She

Satiated, they lay in the bed, and she was thinking if what happened was a dream or a nightmare. She was not happy. She wanted to know whether what she was feeling would linger later, like stale tobacco smoke. She got up, dressed and just left a note:
“Thou art beautiful. Comely as Jerusalem. Terrible as an army with banners. And so my love ‘ere we part never to meet again.”
He would leave in the morning. As he did four years ago, as he has been doing all ten years they have known of each other. She was married for three years in between. The years when she thought of him and not her husband every night. And when her husband died, she called him again. Invited him to hurt her. Again. So she left even before he woke up. She knew about his every want, every mood, every look. But, never of him  - what he thought, what he felt.

***

She is dead.
One line. One meaning. One person.
Two deaths.
That bittersweet smile and that one tear trembling on her eyelash – the memory of it gripped and gnawed at him. It choked him.
“What could you do when I come back to haunt you?”
“Don’t you mean would I, if you?”
“Shouldn’t I know what I mean?”
“Have you forgotten?”
“Should you keep reminding me?” …
It went forever like that – playing Twenty Questions – with no answers.
She is dead.
Her angular face would no longer crease into a sheepish grin when he would scold her. She wouldn’t say “Good morning!!!!” anymore with that annoying lilt to her voice. She wouldn’t slap him and then burst out crying for hurting him.
She just wouldn’t do anything anymore.

She is dead.
He got drunk after four years.

***

I keep looking skywards, while she lies there on that sandalwood pyre. It hasn’t been lit yet. I keep glancing up, at those menacing clouds, and I keep praying. Praying one moment that those damn things would open up and let down a torrential downpour; the next moment I try to will them away.

I can’t touch her. She is mine and I can’t touch her. I can’t look at her wrapped carcass to purge myself of her. I am not allowed to. The tradition says so. I am nobody to them, when I was everybody to her.
Those strangers with puffy eyes and running noses - they are family. Hers. And still strangers. They never saw her. Knew her. Thought of her.
I did.
But I was nobody. Not family. Not a blood relative. I was someone to be tolerated, because she knew me. Because I knew her. Because she loved me.
And she is dead.

I smoked my first cigarette in ten years.

***

She is all burnt. She is no longer a body.
From ashes to ashes … dust to dust.
Somewhere, somehow, she is a spirit. Somewhere, she is around me.
Does she live in any of those speckles of burnt wood?

***

“Goddess of stupid”

“Do you know what stupid means? But then again you always were the wordsmith.”
“Do you think you can rankle me with your petty talk? Ah, but I forget you always were petty.”
“Do you think insulting me is going to make you happier? But then again you always got your ego boosted by kicking my respect around.”
“Don’t you think your ‘I-am-the-victim-here’ attitude is getting a little old? But I keep forgetting that you always played it safe with every thing.”

These just kept on adding up. She became increasingly dependent on me. She used to keep saying she loves me. As if that would make me believe in her love. Ironically she was the one who never believed in her love. She kept on saying, “I love you,” till the day she heard me say the same - to someone else.

She never asked any questions – who was that other someone. She assumed it wasn’t her. And she never was the same again.
I used to keep her on her toes. She was never sure of what I would do next. Yet she loved me. She kept loving me. Though she never said “I love you” again. But she showed. They say actions speak louder than a thousand words. They were right.

And she gradually quietened. Just stopped fighting back. The quarrels ended. And that was the calm before the storm.
And today she is dead.

***

“She left this for you. To be given to you today.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t tell me. She just said, ‘Give this to him on Saturday.’”
“You saw her last week?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, just two hours before she died. I didn’t know. I couldn’t. I am sorry.”
“Hmm.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Neither do I. Did you open it?”
“Wanted to. Tried too. But stopped myself. Not my place to do so. She trusted me.”
“She wouldn’t have known.”
“I would have.”
“She is dead.”

***

Dear love,

      I once read somewhere – “One sneeze, one cough, One doubt. All it would take is one breath. No more.” – it meant death to me. One moment the death, which is a ritual performed by the divine beings – the ones who take us from this world to that, made me sick in my stomach. I felt the pain of death. The next moment the poetic meaning of suicide dawned on me - suicide of a person; suicide of a relationship. Suicide of life, in particular.

      You sneezed. I coughed. I doubted and you took the last breath. ‘We’ died. ‘We’ killed ourselves.

      Being rude to me was aphrodisiac for you. It gave you life. And you snubbed mine. But I still loved you. And then you left me. Taking with you the life that I had. Ten years love, you killed me everyday for ten years. You killed me when I was in my husband’s bed. You killed me when I miscarried. You killed me every time you walked away. But I still walked, talked and went through the motions of life.

      I thought that loving you and hating you would fill the innate loneliness in me. I made up stories, pushed you away to find the breathing space within me. To stumble out of the fog around that was you. I pushed you out and still, still you kept coming back. For a person who has seen little, I could fake knowledge like nobody else. What is more is that the quest for knowledge is still there in me.

      I might not be enamoured by the truth but truth fascinates me. It fascinates me like nothing else. I look for the truth in the best of fiction and fiction in the best of truth.

      What is more floundering for me is that I have to look out for the fact that I have had that chance or not. So much so that I could be something that all the world could be a little confused to know.

      The "little knowledge is a dangerous thing" is an adage that may come true for me any moment now. That all the knowledge that I have acquired over the small time, has been a boon and a curse both.

      "Finding bliss", a thought that has been an illusion, not just an illusion but also a unachievable dream. Bliss is something that is not said for the likes of me. Bliss could be peaceful; it could be a little more than that. But, there is a catch in that. No matter what you do, what you say, you have to be careful of it all.

       So now I am leaving you to it all. Leaving you with me. Leaving you with you. I was not understanding of me, let alone understanding of you. So, now when the understanding has come, finally. I know that there was just me in this thing that we had. There was no we. So let it be. And, now, then, again, let me be. 

Always,

Forever, 

Never,

Yours      

***

At that burning pyre I am back again. My life, which has turned into dying embers and all ash. There is no more the lingering aroma of sandalwood, just the overwhelming stench of burnt flesh. Would they find her there? Can I find her here? Can I walk away without looking back at her, at the years, at those moments? It has been ten years. Ten years since I last saw her as she was. Ten years, since I saw her with me. Ten years, since she was happy with me. 

No I saw her. 

I know her.

I love her.

But my love is dead.