Reunion

I loved Pa. Every Sunday while I nibbled through little morsels from our Sunday breakfast platter, I strained my ears to hear the honk of his car. And as soon as I heard the car (yes, I could distinctly recognise sound of his car and took pride in it!), I could feel my heart pounding against my chest. I wished I could leap out of my chair straight into his arms....but refrained, lest Ma gets angry. Pa would stand at the hallway looking frail, his 5ft 10 inch sturdy handsome frame looked small and ashamed in front of Ma’s calm quietness.

Sunday was Pa’s day....we played, we watched cartoon, we talked....man to man. While I detailed the trials and triumph of my school life he listened with earnest interest. Ma never interfered, never participated either. Sometimes, we went out for lunch. On days we didn’t Ma served us lunch. She joined us with her cold aloofness. In the evenings he took me to my cricket class. Under his watchful eyes I tried to put up my best performance.

I loved Pa more than anybody else even though he wasn’t around for the rest six days of the week. Even though Ma dropped to school every morning, managed parent-teacher meetings alone every term,took me to movies and vacations alone every holiday. Still Sundays were the only days I waited for.

After every holiday, while the other children talked of exciting vacations with their wholesome families, I kept mute. When I returned home into my lonely childhood I took shelter in the quiet shelter of our balcony and shed silent tears. I never complained to Ma and was a obedient child. I was eight and did not know whether I should complain. I heard hushed up stories of Pa liking another woman. At eight, I did not know there was a called ‘desire in relation and ‘liking’ to me was not a crime. So, at eight, though I never complained about her decision to stay apart, I could not comprehend it either.

At eighteen, I left home to join college in another city. At twenty, I fell in love with a woman for the first time. She came in my lonely life like a refreshing shower in a season of drought. My parched soul soaked in every drop of companionship. For the first time since the Sundays of my childhood, I enjoyed our cozy companionship.

At twenty eight she left me after eight years of relationship. She left me because she said outgrown my love...because there was someone else in her life....because it was all over. The phone call came in the evening when I had returned from office to the apartment I had recently bought. I had bought the house to build a home.....when we married. But now I was left with a bottomless loneliness and a lifetime of loan to repaid. That evening I did not have the courage to face light, so I sat in darkness. In the dark evening I dialled her number.

I told my Ma that I realise exactly how she felt all these years, I told her I know what it is lose someone you have held close to heart, what it is to be betrayed. On the other end of the phone there was silence,except for occasional stifled sobs. I could nearly feel the warm tears fall on my shoulder. For the first time since a long, long time I had reunited with her.