The Come And The Go.

The ‘Come and Go’

Standing under the tree, she shivers lightly under the rain.

You see, sometimes death can be denied effortlessly, accepted without accepting. The ashes of her mother flow past in the air…She doesn’t care. What’s past is past. Something is yet to come, yet to go…

She could not contain herself any longer .Her eyes shut tightly, revealing the intricate veins against her milky complexion. But the once echoing expressions emerged as pale, all spoken under breath .As if to herself.

“Beneath my eyelids, there lie all unspoken words, Kaushik. My soul shivers with each tap of footsteps that pass by, fearing the words will spill. The questions, which ever existed, have jumbled up, lost their selves. They eagerly await to drown in memories that you will give them. The rains have never been more brutal. Tell me; don’t you know that I loved you?”

Unbeknownst that Kaushik had already left.

He didn’t wait to see the wet logs, the kerosene flames, turmeric bowl…Ma’s body burn and obliterate.

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Kaushik:

At first, I didn’t know that there was a Madonna portrait on pastel blue walls or that there was a table whose mats Radhika had painted .I couldn’t even discover that there was a window that opened to porch. An ajar door, a girl in frilled frock, bathed in a beam of light was all I saw. The frock was stained with blood. Vermillion red. Her lips were pressed hard, suppressing a sheik.

 “Oof ! you have slammed your fingers,” I almost screamed.

Her drooping shoulders straightened, revealing collarbones. She stood up and gathered her frock; dignity lost nowhere .Her perverse scrutiny left me bewildered. The gaze skipped all details of introductions and impressions and enquiries and objections. Radhika.No sign of regret touched her.

And suddenly there was Ma’s voice,

“I always know …time coming my feel roam …to meet you, mind doc. come.”

(I always knew, this time had to come. My memories will awake in your heart. Mr. Psychologist I really need you now).

“She’s up”, Radhika said. I looked around. “Here” she led the way.

Kaushik:

How could you be happy, Radhika? There is a lady living with you who sees phantoms, crickets and snakes climbing over her. She cries out her skin is being pulled off, her blood drained. She doesn’t let you touch her .Her skin looks caked, bruised. Yellow nails haven’t been plucked for god-knows how many days? Dandruff flakes indulge in her tangled hair.

She has been robbed off her sole possession. Her fantasies and imagination have betrayed her.

You are glad, for what?

Little daughter of the only lady I loved…

Radhika:

A husky voice, disheveled hair and those wrinkles collecting near your eyes when you smile– you have played hide and seek in my dreams. I know you from your black and white photographs in Ma’s college notes, from your left inclined write, the way your ‘R’ curves. I never thought that you won’t be able to discover that I replied to you letters, not Ma. Hearing of you, it is as if I’ve lived with you – played pranks, cajoled. I bit my own fingers out of curiosity, when I opened the door for you.

Glad I am, my mother is a Schizophrenic- I met you.

Did you notice that I didn’t cry? I must have looked tall, standing on my toes.

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“Okay, tell me”, Radhika said marking a line on the floor “How will you shorten it without touching?”

“Outwitting me?” Kaushik pulled the chalk from her fist and drew a longer line next to it.

 “Now see, a line extends infinitely in both directions. If I extend this one, it touches the other. So you touched it and lost, outwitted. Silly, don’t you know how to draw a parallel line.”

Don’t try to get into details. Think of the weave, of complexity, of how crazy love can be, how irresistible. The words are sole means of expression, but they are meaningless. Don’t think. Drown into the lives:

Of Kaushik, who loved Ma. Of Ma who couldn’t understand whom she loved. Of  Radhika, who never understood what love was, who had fallen for Kaushik.

“They are two roses .One has lost its fragrance and wilted. The other struggles but just could not rejuvenate it. Time ceases to move then and nothing changes,” Kaushik said.

“Excuses don’t work…”

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Then, there were her speak-anything-and-everything to impress him attempts.

“…you always can”, she protested. “I mean see, people around here have always thought polythene to be an object and Paragon too”( twisting her ankles to show blue slippers) .

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Desperation, destitution – what will compel you to think about me Kaushik?

My thought fly boundlessly but they never return with hope. I know I am no more than a cobweb in the last room you will ever visit.

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Time has passed; it has been seven long years since Kaushik left.

Radhika:

An obituary just reminded me of you.

Two drooping roses in the pen-stand and an alarm clock with retarded battery .It takes sometime to know things, doesn’t it?

And, threads have untangled one by one. But the roses won’t leave the pen- stand, nor will the clock ever have a battery for years to come. Things have already come, already gone – spotlessly, leaving no mark. Only ,her life has yellowed a bit.