Since I joined
my job, twenty-five Km far from the city, I hardly got time to meet Sarita on
weekdays. It was different when we were doing our graduation in chemistry. But
the weekends were ours. Out of the city drive, walking on the bank of the lake,
drinking coconuts, and sometimes sitting in a pocket-friendly restaurant: these
were the items on our menu.
She had started
attending her factory. Both the chemical stuff were caged into money-spinning
machines. For Sarita, it was nothing more than shouting at workers and scolding
engineers for better output. She was assisting her brother and father.
“You know
Vishal, these workers are born-lazy," she would open her factory premises
while sitting in restaurants, too.
“Change the
subject, or change the mindset.” I was bound to oppose her because as per her
definition, I too would be a born-lazy, late coming, and dim-witted. I was also
a worker in another factory.
Neither of us
knew about the reason for which we had continued to meet after completing our
study. But Sarita’s visits to my home wrote a new chapter.
“Do you know
what your Mama told me on phone today?”
“She is in hurry
to find a bride for me.”
“She had found
out. It’s me.” I took Sarita’s words as our teacup jokes. My word-decoding
machine was not poor. But when I looked at my payroll, I saw that I was a snail
on the ground. And Sarita was a fairy, travelling in spacecraft. My mother had
seen only her face and her friendly talks on my birthday. She did not know that
there were thirty workers like me working under her direct supervision. She was
the daughter of an industrialist.
“Then why she
comes to meet you every Sunday?”
“Mama, we are
friends. Nothing else.” But my words failed to shake her castle of hope. The
castle survived until she took her last breath.
******
IT WAS SUNDAY.
For some, it begins with a good tea and for some, it begins with a lengthy
yawn. My day started with the touch of a hurricane. It was in my one-room
apartment. It started blasting in every direction.
“I have not seen
a cruel man like you. Where had you been since a fortnight?”
“I… I was…”
“Okay… I am not
dying to see you. “
“Sarita I was
at….”
“Okay… who cares
for me?” She did not give me time to say that I was at my village for some
religious rites. My mother’s ashes.
“You are coming
to my home. Seven o’clock, evening. Sharp Seven.”
She wanted me to
meet her parents. Marriage proposal.
“Sarita, but…”
“Shut
up.”
*******
IF I HAD LOVED
any woman, other than my mother, she was Sarita, the woman who was a deputy
director of a big industrial unit of the city. Though I knew that no woman
could have a fine reason to come to a young man’s home every Sunday evening and
remain with him until midnight, I had never fantasized about her. I knew my
limits.
On her
insistence, I had to go. Her parents knew me. Earlier her father had offered me
a job in his factory, too. But Sarita had opposed making me her subordinate. So
I had joined elsewhere.
“You know
Vishal, she is a little bit immature.” The industrialist father was quite
mature—mature enough to teach lessons of economics to a chemistry guy. “She
wants to marry you. But she is used to a living that is impossible at your
home. You understand what I mean.“ I understood what he meant. The copybook
arguments: she was used to spending an amount equal to my salary for her make-up
materials; she did not know even how to make tea, and she was used to driving
costly cars.
As if it was not
enough, he added, “You please talk with her and tell her to accept the proposal
from an NRI industrialist. I think you will help us.”
“Yes, uncle. I
will.”
******
I FOLLOWED THE
letters written on Sarita’s home-walls. I had nothing to complain about her
father. He had just followed the protocol. He was a shrewd businessman. He even
tried to make an anti-virus system out of a virus itself. I was a virus in his
system of comforts.
Days became a
week, and the weeks rolled out into a couple of months. I tried to forget her
face, the hair she kept flying, the lake-deep eyes; I tried to forget her
questioning eyebrows and silent lips. I even tried to forget how I liked her
knuckles.
The Comforting
sun of mid-February was yet to come out of clouds. Dawn, perhaps. There I heard
a knock. The knock that I would recognize even while sleeping pulled my woollen
shawl. My blinking eyes were astonished to see a face, the face that was
imprinted onto my conscience.
With a flash,
the pool of light entered my apartment. The cold was nowhere in the air. Her
well-plated hair, a traditional dress that was not costly, and a middle-class
suitcase in hand: these would have been ordinary things. But for the women
before my eyes, it was something else.
She went
straight into the kitchen. If a disorder of a bachelor’s house were to be
ignored, my kitchen was not a complicated place.
“Let me make
tea. ” She said.
The deputy
director of a company had put on an ordinary woman’s cloak. By then I had
altered my position and stood as near as chivalry would permit. I moved my head
up and down, parallel to the movements of her hands fetching articles lying on
the shelf.
“You know
Vishal, I have stopped doing make-ups. And I… I have learnt some cooking, too.
And I think this house is quite big for us. Isn’t it?”
“Sarita, my
dear, please don’t... don’t say more.”
“Oh…” and there
was an embrace, the lifelong union.
It was Valentine’s
Day.
And the gift
from God was under my roof.
THE END
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