Recognition
“Ritu you’ve really lost it! I mean, whoever gives a packet of tea leaves as parting gift to a lover! Don’t tell me you couldn’t think of anything else!”
“What’s wrong with tea? It’s warm, fragrant, it lingers on the lips, its taste stays on your tongue and every sip goes in to mingle and become a part of the blood!”
“In other words it reaches where you couldn’t. A lover’s ultimate desire!”
“Don’t get melodramatic, we aren’t lovers, just friends!”
“You were in your mind. But you intellectuals just talk or fantasize but never have the guts to get real!”
“I’m okay with an illusion – a sweet illusion. Besides even if we were serious, it could have never happened – he’s married you know.”
“He’s separated, his wife – what’s her name – Nayantara, sleeps with none other than the Vice Chancellor! It’s the university’s open secret. I saw her picture last week, on page three. She’s in a different league altogether, it was never destined to work. Poor guy! But he really should’ve thought twice before marrying the Minister’s daughter!”
Ritu wanted to retort, she hated it, when anyone called Sudeep a “poor guy”. She knew that the separation from his wife had cost him a slice of his soul. But, whatever might be his flaws, he was no loser. A flame yet burnt in him. She wrapped the packet of Jasmine tea in special handmade paper and then scribbled some lines of a poem on it. If Sudeep didn’t like the tea, he’d probably like the poem!
She waded through the crowd of book-lovers at Crosswords to reach the coffee corner which was snuggled inside for people who loved words and a warm drink. It was crowded, but Ritu didn’t take more than a moment to spot him, his eyes piercing into a book. When she handed him the gift, he read the lines aloud amidst the dull chatter that mingled with the smell of coffee. His voice seemed new again, like when he’d read the first poem to her in the staff room,
In a very ordinary world
A most extraordinary pain mingles with the small routines,
The loss seems huge and yet
Nothing can be pinned down or fully explained.
You are afraid.
If you found the perfect love
It would scald your hands,
Rip the skin from your nerves,
Cause havoc with a computered heart.
He was quiet for a long moment savouring the taste of the poem almost, then he smiled at Ritu,
“I didn’t know you’d started reading contemporary poetry.”
“I haven’t, I read these lines somewhere and thought may be they’ll mean something to you, so I’d jotted them down. I don’t even know the poet.”
“He - Brian Patten - is one of my favourite poets. Thank you,” he looked into her eyes, “this is not something you’d normally expect from a Physics professor!”
“It’s the friend that shared this, not the Physics professor! Besides, something is bound to rub off from you for all the time we’ve spent together…” she became quiet.
“I guess that’s due to change now. I’m flying next week,” he said what was on her mind.
Ritu tried to keep a steady expression. It’s good that pain was invisible… Or was it?
“Why are you leaving the country Sudeep?” she kept her hands on the table to keep them from trembling.
He was quiet, and he didn’t look at her face when he answered,
“Call me an escapist, a coward. Whatever! I can’t take it anymore!”
“Have you spoken to your wife?”
“What is there to speak about now, when she isn’t my wife any longer? She’d done all the talking that was necessary when she walked out on me. I don’t have words for her anymore.”
Ritu knew how deep the gash was when he said that, considering how his wife had been a muse to so many poems of his poems, he’d dedicated his first book of poems to her “To Nayantara, my muse and wife”. To make him introspect on the broken relationship was a thorny affair, but to stay quiet would be dishonest,
“May be you gave her reason to.”
“Oh! I’m responsible you mean?” his face changed colour.
“I don’t know Sudeep. May be Nayantara found more meaning outside the marriage, some relationships come with an expiry date. You both had come together because you were both following your bliss, remember? …May be bliss came from another source now. Don’t you think you should’ve tried harder to find out?”
That hurt! He wanted her to think well of him, not with pity or scorn like everyone else. Sudeep noticed she didn’t call him a loser, but said nothing to make him feel unburdened either. Why, he wondered, should anyone’s opinion matter, especially now, when he was running away from everyone and everything. He tried to explain in spite of himself.
“Nayantara married me because she thought I was a crazy poet, and then left me because I was only a crazy poet! I guess, she needed me to be more than a poet, may be a powerful, successful man. I was a disappointment to her.”
Ritu knew their love story, they had been college sweethearts and married amidst vehement protests from his politically powerful father-in-law and his cronies. The first three years of their marriage were a fairy tale, she later realized. When she’d met him first time in the college staff room, he was struggling to compose a poem for his wife on their fifth marriage anniversary, like he used to on all the anniversaries. He couldn’t, the poem refused to come. They never celebrated the seventh anniversary together.
Sudeep looked at Ritu. He hated her specs, they seemed to hide her soul. Eyes that could pierce into yours, but would keep their mystery to themselves, it wasn’t fair. She’d come to know him so well in such a short period. He felt so comfortable with her. She knew every inch of his heart’s fabric, where it was frayed, where torn and where you could still find beauty. Sometimes he felt she was too direct, too ruthlessly truthful about his dark side. He blamed it on her Physics background, hers was a scientific mind that stated things as they were without anything added or taken away. Yet, she didn’t judge him, that’s why he could breathe easy around her. Where would he find a friend like this, in front of whom his soul stood naked without being ashamed? He will miss her, he thought. A lot.
***
She wondered if he was on drugs or in some relationship, at any rate he was trying to escape from reality, that’s why he hadn’t got back in touch. Something he confessed only to his poems. One day her email lit up with his message.
I know you must be hopping mad with me. It’s been six months and I haven’t written or called. I was trying to settle. Yup settle! On the outside too, though that’s much easier, it’s the inner mess that’s hard to clean up! …Where did I go wrong Ritu?
She logged out of her email and then logged in again, re-reading, soaking in his message. Her mind was a burning cauldron filled with wicked ingredients. She felt like scratching his face some how. He was so selfish, always saying his bit, never really asking about her. Somebody needed to tell him that!
Seven months and twenty days to be precise! Anyway, may be it’s about what you focus on – yourself! Try focusing on the other person once in a while, just as an experiment if nothing else!
She wondered if he would retreat into his shell again and sulk. The following day, he was there in her inbox,
Why don’t you ever elaborate? It’s crazy to think that everyone can read your mind! I wonder if it has to do with being a Physics professor or maybe a woman!
Ritu smiled this time. He was still the same, short tempered and a lover of words and long winded expressions. She admired him for the way he had with words, not that it helped him in saving his marriage or get over pain.
Stop sounding chauvinistic! It’s just that I’m not trained in words as I am with formulae and theory. I’m simply saying that you are always talking about yourself – your views, your hopes, your pain, your insight. Of course, I love to hear you talk because you’re so good at it, but intimacy is two- way traffic. May be you should ask questions and LISTEN to what the other has to say!
Sudeep didn’t write back. After a week, Ritu got a call.
“I’m coming back for a fortnight. Can you find time to meet me?”
“Sure.”
That was a change, she thought. He asked!
They met at Dilli Haat, a mutual favorite place, with stalls of handicrafts and food from different, pleasant outdoors, there were enough people around to let you melt inconspicuously in the haze of the crowd. When they hugged to greet, Sudeep held her a trifle too long, she thought.
“I came to attend a long meditation camp where you go into ten days of total silence,” he looked at her for a reaction, an eye brow moved, “And?” her brow asked.
“I also came to round it all off officially. I guess I’ll be officially divorced now.”
She could hear glass shattering in his voice. He got up slowly, heavily, as if he was wearing clothes made of iron.
“They have good fruit beer, I’ll get some,” his voice was dry, in need of a cool drink.
“Why the silence-meditation camp?” she asked through sips of fruit beer.
“I guess you were right - as usual, I need to learn to listen. Listen to myself first.”
“You used to listen to me in the beginning, when we got to know each other, remember?”
He smiled.
“I was so intrigued by you Ritu! You were the new kid on the block, and there was so much talk about you. Gold medal in Physics and all!” he laughed, “that’s enough to catch any guy’s attention!”
“You stalked and observed me as if I were another species!”
She laughed and then became pensive.
“You were a very good friend, I wouldn’t have survived all that if it hadn’t been for you” she confessed.
“You are a strong woman. I don’t know any woman could’ve survived the shock of losing her husband in a gory accident like that. Did they ever trace that bastard of a driver?”
“No. But, I also didn’t pursue it beyond a point, I couldn’t see the point of punishment. What I lost, I lost beyond redemption. Nothing would bring him back.”
Ritu choked as she said it, the pain suddenly surfacing. It was as if they had been under an unlucky star. She had tasted agony and ecstasy, within the first month of marriage. She’d never told him how she faced the bitter grief and how her in laws thought she was a fatal curse for their family. It didn’t matter what they thought now. The whole thing seemed like a nightmare, one she never wanted to remember. It was a brief episode, but terribly, terribly painful.
“You loved him, didn’t you?”
“I would have grown to love him, I suppose, had we had the time together. That’s how it happens in arranged marriages – not something romantic poets like you believe in!”
“I don’t know what I believe in now. Passion couldn’t sustain my marriage, or perhaps the passion that didn’t last long enough. I guess I have to look beyond emotional waves.”
They sat quiet with the mellow air and pain moving with their breath.
***
She waited for him to contact her after his silent meditation course. He didn’t. After six months he sent her a text message.
“Happy b’day to you!”
She sent back a burning response.
“My birthday was last month! It doesn’t change just because you have a poor memory!”
Singed, he gathered the courage to dial her number, she picked up the phone after a while. He spoke first,
“Sorry! You know how bad I am with dates and details. Anyway, I’m back in Delhi. So, we’ll celebrate your birthday together.”
He was so irritating! It was no use arguing with him. He lived in a utopian world where you did things if ‘they came from the heart’. It was just a fancy way of justifying your whims, she’d once told him. But she agreed to go out with him just the same.
“You are crazy! You use my birthday as an excuse to come here. Whoever comes to Bahai temple for a celebration or date or whatever you want to call this!”
“Let’s not label it. I know and you know, I’m selfish, but uniquely so!” he smiled mischievously.
She looked at him. He seemed settled, at ease.
“What’s happening?”
“Actually, nothing! And I’m loving it!”
“You’ve changed.”
“Umm, perhaps I’ve just become more of myself.”
“And what caused that to happen?”
“Oh! so many things! It seems that everything in life was leading to this, to finding a slice of yourself.”
“Do you see some kind of pattern then, in all that has been happening?”
“Ah! spoken like a true physicist, always looking for coherence and patterns in the messy chaos of life!” he laughed, “some scientist made a law about uncertainty didn’t he?”
“Heisenberg. He gave the principle of uncertainty, but – never mind!”
He became pensive again.
“I guess the breakdown of the marriage, shattered a lot of my notions, about love, about fate, about my own image. It was a massive crack in the middle of the road, that suddenly made me put the brakes on. And you did the rest!”
“Me? What did I do?” she was surprised.
“Oh! nothing much, just an inadvertent lesson in optics! You held up the mirror when I needed to take a good look at myself, a mirror that showed me my bare soul. I don’t think I would have ever looked inside me if it weren’t for you.”
He noticed she was shivering, he took his jacket off and put it around her shoulders. Dusk was round the corner.
“I guess I never quite got out of my teens, and always thought that a heady passion was what you needed to experience life fully. I always liked fireworks you know, even as a child! It was after the sound and fury and smoke, that I realised that love can burn quietly like a candle. That you need to look beyond the dazzle, to notice that gentle flame.” he looked into her eyes as he said that, and then he softly added, “You taught me to be silent and listen to real heartbeats - mine, yours, everyone’s.”
They stood looking at the shimmering piece of architecture. White and peaceful. She raised her eyes to look at him. He was looking into the distance, in a sort of trance, when you look ahead but don’t quite see what’s in front of you. He spoke gently.
“You have to have the courage to recognize love in all it’s forms. To see it as it is. To not label or categorize it, to not try to manipulate and make it fit into a neat mould you might have been carrying for generations or borrowed from books. Moulds of hand me downs.”
She didn’t look at him when she asked,
“How do you do that?”
“You taught me that! To be quiet, to listen. It is not your brilliance but your silence that makes you aware of the love that is there in your life.”
She then quietly wrapped her arm around his, and they walked out together in the dusk.
- Harvinder Kaur
(Published in New Woman)
“Ritu you’ve really lost it! I mean, whoever gives a packet of tea leaves as parting gift to a lover! Don’t tell me you couldn’t think of anything else!”
“What’s wrong with tea? It’s warm, fragrant, it lingers on the lips, its taste stays on your tongue and every sip goes in to mingle and become a part of the blood!”
“In other words it reaches where you couldn’t. A lover’s ultimate desire!”
“Don’t get melodramatic, we aren’t lovers, just friends!”
“You were in your mind. But you intellectuals just talk or fantasize but never have the guts to get real!”
“I’m okay with an illusion – a sweet illusion. Besides even if we were serious, it could have never happened – he’s married you know.”
“He’s separated, his wife – what’s her name – Nayantara, sleeps with none other than the Vice Chancellor! It’s the university’s open secret. I saw her picture last week, on page three. She’s in a different league altogether, it was never destined to work. Poor guy! But he really should’ve thought twice before marrying the Minister’s daughter!”
Ritu wanted to retort, she hated it, when anyone called Sudeep a “poor guy”. She knew that the separation from his wife had cost him a slice of his soul. But, whatever might be his flaws, he was no loser. A flame yet burnt in him. She wrapped the packet of Jasmine tea in special handmade paper and then scribbled some lines of a poem on it. If Sudeep didn’t like the tea, he’d probably like the poem!
She waded through the crowd of book-lovers at Crosswords to reach the coffee corner which was snuggled inside for people who loved words and a warm drink. It was crowded, but Ritu didn’t take more than a moment to spot him, his eyes piercing into a book. When she handed him the gift, he read the lines aloud amidst the dull chatter that mingled with the smell of coffee. His voice seemed new again, like when he’d read the first poem to her in the staff room,
In a very ordinary world
A most extraordinary pain mingles with the small routines,
The loss seems huge and yet
Nothing can be pinned down or fully explained.
You are afraid.
If you found the perfect love
It would scald your hands,
Rip the skin from your nerves,
Cause havoc with a computered heart.
He was quiet for a long moment savouring the taste of the poem almost, then he smiled at Ritu,
“I didn’t know you’d started reading contemporary poetry.”
“I haven’t, I read these lines somewhere and thought may be they’ll mean something to you, so I’d jotted them down. I don’t even know the poet.”
“He - Brian Patten - is one of my favourite poets. Thank you,” he looked into her eyes, “this is not something you’d normally expect from a Physics professor!”
“It’s the friend that shared this, not the Physics professor! Besides, something is bound to rub off from you for all the time we’ve spent together…” she became quiet.
“I guess that’s due to change now. I’m flying next week,” he said what was on her mind.
Ritu tried to keep a steady expression. It’s good that pain was invisible… Or was it?
“Why are you leaving the country Sudeep?” she kept her hands on the table to keep them from trembling.
He was quiet, and he didn’t look at her face when he answered,
“Call me an escapist, a coward. Whatever! I can’t take it anymore!”
“Have you spoken to your wife?”
“What is there to speak about now, when she isn’t my wife any longer? She’d done all the talking that was necessary when she walked out on me. I don’t have words for her anymore.”
Ritu knew how deep the gash was when he said that, considering how his wife had been a muse to so many poems of his poems, he’d dedicated his first book of poems to her “To Nayantara, my muse and wife”. To make him introspect on the broken relationship was a thorny affair, but to stay quiet would be dishonest,
“May be you gave her reason to.”
“Oh! I’m responsible you mean?” his face changed colour.
“I don’t know Sudeep. May be Nayantara found more meaning outside the marriage, some relationships come with an expiry date. You both had come together because you were both following your bliss, remember? …May be bliss came from another source now. Don’t you think you should’ve tried harder to find out?”
That hurt! He wanted her to think well of him, not with pity or scorn like everyone else. Sudeep noticed she didn’t call him a loser, but said nothing to make him feel unburdened either. Why, he wondered, should anyone’s opinion matter, especially now, when he was running away from everyone and everything. He tried to explain in spite of himself.
“Nayantara married me because she thought I was a crazy poet, and then left me because I was only a crazy poet! I guess, she needed me to be more than a poet, may be a powerful, successful man. I was a disappointment to her.”
Ritu knew their love story, they had been college sweethearts and married amidst vehement protests from his politically powerful father-in-law and his cronies. The first three years of their marriage were a fairy tale, she later realized. When she’d met him first time in the college staff room, he was struggling to compose a poem for his wife on their fifth marriage anniversary, like he used to on all the anniversaries. He couldn’t, the poem refused to come. They never celebrated the seventh anniversary together.
Sudeep looked at Ritu. He hated her specs, they seemed to hide her soul. Eyes that could pierce into yours, but would keep their mystery to themselves, it wasn’t fair. She’d come to know him so well in such a short period. He felt so comfortable with her. She knew every inch of his heart’s fabric, where it was frayed, where torn and where you could still find beauty. Sometimes he felt she was too direct, too ruthlessly truthful about his dark side. He blamed it on her Physics background, hers was a scientific mind that stated things as they were without anything added or taken away. Yet, she didn’t judge him, that’s why he could breathe easy around her. Where would he find a friend like this, in front of whom his soul stood naked without being ashamed? He will miss her, he thought. A lot.
***
She wondered if he was on drugs or in some relationship, at any rate he was trying to escape from reality, that’s why he hadn’t got back in touch. Something he confessed only to his poems. One day her email lit up with his message.
I know you must be hopping mad with me. It’s been six months and I haven’t written or called. I was trying to settle. Yup settle! On the outside too, though that’s much easier, it’s the inner mess that’s hard to clean up! …Where did I go wrong Ritu?
She logged out of her email and then logged in again, re-reading, soaking in his message. Her mind was a burning cauldron filled with wicked ingredients. She felt like scratching his face some how. He was so selfish, always saying his bit, never really asking about her. Somebody needed to tell him that!
Seven months and twenty days to be precise! Anyway, may be it’s about what you focus on – yourself! Try focusing on the other person once in a while, just as an experiment if nothing else!
She wondered if he would retreat into his shell again and sulk. The following day, he was there in her inbox,
Why don’t you ever elaborate? It’s crazy to think that everyone can read your mind! I wonder if it has to do with being a Physics professor or maybe a woman!
Ritu smiled this time. He was still the same, short tempered and a lover of words and long winded expressions. She admired him for the way he had with words, not that it helped him in saving his marriage or get over pain.
Stop sounding chauvinistic! It’s just that I’m not trained in words as I am with formulae and theory. I’m simply saying that you are always talking about yourself – your views, your hopes, your pain, your insight. Of course, I love to hear you talk because you’re so good at it, but intimacy is two- way traffic. May be you should ask questions and LISTEN to what the other has to say!
Sudeep didn’t write back. After a week, Ritu got a call.
“I’m coming back for a fortnight. Can you find time to meet me?”
“Sure.”
That was a change, she thought. He asked!
They met at Dilli Haat, a mutual favorite place, with stalls of handicrafts and food from different, pleasant outdoors, there were enough people around to let you melt inconspicuously in the haze of the crowd. When they hugged to greet, Sudeep held her a trifle too long, she thought.
“I came to attend a long meditation camp where you go into ten days of total silence,” he looked at her for a reaction, an eye brow moved, “And?” her brow asked.
“I also came to round it all off officially. I guess I’ll be officially divorced now.”
She could hear glass shattering in his voice. He got up slowly, heavily, as if he was wearing clothes made of iron.
“They have good fruit beer, I’ll get some,” his voice was dry, in need of a cool drink.
“Why the silence-meditation camp?” she asked through sips of fruit beer.
“I guess you were right - as usual, I need to learn to listen. Listen to myself first.”
“You used to listen to me in the beginning, when we got to know each other, remember?”
He smiled.
“I was so intrigued by you Ritu! You were the new kid on the block, and there was so much talk about you. Gold medal in Physics and all!” he laughed, “that’s enough to catch any guy’s attention!”
“You stalked and observed me as if I were another species!”
She laughed and then became pensive.
“You were a very good friend, I wouldn’t have survived all that if it hadn’t been for you” she confessed.
“You are a strong woman. I don’t know any woman could’ve survived the shock of losing her husband in a gory accident like that. Did they ever trace that bastard of a driver?”
“No. But, I also didn’t pursue it beyond a point, I couldn’t see the point of punishment. What I lost, I lost beyond redemption. Nothing would bring him back.”
Ritu choked as she said it, the pain suddenly surfacing. It was as if they had been under an unlucky star. She had tasted agony and ecstasy, within the first month of marriage. She’d never told him how she faced the bitter grief and how her in laws thought she was a fatal curse for their family. It didn’t matter what they thought now. The whole thing seemed like a nightmare, one she never wanted to remember. It was a brief episode, but terribly, terribly painful.
“You loved him, didn’t you?”
“I would have grown to love him, I suppose, had we had the time together. That’s how it happens in arranged marriages – not something romantic poets like you believe in!”
“I don’t know what I believe in now. Passion couldn’t sustain my marriage, or perhaps the passion that didn’t last long enough. I guess I have to look beyond emotional waves.”
They sat quiet with the mellow air and pain moving with their breath.
***
She waited for him to contact her after his silent meditation course. He didn’t. After six months he sent her a text message.
“Happy b’day to you!”
She sent back a burning response.
“My birthday was last month! It doesn’t change just because you have a poor memory!”
Singed, he gathered the courage to dial her number, she picked up the phone after a while. He spoke first,
“Sorry! You know how bad I am with dates and details. Anyway, I’m back in Delhi. So, we’ll celebrate your birthday together.”
He was so irritating! It was no use arguing with him. He lived in a utopian world where you did things if ‘they came from the heart’. It was just a fancy way of justifying your whims, she’d once told him. But she agreed to go out with him just the same.
“You are crazy! You use my birthday as an excuse to come here. Whoever comes to Bahai temple for a celebration or date or whatever you want to call this!”
“Let’s not label it. I know and you know, I’m selfish, but uniquely so!” he smiled mischievously.
She looked at him. He seemed settled, at ease.
“What’s happening?”
“Actually, nothing! And I’m loving it!”
“You’ve changed.”
“Umm, perhaps I’ve just become more of myself.”
“And what caused that to happen?”
“Oh! so many things! It seems that everything in life was leading to this, to finding a slice of yourself.”
“Do you see some kind of pattern then, in all that has been happening?”
“Ah! spoken like a true physicist, always looking for coherence and patterns in the messy chaos of life!” he laughed, “some scientist made a law about uncertainty didn’t he?”
“Heisenberg. He gave the principle of uncertainty, but – never mind!”
He became pensive again.
“I guess the breakdown of the marriage, shattered a lot of my notions, about love, about fate, about my own image. It was a massive crack in the middle of the road, that suddenly made me put the brakes on. And you did the rest!”
“Me? What did I do?” she was surprised.
“Oh! nothing much, just an inadvertent lesson in optics! You held up the mirror when I needed to take a good look at myself, a mirror that showed me my bare soul. I don’t think I would have ever looked inside me if it weren’t for you.”
He noticed she was shivering, he took his jacket off and put it around her shoulders. Dusk was round the corner.
“I guess I never quite got out of my teens, and always thought that a heady passion was what you needed to experience life fully. I always liked fireworks you know, even as a child! It was after the sound and fury and smoke, that I realised that love can burn quietly like a candle. That you need to look beyond the dazzle, to notice that gentle flame.” he looked into her eyes as he said that, and then he softly added, “You taught me to be silent and listen to real heartbeats - mine, yours, everyone’s.”
They stood looking at the shimmering piece of architecture. White and peaceful. She raised her eyes to look at him. He was looking into the distance, in a sort of trance, when you look ahead but don’t quite see what’s in front of you. He spoke gently.
“You have to have the courage to recognize love in all it’s forms. To see it as it is. To not label or categorize it, to not try to manipulate and make it fit into a neat mould you might have been carrying for generations or borrowed from books. Moulds of hand me downs.”
She didn’t look at him when she asked,
“How do you do that?”
“You taught me that! To be quiet, to listen. It is not your brilliance but your silence that makes you aware of the love that is there in your life.”
She then quietly wrapped her arm around his, and they walked out together in the dusk.
- Harvinder Kaur
(Published in New Woman)
