As the Bluetooth speaker filled the room with Farida Khanum’s melodious voice, singing ‘Aaj Jaane ki Zid na karo’, Anita wasn’t feeling too different from what Faridaji was expressing in her euphonious voice. Maybe that is why she had selected the song. Maybe that is what she wanted to convey to Arhaan.
“Don’t go. Stay on for one more day and for one more night. Let us bunk office and spend the day away from responsibilities and time tables, let us enjoy this freedom and euphoria that we only experience with each other”, she wanted to say. But what she said instead was, “I have got to get to work.”
That will have to do for today. “After all, life is not in a perfect moment but in everything that precedes and follows”, she thought. For, she had experienced such flawless moments once. She had experienced the yearning, the longing, the pain of separation, the pleasure of union, the inexpressible love, the togetherness, the euphoria and the peace. But these days, all she got from the source of all that were instructions and only as much communication as was needed to survive. There was no clanking of utensils or raising of voices, but only silence, from his end and from hers. The noise of their child made the silence less obvious and more bearable. “No perfect moment lasts. It is almost always followed by anger, pain and eventually numbness,” she thought.
Hers was not a forced marriage. Hers was not an arranged marriage. She had selected her partner. There had been opposition from families. There had been fights. People had stopped eating and some had threatened cutting off ties. And yet she fought, sometimes fairly and sometimes unfairly. Where logic didn’t work, she took recourse to emotions. Finally, when all agreed, she got married to Ajay with great pomp and show.
As she dressed and was leaving the room, Arhaan caught hold of her hand, pulling her towards his chest and wrapping his arms around her, he told her, “Don’t go. Let us bunk office and spend the day away from responsibilities and time tables, let us enjoy this freedom and euphoria that we only experience with each other.”
“How did he read my mind?”, she wondered. Her heart was on the verge of melting. But she resisted. She knew better. He, pleading her not to go, said, “Leave him. You belong with me and not him. We are more similar than you and he can ever be. I understand you better too. But most of all, I love you, with all my heart and soul. I will treat you better than he has. I will always treasure you. I will never let anything change between us. I love you more than anyone ever can.”
“I can’t. I have a child to care for,” she said, as she futilely struggled to get out of his hold.
He let her go, but held on to her face, forcing her to look into his eyes, as he said, “Get Anya along with you. You know I love that kid too. Let us start a new life. Let us build a life together. I want a future with you and a life with you and Anya in it.”
“And all I want are perfect moments like these. All I want is today. I don’t want tomorrow. I dread tomorrow. Girls want future. I prefer not having one in our relationship. That is what makes it so intoxicating and special,” she thought. And yet, she had unwittingly fallen in love with Arhaan. She felt as if her soul was being stolen from her whenever they parted. Every now and then, she grew weak, especially when he asked her to leave her husband. And this wasn’t the first time those words had been uttered. These days this discussion came up almost every other day.
“You say this because you are single. You have nothing to lose,” she said.
“What do you have to lose? Silence? You will have Anya, you will have me, you will have love,” he said.
“I will think about it,” she said and left before he could persuade her to stay on longer, for she knew she was only a few ‘pleases’ away from bunking her office. But after the direction the conversation had taken, it made no sense to stay back.
Taking the elevator from Arhaan’s 8th floor apartment, she got off on the fifth floor, to feed Anya and to give some time off to the nanny to attend to her own personal needs. Today was Ajay’s turn to take care of Anya’s lunch, but since she was here, she thought she might as well spend some time with her innocent, loving and completely clueless daughter.
As she unlocked the door, her eyes landed on the strewn clothes, of her husband and of a woman. Making way to Anya’s room, she found her safe and sound, deep in sleep. However, she heard moans from their bedroom. Through the open door she found Ajay with the nanny, in their bed. The lust and hunger in Ajay’s eyes mirrored what she had seen in Arhaan’s eyes a few moments back. As she stared at the sight in front of her, Ajay’s wandering eyes met hers. There was disbelief and the shock written all over his face. For a few seconds, neither moved or said a word. As if waking up to a rude shock, she rushed out of the home. He scurried to collect his clothes and run after her. But by the time he had his clothes on, she was far gone.
Instead of going back to the office, Anita switched off her phone and went to sit by the sea. It was hot and sweltering, and yet all she felt was cold and broken. Her heart had been smashed to pieces when she saw Ajay with the nanny. “How could he?” she thought with agitation. Her relationship, that she had believed to have turned into silence and numbness, was suddenly back to life again, because now she felt the piercing pain in her heart. “How can I feel so hurt and shattered by his actions if I didn’t love him?” she wondered. After agitation, followed guilt. “How can I blame him when I myself have cheated on him?”, she asked herself. Guilt was followed by relief as she thought, “Now that both of us have cheated, it will be easier to forgive each other. It was probably a good thing that I caught him cheating. Now, we can come out of this stronger than before.”
And yet, something tugged at her heart. “Why did I cheat on him? Why did he cheat on me? Once upon a time, we loved each other madly. What changed? When did we stop caring for each other? Why did we hurt each other? Can we ever be back to what we were? The string has been broken. Can it come back together without the knot? And how big will the knot be?” These questions kept popping and bothering her through the day. She tried to find answers, but not all questions can be answered in a day.
That evening when Anita returned home, Ajay apologized, profusely. He told her it wouldn’t happen again. She asked him how many times it had happened. He didn’t utter a single word. She asked him, “Do you love her?” He immediately blurted, “No. I love only you! I swear.” She believed him. He offered her the passwords to his phones and to his various social media and messaging accounts. He said he was sorry. He said he didn’t mean to cheat on her. He said he didn’t realize when it started and when it continued. But he did realize he was wrong and that it would never happen again. He said that he did realize that he loved her and didn’t want to lose her at any cost.
Her only response, after an hour of his monologue was, “I too, cheated on you.”
Instead of shock, his face still portrayed guilt. He said, “I don’t believe you. I know you are saying this to make me feel bad. You are saying this to hurt me the way I hurt you and I will take it willingly.”
“No,” she said, “I really did cheat on you. With Arhaan. We have been seeing each other during lunch breaks too.”
After minutes or may be hours, he said, “I forgive you. What’s happened has happened. Let us get past it. Let us restart our lives. Let us talk again. Let us express again. Let us love again”, he said.
Sitting on the floor beside her bed, with her head in her hand, she said, “It doesn’t matter that you cheated or I did. What matters is that we are unhappy together. We cannot live together anymore. That is not the example of marriage I want to set for Anya. She deserves to believe in love and marriage.”
“I agree. But tell me something. Do you still love me?”, he asked, waiting for her response with bated breath.
“Yes, I do,” she said, with tears running down her cheeks.
Wiping her tears, and kissing her forehead, he asked her, “Don’t you want our family to be together?”
“Yes I do. Our family is my top most priority,” she realized and said, at the same time.
“Well then, let’s give our relationship a couple of months and then decide,” he said with certainty and authority.
Five months later, as Anita, Arhaan, Ajay, Anya and the nanny, along with 30 other people gathered in the building grounds to celebrate Independence day, Anya looked around happily. Anita smiled, when her eyes met Arhaan’s. Her eyes crinkled just like Anya’s, as Anya smiled and thought, “I love love. I want to fall in love someday and be this happy.”
#preetiwrites..
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