The Last Cigarette
The Last Cigarette
‘I am responsible for killing myself in my whole senses.’
Raza Ali moves to the corner and signs the note.
The retired attorney lights up a cigarette and tosses it out of the window. Raza is trembling all over. He clutches at his side a few times while dressing up but he does not sit down. Buttoning up his coat, Raza checks his laptop for new messages. None. He rushes out of the hotel room, locking it. A young staff member is moping the passage floor. He smiles at her and leaves.
*
“Mash it again,” The servant calls after Meera, taking a break from the cheap songs he is humming. “Or he will spit it out.”
“Mind your business!” Meera shouts back, stepping into her husband’s room. Her thin lips keep twitching in anger. For the first time in years, her eyes are searching for mirrors. She has hidden her frail arms in a pink sweater, while checking her phone for messages. Even the servant had grinned at her. Perhaps she was too old to check messages like this. She had gone red in the face. All this while, her husband is curled up in bed. The curve is the only sign of life on him. But he also breathes and blinks when she shakes him.
The servant is cleaning the floor. Meera begs him to stay till she comes back.
*
Raza drives out from the hotel towards the river. It is so obvious. Returning to his hometown after fifty years, he still knew that there was just one place where she would want to see him. At one time, he had brought her here to plant kisses on the nose. In those times... Raza was sure that he had her forever. “No one can keep us away!”
“My parents?” She had asked.
“Let’s flee!”
“If I refuse?” Meera asked, snatching the cigarette from his hand. She threatened to hit him if he smoked again. She was dark-eyed and dusky. They were still too young to know the huge wall of society between them.
*
“Where to, Aunty?” The betel-chewing auto driver asks Meera.
Butterflies keep fluttering in her empty belly as she sits behind the driver. The rickshaw leaves her close to the river. The river has memories for her. Taking her on a boat-ride, Raza had kissed her for the first and last time. “No one can separate us.” He had promised aggressively, their noses an inch apart. And Meera was wondering how much to tilt her face for a kiss…
Meera struggles to get up among the rocks to reach the edge. She looks with shame at a young couple, lying on the grass, busy with each other. The tall tree has hid behind itself a lean, delicate figure. Meera slowly slips behind the tree, and…
“Aah!’ When the walking stick touched his back, Raza cried out, almost toppling among the pebbles.
*
Meera screams, stepping back.
Raza stares at her, weakening at the knees. He has been sitting on the ground collecting daisies when Mee
ra pushes him on the back. He has turned to find… Meera’s silvery hair close enough for him to inhale their fragrance. His eyes find her glinting black eyes between the wrinkles. "You smoke still?"
He backs off a little without replying. Meera feels her pulse rising as he pulls himself up to his full height. She wonders how her own children would react if they knew their mother had come here. Well, if they ever found out. They only came home once in a year...
Raza wishes he had seen her growing old instead of seeing her old right away. "You are...”
“Ugly.”
“Who, I? Because you are still so beau-!"
“Shut up!” She snaps. The sun is blazing down making her dizzy.
*
“You will fall down!” Raza scolds her, “Take my flowers! Will I make garlands with them?”
Meera has bent down to collect daisies but she actually wanted to hide her happiness. Raza pulls her close to his chest. Meera remembers how her parents had forced her to marry a much older widower when they found out about her affair. Meera had gone to her marital home, dressed like a bride and feeling like a widow….
As she found herself in Raza’s stronger arms fifty years later, she clutched him.
*
Four months ago, Raza had found Meera on the web and started chatting with her. What was there to tell? They both had white hair and wobbly knees. Meera’s children and step-children were settled hundreds of miles away. Raza was unmarried. Still.“Bachelor! I am still most handsome eligible bachelor!” Raza had laughed when Meera called him up two weeks ago. Meera giggled back… That was three weeks ago.
Today that same woman, seventy two years old clutches him, pressing against his waist. She has become oblivious to the couple lying on the grass.
“Aah!” Raza moans, grasping her hand. She stops dead, feeling Raza’s waist again. A round, hard thing. "What is it…?”
Raza keeps quiet, taking her hand and leading it over the place. “Does it hurt?” She asks.
He lowers his head... “Benign?”
“Malignant” Raza replies, remembering the hundreds of cigarettes he had smoked throughout his life. He remembered how the pain had begun and how he had shouted at his doctor, “If I smoke, I should have lungs cancer, not.. this!’ The doctor had said calmly that cancers could grow anywhere. Raza had shuddered with shame and regret. Ten days later, he had started searching for Meera.
For the last meeting.
The last date.
“Come with me.” Meera says.
But what would her children say...? She steels herself and forgets the shame. She forgets everything as Raza pulls her close and the couple lying in the grass jeer at them. The walking-stick falls from Meera's hand; she clings to Raza for support. "Come... with me." Meera begs. He smiles, crying over her shoulder, “Where?”