A Handful of Sunshine

by Vikram Bhatt

  I could see both of us in the full-length mirror that stood by the dresser. Dishonest men who were about to betray the women in their lives did not look any different from honest ones. Yet I knew that this time around it was perhaps for the best. At the end of this dark tunnel of lies was the bright light of the truth and that truth was going to make everyone happy—probably not immediately but certainly in the long run.

  Mira

  ‘Should I break the chapati into smaller pieces for you?’ I asked Akhil. I could see that he was having a hard time breaking the thing with his left hand.

  ‘Not at all, my love,’ Akhil quipped with a smile. ‘After all, it is good to exercise the left hand. Perhaps at the end of this I might just become Mr Ambidextrous.’

  I smiled at him as he busied himself with the chapati.

  ‘Indian food seems to be in demand, Mira, first New York and then just a week later Inverness? A lot of interest in our cuisine, I am guessing?’ Akhil asked in between mouthfuls.

  I nodded, not really giving him an answer.

  All I had said to myself since I had reached home was that Veer was right and letting Akhil find someone who loved him like I loved Veer was the honest thing to do. Everyone had a right to be happy, and if I stayed unhappy I could never really make Akhil happy. And there was truth in that. There was also perhaps some truth in the fact that I had always been a little scared to have children, to start a family with Akhil. Was it because I was never fully committed? Could it be because I was never fully invested?

  I had also decided what I was going to write in the letter to Akhil. I had half a mind to write the letter and leave, but then I decided against it. Perhaps being away and taking my time in forming the letter was the best thing to do.

  I wondered what Mom and Dad would say when they found out. They were sure to hate me. Over the years they had become really fond of Akhil, and Mom had begun to confide in him more than she did in me. This was going to be a blow to them. I found my heartbeats begin to speed up, and once again I had to calm myself by telling myself that Veer was right and this was for the best.

  I was between hope and despair. I couldn’t wait for this sordid night to pass and the morning to arrive. I did not have the strength to take more of this. I did not realize that I had sighed deeply.

  ‘Hey, are you okay?’ I did not realize that Akhil had been staring at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I responded, managing half a smile. ‘Feel like I might be coming down with a migraine,’ I lied.

  ‘Oh my God! You’d better take a pill and get some sleep then. Inverness is a long drive.’ Akhil’s concern tore my heart.

  I took another deep breath and steadied myself. This is for the best, I told myself.

  Veer

  I looked at my watch. It was 10 a.m. sharp. I had messaged Mira to tell her that I was waiting in my car and that I had parked a few metres away from her office building. She responded by saying that she was on her way down.

  My eyes stayed glued on the revolving doors of her office building. Five minutes later, she walked out. She dragged a bag on wheels behind her.

  This was finally it. Mira and I were going to start our lives together. Nine years too late, but I was not going to jinx it by complaining.

  ‘Hi!’ She smiled a worried smile. This could not be easy for her. I could understand how anxious she must be. ‘Don’t step out of the car. I don’t want anyone to see you here,’ she added. I nodded.

  She threw her bag on the back seat and then quickly jumped into the passenger seat and buckled herself up.

  ‘Let’s go, please.’

  I put the car into gear and drove away from her office. Soon I was making my way towards the M1 through the early morning London traffic. Mira did not look at me even once after we started to drive. I caught her taking a deep breath now and then. She was clearly panicking. I decided it was best to let her be. I did not want to say or do anything that might make her break down completely. I knew that once we were away from London she was going to calm down, and the ride through the country would ease her nerves. We had grown up with the sanctity of marriage drilled into us. It wasn’t going to be easy to break down aeons of conditioning about social behaviour and morality.

  It was a long drive and we would be better served with a full tank of petrol. I pulled into the pump just before the ramp to the M1. Mira looked at me and smiled, finally. I smiled back. ‘We should be on our way soon,’ I said encouragingly before I stepped out. She nodded with a smile.

  I unlocked the tank and slid the mouth of the pump into it, watching the gallons tick on the machine.

  ‘Do you have a USB charger in your car for the cell phone?’ Mira asked me. I told her it was in the compartment with the cigarette lighter. Then I heard her say, ‘Oh my God!’

  I turned around and leaned in through the window. ‘What’s the matter?’ I inquired.

  ‘Akhil’s cheque book. I carried it in my purse by mistake.’ I could see the panic on her face again.

  ‘It’s all right, Mira. You aren’t going to steal from his account, and one phone call will get him another cheque book.’

  ‘I can’t leave like this with his cheque book. What is the poor chap going to do for a day or two before he gets a new one?’ Mira gulped hard trying to keep her anxiety in control. This was clearly not about a cheque book, but I could see that she could not see that.

  ‘Mira, you are worrying about this more than you should. It’s just a damn cheque book! He will manage. These are days of Internet banking.’

  ‘I have to go home and drop the cheque book, Veer. I can’t leave like this. Please.’

  ‘Mira, we cannot go back. There is no going back. If we go back, it’s all over. We will never find this courage again.’

  ‘Veer, I am here. Am I not? Did you think I was going to do this, ever? And yet I am here with you, am I not? But I just can’t leave this way. I need to give him the cheque book.’

  ‘Mira . . . please . . .’

  ‘Veer, please, it will take me only a minute. You wait in the car. I shall go in, drop the cheque book and be out before you know it. I have to do this, Veer, please.’

  She looked at me beseechingly. I looked at her, lost.

  Both of us stood at the crossroads of life, a few metres from the ramp to the M1.

  The pump went off with a ‘ding’. The tank was full.

  Mira

  I asked Veer to stop a little further up the road. I didn’t want Akhil to see me step out of his car.

  ‘I am going to be back in a minute,’ I assured him. Veer did not look at me. He nodded, looking away.

  I grabbed my purse and jumped out of the car. I hoped Akhil had not left the house for then I would have to find a way to get the cheque book to his office.

  As I walked through the gates I saw his car and felt relieved to know that he was still at home. I used my set of keys to let myself into the house.

  Akhil was in his study, looking through some drawers with his able hand. He looked up, surprised to see me.

  ‘Hey, you are back? What’s wrong?’ He had an amused smile on his face.

  ‘Your cheque book, I carried it in my purse by mistake.’ I placed the cheque book in front of him on his study table.

  ‘Oh, thank goodness! I was just rummaging through the drawers looking for it.’ He looked relieved at having found it.

  ‘Now, I have to get going,’ I said, turning around before he could get into a conversation with me. I heard him call out ‘Drive safely!’ to me. Then just before I could step out of the study, a thought struck me, and I turned around to look at Akhil.

  ‘How are you going to write the cheque with a broken hand?’ I inquired, sincerely worried.

  ‘I have no clue,’ he answered with a grin.

  Veer

  It was almost twenty minutes since Mira had been gone. I looked at the gate unblinkingly, afraid that should I take my eyes off it something would go wrong. But despite my unwavering stare, slowly but
surely a deep feeling of dread began to close in on me. I tried hard to keep it at bay, telling myself that if she came out of her office this morning for me, she would come again.

  It was close to an hour and my mind had begun to conjure up some dreadful scenarios. Akhil had found out about us and forced her to stay against her will. Or then she had confessed and Akhil had broken down and now she couldn’t leave him. Perhaps Akhil had used the parents route and called Mumbai, and now Mira was under more pressure than she could handle. Something was surely wrong. Five minutes couldn’t become an hour unless there had been some complication.

  A lady was escorting two children home from school. She seemed to be their nanny, not their mother. They were laughing and telling her about something that had happened at school. I watched them as they passed by. The morning had given way to afternoon and there was still no sign of Mira. I couldn’t hold back the feeling of dread any longer. I was enveloped in it. Should I just walk up to her house, ring the doorbell and ask her to come with me? Would that get her into trouble? Where the hell was she?

  It was close to two and a half hours now. I picked up the phone and called her number. I heard it ring endlessly, insensitively. She did not answer the phone. I disconnected and called again. This time I found that the phone had been switched off. She had shut me out. Mira had shut me out of her life again.

  I felt the way I had felt at the Mumbai airport all those years ago when Mira had left for Singapore. She was gone again and there was nothing I could do about it.

  Then the sob that had remained stuck at the bottom of my throat all this time found an opportunity to gush forth. I was assailed by cries that racked my body. I leaned forward on the steering wheel and allowed myself to cry. Not some embarrassed sobs of a grown man, but the wailing of a soul that had found heaven not once but twice and had lost it both times.

  So much for craving the intense love that can devastate you. I sat there in my car, devastated.

  That day I understood that people who had felt great love died twice—once when their love died, and then again when their body died. That afternoon I watched my love die a slow, painful death. What remained was the body. From that moment on I knew living was out of question, I was merely going to exist.

  Mira

  I wrote Akhil the cheque. Then I made him some lunch. After that, I helped him with the bandage on his hand. I did not want to see the time. I did not want to know how much time had passed since I had told Veer that I would be back in five minutes.

  A simple truth struck me while I was helping Akhil dress his wound. Any love that made its foundation on broken hearts would never be able to succeed. When Veer and I were younger, it was different, we did not have any responsibilities, but now we were the safekeepers of other hearts. I had Akhil’s and he had Kavita’s, and we could not break them.

  If I became the person who broke Akhil’s heart with ease, I would also be the person who would one day break Veer’s heart with ease. Once you learned to betray, you could never unlearn it. It would stay with you. If you gave yourself the permission to be immoral once, you would think it was all right to be immoral again and again. I was not that person. If I became that person, I would fall apart and not be able to love Veer. If I became that person, I would not be Mira any more, and what would Veer do with someone who was not his Mira?

  I was beginning to come down with a blinding migraine. I had to get to the bedroom, draw the curtains and shield myself from the brightness.

  Then as I reached for the curtains I saw him in the car, waiting for me.

  It had been two hours and he was still waiting for me! I wanted to scream at him and ask him to go! Just go! Why the hell was he waiting for someone like me? I did not deserve him. Oh, Veer! Please go! Please! But he did not. He just waited and waited some more.

  Then I saw him get down from the car carrying my suitcase. He opened the front gate to my house ever so slightly and placed the bag inside. He was making sure that I did not have to lie to Akhil about where I had left my bag. In all his pain, he was thinking about me. It was to men like Veer that love owed all its greatness. For what would love be, except a word, if my Veer did not make it great by his heartbreaking sincerity?

  I watched him, shoulders drooping, head hanging, walking away to his car, his misery reaching out to me over the distance. He was my life and my life was walking away from me. I could not stand by the window and watch any more. I pulled away and sat down on the bed. My head felt like it was being crushed under the weight of a hundred elephants. That last image of my Veer walking away played over and over in my mind. Pain! So much pain! I had never felt so much pain, ever! I couldn’t breathe. I was dying.

  I got up with a lot of difficulty and made it to the study only by habit, for my vision was failing.

  I saw the colour drain from Akhil’s face as he looked at me. ‘Oh my God, Mira! What’s wrong?’

  I couldn’t answer him. My vision cleared enough to find the floor coming at me. Then I saw no more, heard no more, and thankfully, felt no more.

  VEER

  Friday morning

  I could relate to every word of the lyrics of the Simon and Garfunkel song, ‘The Sound of Silence’: Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again . . .

  Being without Mira, pining for her, was my natural state. After all, I had been that way for nine years. It was just a case of going back to black. But Kavita deserved better. I was not going to fool her any more by giving her promises that I could not keep.

  I thought it was best not to hurt her by telling her about Mira and my failed attempt at finding my one true love. I was hurting enough. I did not need to add her to the list.

  It was dawn. The lights on Harrods were still lit, and through the winter fog it looked like a picture out of a Grimm’s fairy tale.

  ‘You okay, baby?’ I turned around to find Kavita walking towards me, snug in an oversize sweater over her nightwear. She sat next to me and lay her head on my shoulders.

  ‘Kavita, I am not fulfilling my promise to you, am I?’ I asked her in a soft tone.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I haven’t really turned over a new leaf. I am still the old me, emotional miser and undependable to the core.’ I meant every word of it. I was all of that and more.

  Strangely, Kavita did not seem to be shaken at the tone this conversation was taking. At least here was a new Kavita, if not a new Veer.

  ‘You have been through a lot lately, Veer—this whole thing with Mira, and now Shazia passing away.’

  This whole thing with Mira? What the hell did she mean by that? I asked her as much.

  ‘Veer, I know, love. I love you, remember? I know what you shared with Mira was intense. It could not have been any other way. I saw it at the restaurant in Leeds. You denied it, but it was easy to see. Somewhere, you guys still felt territorial about each other and that is the magic of first love, I suppose. I can well imagine how it must have felt with her and seeing her married to another man—must have played on your mind. And then, like that was not enough, Shazia died and pulled the rug from under your feet.’

  I couldn’t believe Kavita had seen all that and decided to stay calm and quiet about it. She had definitely surprised me.

  ‘I knew that this conversation was coming up soon,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘What conversation?’ I asked her, hoping she did not mean Mira.

  ‘This conversation about you not being good enough for me. It is your old escape plan when you are too emotionally cluttered. I have begun to get that about you.’ She gave me a little peck on my cheek and settled her head back on my shoulder.

  ‘You know, Veer,’ she continued, ‘there are two kinds of men. One, the anchor type, are emotionally solid and won’t budge even if a tsunami comes their way. The other kind is what I call the runner type. The runner is someone who wants to run the minute he thinks he is getting to a place where he is going to get emotional and in time going to end up hu
rting himself or someone else. You are a runner, Veer. But I have decided that I am just going to run with you, Mister. So run all you want. I’ve got my trainers on!’

  I couldn’t keep from laughing despite all the gloom that hung around me. Kavita hadn’t figured everything out but she had figured enough.

  ‘What if I decide to run from the UK and go back to India, for good?’ I was expecting some argument on that one, but nothing came my way.

  ‘I have my trainers on, as I said. Run to the North Pole if it makes you happy. I am coming with you!’

  Then she picked herself up from the couch and kissed me gently. ‘I am not Shazia, but I can make you a great cup of coffee.’

  I watched her as she walked into the kitchen, humming a tune.

  Somewhere in a house in a London suburb, Mira would be up as well, making a cup of coffee for her husband. Even if Kavita was right, even if I was a runner, I wondered if I was ever going to be able to run far enough from the ache of a life without Mira.

  MIRA

  Sunday night

  It had been a week since the day I’d fainted in the study. Had it not been for the carpet, I would have hurt myself rather seriously.

  Akhil called the doctor to the house. It was a bad attack of migraine and nothing to worry about, the doctor assured Akhil. Fortunately for me, he couldn’t see my broken heart.

  The medicines sedated me for most of that day and the next. In my medicated stupor, all I could dream of was Veer in the car, outside my house. It made me wake up again and again to check if Veer was still waiting for me; only, I did not have the strength to drag myself out of bed. I could feel the tears wet my pillow and I remember worrying that he must still be in the car, hungry and thirsty and alone and sad, and then the dream would begin all over again.

  Late on Friday evening, I was well enough to sit up in bed and have some soup. Akhil looked at me for a long moment like he was thinking of something.