It
was awfully hot and humid, I had been waiting for a ride for quite a
while, when eventually I squeezed in the back seat of an
auto-rickshaw. A warm gust of wind ruffled my hair, bringing in some
strange smell of dust and sweat...it wasn't really turning out to be
a great day....I had been feeling listless for quite sometime now, a
lot of things were hell bent on ruining my happiness. Well, I
reasoned with myself, maybe it was just jitters.... I had decided to
get married to my five year long boyfriend, there's bound to be some
nerves...There were lots of things I wasn't sure of, whether I was
capable of such a commitment, whether I had become too much of a
cynic...I had been quite a romantic during my teens, but I had grown
out of those adolescent dreams long back, life had conjured a reality
from the dreams, which were not quite interchangeable.....to cut a
long story short, I was terrified of making a wrong decision. The
auto braked suddenly, and a youngish boy got in. He looked quite
chirpy, and his happiness bothered me. He was yapping into his
mobile, talking about a prospective job interview which he had day
after. I didn't mean to eavesdrop but he was literally shouting into
speaker, so there...As I sat squished between a heavy sweating lady
and the boy, excerpts from his conversation came floating to
me...somehow, his naive optimism touched me and I wondered why don't
people reach out to others...I mean we search for a sense of
connection throughout our lives, yet on any public transport, people
go out of their way to avoid other fellow travelers...so I decided to
let down the boundary....
“Hey,
I don't mean to pry, but I heard you talking on the phone...”I
stuttered wondering how foolish I sounded, thank goodness I had the
good sense to wait till he hung up at least, “well, I just wanted
to wish you luck for your interview...” I trailed off, thinking
maybe that's what boundaries are for, feeling stupid....The auto had
stopped to let him down, he got down, paid the auto driver his due,
and smiled at me, “Thank you!”. I felt instantly relieved
and my weary day all of a sudden felt a lot lighter. I smiled
thinking how I was dwelling on trivial stuffs, instead decided to
focus on listening to some music.
The
time I reached home, my good humor had dialed down a lot, it could
have been the weather as well, why won't it rain?? I found my mum
sitting by the veranda as usual. She liked watching people go by the
street. I went in for a quick shower, and I seated myself beside her
when I was done, wondering what she liked about watching people passing by...we
started talking about some things, she was talking about my wedding
and what preparations we needed to do, and what not...then, she
started reminiscing about her marriage...Now, all of us have some
preconceptions about marriage and relationships, and most of them are
steeped in childhood memories of our parents and loved ones...so I
knew my parents were very close and most of all, they seemed like
great friends...they would spend a lot of time talking to each
other...but I was not quite aware of the romantic angle between them,
I had discovered a bunch of letters from my father to my mum, as a
child quite by accident, but they were indecipherable for me at that
moment...and somehow, they were lost over time, so I didn't get a
chance to really read them...I had grown up with the notion that my
father was a person wrapped in his own world, sometimes I felt he was
a tad cold...there was a incident, I remember when I was quite young,
my mum was peeling mangoes and she cut herself on the knife, I was
scared and I ran to my father saying, “She cut herself”. He was
reading a newspaper, and he barely looked up, I was struck by his
indifference....I was awakened from my reveries by mother's voice,
and she was sharing an incident from her early days of marriage,
before I was born...
Years
ago, just after they got married, my mum had suffered from a brief
spell of problems with infertility, which her gynecologist had
assured would pass in time. But, one could imagine, how much she
might have suffered from subtle or not too subtle comments or nudges
or concerns from relatives and friends...and the situation would have
gone worse if her mother-in-law would have made any comments, it was
precisely at this stage when my father intervened and he spoke quite
firmly to his mother (which was rather bold on his part since he was
the quintessential mother's child!), making it quite clear if anyone
from the family made any more snide or other comments about her, they
would move out....I was quite surprised to say the least! People
surprise you, to say the least, this was the same person who had
seemed so cold and indifferent to me, or maybe we assume the worst
about people pretty quickly.
A
sudden flash of thunder started me, it was raining. I smiled,
thinking how easily I had given up on love and romance, when I had my
heart broken once or twice, without waiting for the weather to
change...and now when there's a chance of happiness, I am too scared
to reach out, just as I was apprehensive to talk to the boy in the
auto and the way I was pretentious enough to believe that I knew my
parent's relationship from outside. They had shared 35 years of
togetherness and my mum still relished how he had stood up for her
that day....it was the same warmth creeping up my heart that I had
felt in the auto when the stranger had smiled at me, and I felt
grateful to be alive, maybe a little bent and a lot out of shape, but
life was definitely good.
