teary eyes, something stabbed Sandhya’s heart and even before realizing it, she remarked, “A little too late for that, I’m afraid.”