Closure

Ten years is not a long time, not when you see them flash by you in a fraction of a second through the eyes of a lost love. Another day, another train journey, a whole other era – the compartment morphed into one that was less comfortable, but infinitely more cozy. We were not alone, yet it was like we were the only ones there. He was slumming it for my sake, travelling in the sleeper class because I could not afford an AC ticket, and because he was so much in love with me. We had berths, but we chose to sit up all night, holding hands, whispering, and even cuddling and kissing when we felt bold enough or when the urge was too much to resist.

It took every ounce of self control I possessed to jerk myself back to reality, to life as it was today. It seemed like nothing had changed – there he was, sitting across me, looking at me like a deer caught unawares in bright headlights, forgetting that there were other people around. However, the bright band of gold on his ring finger gave me enough of a jolt to show that everything had changed.

We were no longer the inseparable couple we were all through college and a few years after too; we were practically strangers now, erstwhile lovers whose paths had crossed again through some strange quirk of fate. I had no idea what he was doing on a train; with the freaking rich (and anal) dad he had, it was a wonder he was being “allowed” to travel with the masses, even if it was in a 1AC compartment.

I put aside the past and focused on putting my bags under the seat; should I sit beside him or on the seat opposite? There was one other person in the compartment, an older man who had his head buried in a magazine. Vanity reared its ugly head and I chose to flaunt my still young and still slim body by sitting across from him, as if to make him regret what he had given up when he chose his father’s money over me. I could feel the bitterness rushing back into me, but before it could get too acrid, my conscience took over. What choice did he have? Would you have done anything different in his place? Would you have given up every comfort in life just to feel your lover’s arms around you? Yes I would, the tiny voice screamed back. And hate and love mingled together again to cause an agonizing emotion that is hard to shake off.

I forced these negative thoughts out of my mind and dragged myself back to the present; what was he doing here in India? The last I heard, he was in the US of A at some fancy college pursuing a degree that his dad had “purchased” for him. I was both the beauty and the brains of our relationship, no wonder most people thought I was a gold digger for hooking up with him; they couldn’t see why else I fell in love with him. Little do they know that in typical filmy style, I was offered an obscene amount of money to get my claws off him; it’s not like I’m completely ethical, but I chose not to take the money and run. And I had no regrets even after he threw me over for the same cold, hard cash.

I had made it on my own; with just my education and tenacity, I was a successful professional today with an overweight bank balance. I was still single, and for some reason, the thought of marriage left a sour taste in my mouth.

The train had left the station – a quick look at my watch showed me it had been well over 15 minutes since I boarded, yet we had not exchanged a single word. I had been lost in my thoughts while he had apparently sought refuge from his guilt-ridden past in his laptop. Night crept upon us, and the elderly gentleman asked if he could go to bed. Sleep hadn’t beckoned me yet, and I doubted if it would today, yet I climbed up to my berth, closed my eyes, and tried futilely to close out my memories.

I had worked hard to forget him and move on; tears and depression had eventually given way to resolve and determination. Work was my salvation as I threw myself into my climb to the top. Eventually, the memories had stopped tormenting me, until now. Why did I have to see him today? More importantly, why does my stomach feel full of butterflies? Why does my heart long to reach out to him and….Oh, stop it, I can’t go there anymore, no one climbs back into a gutter after they’ve clawed their way out.

I saw him climb up to the berth alongside mine and lie down. A smile came unbidden to my lips as I saw that his legs stretched out of the berth – he had always been too tall for standard Indian sizes. He turned towards me, it was dark, yet I saw the light in his eyes as he looked right at me. I could not turn the other way now, and what was even more terrifying was that I did not want to. I shut my eyes tightly, yet a single teardrop squeezed through. The next time I opened them, a thin sliver of light came in through the space between the curtain and the window.

I looked at my watch, it was 5.30 am. I looked down, and my heart stopped beating – the old man and his luggage were nowhere to be seen, and Ram was staring right at me from his seat below. “Suki…..,” his lips moved and I thought I heard my name, yet I was unsure. I wanted to curl up and cling to the safety of that berth until we reached our destination, but the maturity I had gained over the years made me climb down. Oh God, I must look a mess! I walked out of the compartment with my handbag, freshened up, and came back. I knew we were going to talk, I did not know about what.

Surprisingly enough, it was easy to hold a normal conversation with him – you would think it would be hard to reconnect on a casual basis with someone you gave your soul to and who you last saw through a film of tears and desperation! But the pleasantries flowed, even as our past was relegated to water under a bridge – he was married (to a rich socialite of course), no children yet (I’m sure the bitch does not want to give up her anorexic figure for bratty kids), he had joined his father’s company (no surprises there), and was now on his way to a business meeting in Delhi.

Then again, once the gaps in information over the past few years had been filled, the yawning chasm that our unresolved relationship had created opened up again. Maybe he saw accusation in my eyes, or maybe he saw the yearning still hidden there – in a trice he was beside me and I was in his arms. As he kissed me and held on tightly to me, my mind turned blank and I gave myself up to sensations I had long forgotten.

The sounds outside our compartment shook us to reality and we broke apart. The train had pulled into Delhi. He asked for my mobile number, I reached into his pocket for his phone, went into the contacts section, and saved – Sukanya: 9840983445. I looked longingly into his eyes, yet not another word was exchanged as we picked up our bags and made our way out. I hung behind when I saw the liveried chauffeur waiting deferentially outside the compartment to carry his luggage to the car (obviously fancy) that was parked outside.

And as I made my way to the taxi stand, I was whistling. Men are such suckers - when they think they can have a woman with no strings attached, it’s so damn easy to string them along. I smiled thinking of my real mobile number - 9840954438; and no, he does not know where I work or even what I do for a living because he had been too much of a pompous ass and spoken only about his life – the miserable existence he was supposedly leading because he had a rich father and a snooty wife. He had no curiosity at all about the woman whose heart he broke all those years ago, only the wicked desire to tap the residual desire he saw in her eyes and read in her body language.

I was taught as a child to ask God to give me what I wanted; yet today, it was a deal that I made with the devil that helped me find what I needed – CLOSURE. It was by no means revenge on any scale, but it felt sweet all the same!!!!

Boy Oh Boy! Marriage!

He knew exactly how he felt at that moment, and it was not a pretty thought or feeling; he was the egg that was ripe for fertilization – the sex was over, the pleasure of the orgasm had died down a while ago, and now all that was left was this – the dread of the morning after and the consequences that come with them. A million sperm were hurtling towards him, and all he wanted to do was run and hide so they couldn’t catch him. But he knew better - this was the natural order of things and he was resigned to his fate.

Hardly a week had passed since he had returned from the UK, but even that was too long for his mom to wait – she was already planning his wedding. Who was he kidding – she had been planning it from the moment he had been born and she knew it was a boy. After all, in her world and the one he was having trouble understanding, the male child is a status symbol, one you can auction off for the best price once you’ve dressed him up with a fancy education, even if it is a degree from a tiny college in a god-forsaken town in rural England for which you had to pay through your nose.

And so here he was – his carefree bachelor days were drawing to a close and he was supposed to “choose” a bride, someone he had never met before, marry her, and live happily ever after? If his mom had her way, the girl would be rich enough to have loads of money yet not too rich that she could flaunt her wealth and use it as a weapon, educated enough to boast about to relatives but not so much that she outshone her son, pretty enough so that her son was the envy of the neighborhood yet not so much that the beauty went to her head, capable enough to run the household yet not so much that she would dethrone the reigning queen (his mom of course), and most important of all, fertile enough to bear her two grandsons – as she had told him once too often, she “understood” today’s girls and so would not be greedy and ask for more. He wished he could tell her that it was the male factor that determined the sex of the baby and that the woman had nothing to do with producing a boy or a girl, but he saved his energy as he knew it would fall on ears that pretended to be deaf to things they didn’t want to acknowledge.

He was not averse to the idea of marriage per se; what he protested against was being used as the bait to catch the biggest fish in the pond. His mom thought he was both the cream and the cake, yet only he knew that he felt more like a lump of meat on a butcher’s auction block, waiting to be sold to the highest bidder. No, he didn’t have a girlfriend who he wanted to marry, and although he had had his share of women (how many exactly is one’s share by the way?), they were all in his past, the remnants of his happy-go-lucky youth. And since he had never been in love, he was open to the idea of an arranged marriage.

He thought of the woman who would soon become his partner for life – she need not be beautiful but I should like the way she looks, education does not matter as long as she is intelligent (he was wise enough to know that the two were entirely different entities), she should be a good friend more than a wife, and yeah, it wouldn’t hurt if she enjoyed sex instead of looking at it as something that needed to be hurriedly done in the dark or as just the act of procreation. If he had told his mom all this when she asked for his preference, she would have cut off his tongue – if she hadn’t fainted in shock before that.

The next few months were a blur – he remembered just wanting the damn thing to be over and done with; he had reached a point where he didn’t care who he married just as long as his mom stopped obsessing over every tiny detail. But fate was kind to him – he married someone who was not perfect, but made the perfect foil for him. His mom was happy with her daughter-in-law, mostly because the latter was resourceful in buttering her up in every possible way so that the relationship was smooth. And he was content with life and thankful he never had to go through the rigmarole of choosing a bride ever again.

Two years down the line, he knew he had thanked fate too soon – the gleaming glint in his mom’s still-youthful eyes spoke volumes when the doctor emerged from the labor room with the “good” news that his newborn was a boy, and he sank to the nearest chair wondering if God would have been inclined to listen to him if he had prayed harder for a girl!!!