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The Story of a Long-Distance Marriage

Page 4

by Siddhesh Inamdar


  Thanks to the traffic-free roads at night, we reach Green Park in less than fifteen minutes. After she has stepped out, I feel amused by the way our clumsy conversation had lapsed into an awkward silence, both of us pretending to listen to the songs playing on the radio. I reason that she must still be smarting from her break-up and I can see why she would want to keep her distance from all men for a while.

  But the next day we bump into each other in the office cafeteria; we are both there to grab a cup of tea and a sandwich just before office hours. And soon it turns into a routine—Alisha and I catching up for a few minutes over tea in the cafe before heading to our floor.

  *

  Saying it out loud to Alisha sets me thinking. I hadn’t paid much attention to it but I do now: how Ira and I don’t talk every day. How, when we do, it’s always me who messages her and asks her to call. And how short these calls always are. Earlier I had put it down to her being busy with her assignments, as I said to Alisha. But increasingly I find myself thinking about Ira—while sitting at my terminal and editing a story, while having tea with Alisha, while stroking Momo as he eats—and debating if this is something I should talk to Ira about.

  It is December now, and there is a deathly quiet all around. It’s like everyone in the city is putting their energy into staying warm and nothing else. My house too feels eerily silent. Shobha is wrapped up in a sweater and a shawl, her body bent against the cold wind, as she appears at my door every morning and goes about her work wordlessly. Momo sleeps through most of the day, occasionally barking at night in response to the stray dogs outside. Varun no longer appears shirtless on the balcony after returning home from school to allow himself to be seen by the gaggle of girls in uniform passing by. The season for doing so had long gone but he had persisted, perhaps in the hope of getting lucky and boasting to his friends, who come on expensive bikes in the dead of night. Now, he too has retreated to the warmth of clothes and a house whose doors stay shut.

  I am startled out of sleep one night by someone at the door ringing the bell not once, not twice but six or seven times in succession. I jump and sit up in bed wide awake. I switch on the light and see it’s four-fifteen. Whoever is at the door is really angry. Or dying. Or maybe the building is on fire. Momo is already at the door, barking loudly. I am a little wary of opening it because there’s no safety door outside. There’s no option but to open it.

  It’s Anju. Wrapped up from head to toe, in the dark she looks like an apparition. And she looks scary because she is livid. ‘That dog,’ she snarls, and I push Momo away from the door. ‘It has been barking for one hour along with its friends on the road. How do you expect your neighbours to sleep through this noise?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, hoping it will placate her. I am shivering, not just because I have forgotten to wear my sweatshirt in the rush to open the door but also because I do not respond well to people yelling at me, certainly not at four-fifteen in the morning. ‘It’s just that it’s winter and you hear the barking since the fans and ACs are off.’

  ‘Of course, I know that. But just because your dog has been barking all year does not make it okay for him to keep us up tonight. Make it stop or I will have it thrown out.’ With that, she turns around and stomps off.

  Just then Momo barks at her and I quickly close the door, making sure I lock it properly. I retrieve his toy bone from under the bed and throw it at him. He catches it in his mouth and his barking stops as he starts chewing it. I go back to bed but my shivering doesn’t stop despite the blanket. I am unable to sleep, so I decide to call Ira.

  ‘Hello? Why are you up so early?’ she asks.

  ‘Just had a huge fight with Anju. Momo was barking and she came to complain. Rang the bell ten times and threatened to have him thrown out.’

  ‘It’s all right. She’ll be fine tomorrow. She’s not going to throw him out. Talk to her calmly in the morning.’

  She is talking in a soft whisper, which annoys me. ‘Where are you?’ I demand.

  ‘In the library. Listen, I have an assignment to submit in an hour. Go back to sleep and we’ll talk later.’

  And before I can check myself, I scream louder than Anju. ‘Talk to me now! I am sick of you telling me you can’t talk because of some stupid assignment.’

  Ira does not respond immediately. I hear her shuffling around and figure she must be stepping out of the library. ‘Don’t talk to me like that, Rohan,’ she says loud and clear. ‘You know Momo starts barking when he doesn’t have his toys around. Why didn’t you make sure before going to sleep that he had his bone with him?’

  ‘I did. He had it,’ I lie because I don’t want to admit that she knows well what’s happening in our house despite being on a different continent.

  ‘Whatever that is, this is part of having a pet. There will be days when you have to face the neighbours.’

  ‘That’s rich, considering you are the one who got Momo home in the first place.’ I regret saying it as soon as the words leave my mouth; I remember well why she had decided to get Momo home.

  I flare up quickly and calm down quickly too. But I know that Ira, once angry, can remain angry for days. ‘Listen, I don’t want to fight,’ I say in a conciliatory tone. ‘I can manage the Momo situation. I just got upset and expected you to talk to me properly for five minutes without using your assignments as an excuse and trying to hang up.’

  ‘Don’t talk dismissively about my work. It’s important to me. It’s what I’ve come here to do.’

  ‘I’m not dismissive of your work.’

  ‘You are. You always have been. You did this to me in JNU also. I got top grades in my first year when you were not in Delhi. And as soon as you arrived, they started slipping. You just don’t think what I do is important. You always want me to keep it aside and focus on you. Your argument with Anju. Your work. You should listen to yourself when you’re in office and I call you. You cut the call without even checking whether what I have called to say is urgent.’

  ‘That’s different. I can’t stop press because you want to talk to me. I have a deadline,’ I say and know immediately what she is going to say.

  ‘And I don’t? I also have to submit my assignment in an hour. The entire class is sitting in the library. Half of them are having meltdowns. You live in your cosy dream world where you think posting romantic things on Facebook every day makes you a good husband. Let me break it to you, Rohan. It doesn’t. You do it only to make yourself look good in front of the world. But it doesn’t do anything for me.’

  I can feel my temper rising. ‘Why are you making this about other things? I was just a bit upset and wanted to talk to you for five minutes so I could calm down and go back to sleep, which I wasn’t able to.’

  ‘Instead you yelled at me and upset me and made sure I won’t be able to concentrate and turn in my assignment on time. This is what you do. This is what you’ve done all the time. Why call me with a problem when you don’t want my help? I told you to talk to Anju tomorrow after both of you have calmed down. What more can I do when I’m in a different country?’

  ‘And whose fault is that?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No, tell me. Tell me what you mean. Don’t be shy.’

  ‘Don’t be nasty, Ira. I didn’t mean anything.’

  ‘No, you did. You always do.’

  ‘Fine. You’re the one who has made the choice to leave your husband behind and fly off to live your dream. The least you can do is make five minutes for me when I need you. Let me figure in your scheme of things.’

  ‘For twelve years you’ve figured in my scheme of things. Not just figured, you were my scheme of things. I used to hang around you the entire time in college. Write the assignments you would submit in your name. But were you there for me when I needed you?’

  I don’t respond because I don’t know what she is talking about. She continues.

  ‘Or were you too selfish to notice all the times I cried mys
elf to sleep for a year after we got married? No, you weren’t even home all those times. You were in office sending your paper to press.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘For a year I tried to tell you how depressed I was in my job. I kept telling you I wanted to quit. And all you ever asked me was how we were going to pay the rent. And that too was something you said on the days you bothered to respond. The rest of the time you only behaved like everyone has problems at work and I should chin up and pull my weight in the house. So don’t ask me whose fault it is that I’m in a different country. Because it isn’t mine.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I ask her quietly.

  And the few moments she takes to reply tell me that it is a conscious decision she has made to say what she says; she is not saying it out of anger.

  ‘You know, there are times when my friends make sad faces at me and tell me it must be so difficult for me to stay away from you. And I play along and say yes. But I feel rotten inside because it’s not true. I love you but I miss Momo more. When I think about our marriage, I only feel bad that it’s reduced to this. Of course, I wanted to study in New York, but I came here because I couldn’t stand feeling lonely while living in the same house as you.’

  And then she delivers the final blow.

  ‘I just wanted to get away from you, Rohan. You drove me away.’

  Distance

  The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

  Oscar Wilde

  6

  Rift

  I am in bed but feel like I am falling. Like a huge chasm opened up under it and I am plummeting into it. It is as if the coordinates I had used to navigate life are no longer in place and I don’t have a sense of what’s going on any more. I am too shocked and shattered to respond. I don’t know what to make of what Ira has just said. It’s at odds with what I have always thought about our relationship.

  For me it’s been a fairy-tale love story of the new age: boy and girl become friends on the first day of college, fall in love and get married ten years later. Yes, it soon becomes a long-distance marriage, but I had taken that to be a sign of how deep our love is. How am I to accept now that it was all a facade, that beneath it we harbour the mundane resentment of an ordinary couple married for forty years? How am I to accept that I was such a lousy husband that she could not bear to be with me? It doesn’t add up. How strong is the foundation of our marriage after all?

  ‘Hello? Hello?’ Ira says, and I realize I haven’t said anything for a long time. Should I fight back? Should I blame her for all that I hold against her? Should I meekly accept every charge and say sorry? But she hangs up before I can do anything, and I decide to leave it at that, at least for now.

  Momo has gone to sleep at the foot of the bed. I want to kick him for triggering the whole fight—our first since … Earlier I would have said ‘since Ira went to New York’. Now I complete the sentence with ‘since she walked out on me’. Is that what it is, really? The truth is I’m not new to her temper. For all the things I love about her, she is a volatile person with a sharp tongue and I don’t want to take what she says at face value.

  It’s six o’clock. I’m not able to go back to sleep. In fact, I’m unable to think of anything other than Ira. I wonder if she’ll be able to focus on her assignment and submit it on time. Or would she be sitting in the library, upset and crying? I consider calling her back just to check on her but realize it may do more harm than good. Ira usually takes a few days to calm down, and calling her back in this state might start off another fight. I try to distract myself. I think of calling Yusuf. If he is on the night shift, he might be awake. But I check his Last Seen on WhatsApp—11.55 p.m. He must have been on the afternoon shift. And before I know it, I drift off to sleep.

  I wake up at eleven. I sit up with a start in bed and realize I must have slept through Shobha’s ringing of the doorbell. There’s no missed call or text from Ira. I know she can be like that when we are fighting. So I try not to make too much of it. I want to speak to her. But it must be past midnight there, and the only thing she likes less than being disturbed in the middle of her work is being disturbed in the middle of the night.

  I think of all those times she had asked me to get a job which wouldn’t involve me reaching home at one, entering the house stealthily like an intruder and scaring her while she was asleep. I gave her a fright every day, she would tell me, and then she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep for an hour. But I had refused, saying I was doing well at work and was on the brink of a promotion. Ira was a light sleeper, and perhaps I did not take her problem seriously. Suddenly I miss her badly and want her in bed next to me so that I can watch her sleep. If it were not for the long distance, I’m sure we would have resolved the fight already.

  I am distracted all day. There are few places more alive than a newsroom: editors quietly poring over the day’s paper to look for mistakes, reporters speaking loudly on the phone as they try to get a quote from the police commissioner or home secretary or someone important, and news playing uninterruptedly on the TV screens of our vast floor even though nobody is really listening. I had hoped all the activity would help me take my mind off Ira, but it doesn’t. I’m only waiting for it to be six-thirty so that it’s eight in New York and she is awake.

  The phone rings for a long time when I call her. The evening editorial meeting with the editor-in-chief has just got over, but it will be followed by a separate page one meeting with Maran, the resident editor, to freeze our line-up for the evening and begin work in all earnest. But I’m out in the corridor, having decided simply to say, ‘It was urgent,’ if I’m pulled up for skipping the meeting. I’m wondering if Ira is still sleeping or deliberately avoiding my call, when she answers and says, ‘Hello.’ She doesn’t sound like I have woken her up.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, relieved that she did not ignore my call. Having spent the entire day waiting to talk to her, I’m strangely tongue-tied. ‘Did you manage to submit your assignment on time?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. The rest of the class did. I’ll get an F.’

  I feel a stab of guilt. ‘Come on. Can’t you ask your professor for an extension?’

  ‘There are other submissions I’m late for.’

  We stay silent for some time. Reporters are arriving to file their stories after a day’s work in the field. The editors who bring out the early edition are leaving. They all look at me curiously. I wonder what they can tell.

  ‘Listen, I’m sorry, okay?’ I say. ‘I shouldn’t have shouted at you or come in the way of your work. But it’s wrong of you to think that I don’t take your work seriously. I’m super proud of you. You’re in a city that the world only dreams of visiting once in their lifetime. Of course I’m proud of you.’

  ‘Rohan, I know you still don’t understand. I know you still think it’s one of my tantrums. It’s not. I don’t want to go over it again. At least not now. I’m not saying this to hurt you. But I want you to understand how desperate I must have been to have done what I did.’

  ‘No, I don’t get it.’ My voice is rising. ‘What do you want me to make of it? What has gone so horribly wrong? And even if something had, why did you leave without talking to me about any of this?’

  ‘I did. You weren’t listening.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The fact that you don’t remember shows you didn’t take me seriously, Rohan. If you weren’t listening then, there’s no point now. I have a lot of work to do.’

  ‘Fine.’ I cut the call without waiting for her to react. I immediately regret it and think of calling her back, but I know she won’t answer this time. It’s anyway getting late and I need to be at my desk.

  ‘Where were you?’ Tanuj asks me as I sit down. ‘Maran was asking about you in the meeting. I didn’t know what to tell him.’

  I shrug and say without looking at him, ‘On the phone.’

  He must have
picked up on something in my voice. He doesn’t say anything further. He doesn’t probe, but even if he had, I wouldn’t have minded. ‘I’ve emailed the line-up for today,’ he says, looking straight at his computer screen. ‘We have an early deadline. There’s some sort of special ad on the front page which they need to paste manually after the paper is printed.’

  ‘All right.’

  Five minutes later, he tags me on a funny dog video on Instagram with the message: ‘Since these always cheer you up.’

  *

  I get off work early on Christmas Eve. Several of my colleagues, including Tanuj and Alisha, are going to Sacred Heart Cathedral, Delhi’s biggest church. They ask me to join. I had anyway planned on going, but alone. I don’t feel up to going with the rest. I turn down their offer, allow their cab a head start and then decide to walk to the cathedral, which is not too far from our office. The brightly lit grounds of the church are usually so crowded on Christmas Eve, and the visitors so immersed in the festivities, that I figure the others will never spot me dawdling by myself.

  Ira and I had gone to Sacred Heart last year. All the roads converging at the GPO roundabout were so chock-a-block that we had to park the car ahead of Bangla Sahib and walk back. It had been unexpectedly cold and my teeth were chattering. I had wondered if it was wise to have come, especially since neither of us was religious. But, despite the crowd, it had felt nice being part of the carnival atmosphere. We had sat by ourselves at the back, right through the mass up to one-thirty, when I had started dozing off and we had decided to leave.

  This time I sit in the same spot as last year. I stare vacantly at the priest in the distance delivering the sermon and, without knowing it, I pray a little. I don’t intend staying for too long. I just want to keep up the tradition Ira and I had started—convert something we had done just once into an established ritual. But when I get up and turn around to leave, I catch sight of my team milling about. Alisha sees me. She looks like she is about to call out, but hesitates for a moment and then drags the rest in a different direction before they can spot me. I’m grateful for her thoughtfulness.

 

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