The Song of Silence

Two mornings after I got engaged, I was not in Mumbai any-more. Far from my workplace and my mother, I was in Shimla, my birthplace. After sixteen years. And it was the end of my road.

It was a fine day. The roses in the garden were wet with dew-drops. Monish was ashamed to face me. His lips were cracked. He lay still, head slumped over the pillows. I made tea and helped him out of bed. One hesitant hand paused over my shoulder. I grabbed the other hand. He managed a small laugh and whispered, “I knew you should not have come.”

“And I always knew I should have.” I said. Monish dropped his face, shy like a stranger in his own house.

“Who told you about me?” He asked.

I poured him a cup of tea. No one had told me. I had called a local of Shimla on the night of my engagement. Monish saw my face. “Please go now,” he pleaded. His hands were trembling; I grasped them to stop hot tea from spilling over his clothes. Monish gently shook off my hands. He finished the cup and lay down.

I wanted to ask how this happened but I was scared of what he would say…When I had reached Shimla the day before, my body and mind wanted rest. But thoughts of Monish had kept me rushing through lanes. In the evening I found his pink roofed house. I could not have recognized Monish if not for the prominent dimples on his cheeks. He could hardly reach the door without getting faint. I had to help him back to his room. Since then I had been in his house.

“What will you tell everyone?” Monish asked, slowly turning on his side. The same docile person. My face broke into a smile.

“Who everyone?”

“Your family! I …am no one… of yours.” He said, one delicate hand lying over his stomach. He slowly indicated the medicine cabinet.

As I looked in the cabinet, my childhood in Shimla passed over my eyes. I remembered the time in school when my parents were getting divorced. I wanted just one small dark corner to cry. My father loved me but not my mother. He withdrew from both of us. I had tried to cling to my Mother one night. She had scolded me and sent me off to my room.

I was an eight-year-old girl. For me, that corner was a school friend’s arms. He held me when I cried. Everyone else was too busy with their lives.

*

“Ooh!” A suppressed moan brought me back. Monish had buried his face in the pillow, nails digging into the bed-sheet. My head started hurting. I could not imagine how Monish had kept himself going alone.

I did not have anything for lunch. He asked me once if I had eaten. I nodded positively. Monish laughed. He knew I was lying but medications made him too dizzy to argue. In the afternoon, I dozed off in the armchair beside him. In my sleep, I dreamt of the school boy who thought I was his friend.

He hugged me when we were together and pulled my pleats in crowded classrooms. One day I was caught stealing fruit from his garden. Exchanging a meaningful glance with me, the boy told his mother that I was not stealing, he had asked me to get fruits for him.

When we were alone, he scolded me, “You are a thief, Sona!”

The voice came from somewhere deep in my dreams before getting stronger. Then it was real. I got up and found Monish staring at me. Dark exhausted eyes. He was biting his lips hard. I put an arm around his bony shoulder. He looked away. It was the first time since childhood that I held him.

“Bring me some… roses” He stopped, his breathing shallow. “Red.”

“No!”

“Please.”

*

I had gone to his backyard when I remembered my divorced mother taking me to Bombay. I remembered my only friend, a boy of twelve with deep dimples crying and consoling me at the same time. Adults could never understand our relationship.

I was plucking the best roses, tears streaking down my cheeks when my mother called me up, “Aren’t you ashamed of going away like this. You are getting married next month!”

“To a man I don’t love. Just like you?” I asked. It was the last time I spoke to Mother.

I finished plucking flowers, not a child, nor a teenager, a woman of twenty-eight. And for the first time free to choose what I wanted to do with my life. I discovered that six years of my job had given me the power to do something meaningful with myself. I had money of my own and I waned it to be useful.

At night, I asked Monish. “Which stage is it?”

“Third.” He smiled through a haze of pain and morphine. I smiled back, my whole life lying before me. For the first time I saw who I was and what life had to offer me.

“You have to live, Monish. Come with me.”