Half a fairy tale

Deathly calm prevailed. It was the calm after a storm. The deafening silence that hung around the house like a pall weighed heavy with unuttered accusations and allegations. The tension in the air was so thick that one could slice through it. But this was not how it had always been. In the initial years of their marriage, the extended honeymoon period, every fight had been followed by the sweet foreplay of making up. Even their fights had had a tenderness to them. But with time it had changed character. Harsher words were used. The fights ended with banging of doors and stomping out. Inevitably one of them would spend the next couple of nights on the sofa. But now after 25 years of marriage, their fights had changed character again. Words were now used like weapons, aiming to maim and scar. And every fight was followed by silence. Silence as cold as a tombstone.

Ranjan knew the drill. For the next forty-eight hours Sudha and he would not speak to each other. They would steer clear of each other. This would not be difficult to do as they resided in a three thousand square feet apartment and already occupied separate bedrooms situated at two ends of a corridor. After that, one of them, more likely Ranjan would break the silence with some inane query to which the other would reply with an economical use of words. Over the next few days they would gradually ease into conversation using monosyllables. Finally, they would settle down into the passionless domesticity that their marriage had metamorphosized into.

However, with the commencement of the lockdown due to the corona virus pandemic, Ranjan sensed a subtle change in the texture of their fights. It had lost its edge. In fact, their first disagreement had occurred almost twenty days into the lockdown. This was a record in itself. They rarely went two weeks without having a verbal spat followed by a period of silence. When the lockdown had begun, they had discovered a new bonhomie, sharing household chores, experimenting with new recipes, eating their meals together, having conversations. They even sang together one evening. This newfound marital calm had lasted all of twenty days till Sudha had decided to take umbrage on a simple comment by Ranjan which she perceived as criticism of her culinary skills. Words had been exchanged, then accusations and finally abuses. Then the inevitable silence.

It was within this period of silence following their first lockdown fight that Ranjan had met Dia on Facebook. Her name had been suggested arbitrarily as a friend and on an impulse Ranjan had sent a friend request. Dia had accepted. Thus, began a casual virtual friendship which within two months had evolved into a soul connect that defied definition.

Dia was a forty-five-year-old divorcee. She was a fashion designer who worked for the fashion house of Mogra. She was also an artist who worked with different mediums and often showcased her work at exhibitions. Every few months she escaped to her ancestral home in Dharamshala to rejuvenate in the lap of the pristine mountains and reinvent herself. That was where she was when the country wide lockdown had been declared.

It was Día’s quick wit like a rapier that thrust and flashed but never hurt and her dry humour which attracted Ranjan. She was an excellent conversationalist, intelligent and well-read with the rare ability to analyse every situation with a disparaging honesty that almost verged on bluntness. She had a keen eye for beauty and abhorred the superficial.

Their conversations were long and varied. They spoke about everything under the sun. deep soul stirring conversations about their quest for happiness, their perception of the new normal, mindfulness as a regular practice and how Buddhism was more a philosophy than a religion. They had heated debates on world politics, on patriarchy, about how in an age of equality women were still given unfair privileges in the armed forces. But mostly they indulged in light-hearted banter, pitting their wit against each other. With time their conversations took on a flirtatious tone. There was a certain charm about their flirtation, sweet and subtle. Little was said and much implied. In the easy going sometimes innocuous messages they exchanged, one had to read between the lines to understand the essence of all they shared.

Even as the conversations between Ranjan and Dia lengthened, the silences between Ranjan and Sudha stretched out too. Now the silence did not necessarily follow a fight. The silence had become all-pervading and omnipresent. It was as if they no longer had anything to say to each other. Their storehouse of words had run dry as had their emotions. On the rare occasions when they attempted to make conversation, it sounded forced. Ranjan sometimes wondered what they had shared in the early years of their marriage. He remembered long conversations. Conversations that flowed with a natural rhythm, that were not forced, that did not require a subject matter. Conversations that were not just words but echoes of the soul. He remembered amusement, he remembered shared laughter and he remembered a certain respect for each other’s intellect. What he did not remember is when it had all ended. Was it when Ranjan had started going on tours that kept him away from home at length? Was it when Sudha had given up her job as an art teacher to concentrate all her attention on the upbringing of their two daughters? Was it when their children had gone away to college, suddenly emptying their home of all gaiety?

The days of lockdown sped by. At least it did for Ranjan. Unlike his colleagues and friends, he did not miss his office or the outdoors much. He was quite contended. He spent his mornings completing designs or attending online meetings of his architectural firm. But once the sun set, he wrapped up his work and waited for Dia to come online. In many ways he felt like a teenager again. The sweet anticipation that coloured his days, sudden snatches of remembered conversations that made him smile in the midst of a boring meeting, the mild quickening of heartbeat as Dia greeted him on Facebook messenger with easy going banter. Ranjan sometimes wondered how Sudha passed her time besides looking for an excuse to pick up a fight with him. She too seemed caught up in her own world. Perhaps she had picked up her paint brushes again. Art had once been a passion with her. Or perhaps she had immersed herself in one of her unputdownable novels. Sudha was a voracious reader.

It was the last night of lockdown. Offices would open the next day, public transport would ply, people would venture out with masks, maintaining social distancing. Ranjan had had his last conversation with dia. Though he did not bid her goodbye, Ranjan knew that it would not be wise to continue this nameless liaison, so perfect, so soul satisfying, into the real world. It belonged to the virtual world and there it would stay. Like a favourite dream that one knew would never come true yet one revisited from time to time. Like long forgotten melody one hummed even before one remembered its lyrics. Like the sad sweet memory of first love that brought a wistful smile to the lips and a yearning to the heart.

Ranjan had had foresight. He had not used his real Facebook account to befriend Dia. Instead he had used his fake account under the name of Danny that he had created a few years back to become “Facebook friends” with his teenage daughters at a time when social media has become a menace to every parent’s peace of mind. Danny was not totally a fake name though. His roommates at the School of Planning and Architecture had nick named him Danny after the actor Danny Denzongpa as Ranjan had been the only Nepali student in the institute. Ranjan had not given Día a glimpse into his reality either. He had told her that he worked with buildings and Dia had assumed that Ranjan was in the construction business. Ranjan had mentioned that his home was in Siliguri when in reality his ancestral home was in Siliguri and he had relocated to Mumbai many years ago.

Ranjan felt no qualms about the half-truths that he had shared with Dia. The truth would only complicate matters. Who knew if he revealed the truth about himself, it might have come back to bite him in the future? Instead he had given her a glimpse into the inner sanctum of his mind and soul where he rarely let anyone trespass. He had unmasked himself for her, shown her the man that he wanted to be, the man he really was deep within behind the social facade, the man Sudha would have never appreciated if she had known him.

              …………………………………………………………………………..

Sudha shut her laptop and heaved a sigh. It was a sigh of relief, of regret, of yearning, of finality. She had deleted the account. Now there would no trace of Dia. This account had been created by her older daughter as part of a project for “grandparent’s day”. Dia was what Sudha’s daughter called her grandmother not being able to pronounce dida which in Bengali meant maternal grandmother. The Facebook account had never been used but because it had been created using Sudha’s mail account, Sudha often received notifications. That is how she had come across the friend request from Danny. She had accepted it on an impulse so uncharacteristic of her. At first it had only been a means to get over the boredom and frustration of lockdown. It was also a distraction from the intense irritation that Ranjan’s constant presence in the house caused her.

 But soon the casual virtual friendship had evolved into a connection so beautiful, so rare, so soul soothing. A younger less cynical Sudha would have embraced it as a fairy tale romance. but an older world weary Sudha knew that life was only half a fairy tale where there were many “once upon a times” but no “happily ever afters”.