Tea for Two and a Piece of Cake (11 page)

I am petrified. Then with shaking hands, I dial Samir’s number. ‘Why is he taking so long to answer the phone?’ I mutter with increasing worry.

Finally when he does, groggy with sleep, I break down and tell him that I think my father is dead.

He tells me he will be right over, and keeping true to his word, he is at my home in twenty minutes. I have been pacing up and down the room the whole time, not knowing what to do, and I keep going to the balcony and peering to see if I can spot his car. He has called for an ambulance too and arrives minutes before the ambulance does.

The paramedics shift my father on to a stretcher and we follow the ambulance in his car. We rush to emergency and the duty doctor checks for his pulse and then examines him with a stethoscope. Then shaking his head, the doctor says, ‘I am sorry, but I cannot get a pulse. He is dead. Nurse, note it down as a case of dead on arrival.’

It Must Have Been Love

Present day

Mumbai

T
houghts are whirling madly around me. My head is in utter turmoil. On the one hand I am angry. How in the world can Samir just phone me and tell me our marriage is over? What the hell? On the other hand, the reality that he
can
do so and has indeed
done
so, sinks in slowly like the gradual drizzle of rain. It is only when the water is ankle deep that I realize it had been building up slowly all along and that something has to be done about it now. And Samir has done it.

The pain of it is too much to bear. It feels like a million pieces of shrapnel have entered my heart. It becomes increasingly unbearable. Were all these years a mere joke for him?

With trembling fingers, I dial his number. He does not answer. My heart sinks. I dial again.

This time he picks up.

‘Samir’ I say. My voice is a hoarse whisper. I am unable to stand upright, sitting on the floor on our balcony, my head bent low, and the phone cradled in one ear. I am so emotional, I can barely speak.

‘Look Nisha, the writing has been on the wall for a few years now. Don’t pretend you did not notice it. I am sorry it has to come to this, but it is over,’ he says ever so calmly and so very clearly. There is not a trace of emotion in his voice. It is the calm, collected, and unaffected way that he says it which does me in. How can he? How is he so cold, so heartless? Can’t he hear the plea in my voice begging him to come back? There is a huge lump in my throat and I start breathing rapidly. When I try to speak, no words come out. I am speechless.

Tears cloud my eyes. What writing? What wall? Why is he doing this? It makes no sense to me.

My hands start shaking again, and the intensity of the pain is too much to bear. I am unable to talk at all. He cuts the call abruptly. I feel as though someone has held my head and smashed it hard against a rock. I feel as though I will explode.

Did the past eight years mean nothing to him? Do his children mean nothing to him? Granted, it was me who was very keen to have them, even though he did not want children just then. But then, I have totally kept up my end of the bargain. I have been with them, day in and day out, with him doing only a guest appearance in their lives. It is me who chose Tanya’s school, it is me who held her though the sleepless nights, it is me who changed her diapers and took her for her vaccinations, it is me who was there for every parent–teacher meeting, for every single time she performed on stage. I was there through and through. I want to scream at him. I want to tear out his hair. I want to claw him and demand justice.

The phone beeps and it is a text from him.

‘Please do not try to call me. I am moving in with Maya. Will contact you over the next couple of days and will try and sort out things.’

That really kills me. It is the final stab, cold and brutal. There I have it. In black and white. He has left me for a younger woman. A bloody good-looking slimmer, smarter woman.

I run to his cupboard and to my utter shock, I see that almost all his clothes are gone. How could I have not known? When did he pack? Was I so engrossed in Tanya and Rohit that I had not even noticed? Some of his other clothes remain neatly stacked in the cupboard. His belts and ties are there. It is too painful to look at them, and I shut his wardrobe with a pounding heart.

My heart now feels like a stone. I burst into tears and I cry. I cry for all that has happened. I cry for Tanya and baby Rohit. I cry for all the years that I have spent with him which now feel like a sham. I cry for the fool I have been. But mostly, I feel terribly sorry for that stupid silly Nisha who thought that she had found heaven, the day that she married Samir and moved into his home.

How naive and foolish one is at twenty-six. How things change! Who would have thought it would come to this?

I cry for hours. The sound is alien to my own ears as it is a wounded cry I never thought I was capable of emitting, and finally, when I have exhausted my tears, I go into the children’s room. Little Tanya is sleeping peacefully in her bed, blissfully unaware that her mother’s world has just shattered into a million pieces.

She sleeps peacefully on the pink princess bed, with its motif of a crown and the other embellishments she chose herself on her sixth birthday.

‘I am a big girl now, Mama, and I will sleep on my own,’ she had said.

Baby Rohit is in a crib next to her, the same crib which Tanya had used as an infant. I kiss Tanya tenderly, taking in the softness of the cheek and the sheer innocence of her face. For a moment, I marvel at how blissful a child’s sleep can be. She does not even stir in her sleep. I kiss Rohit and inhale the warm baby smell, a mixture of talcum powder and softness, and that special love which babies seem to radiate.

This brings a fresh set of tears, but I bite them back quickly.

Finally, I sit on the floor next to Tanya, and no sooner do I rest my head on her bed, I fall asleep exhausted.

She wakes me up the next morning and I am unable to open my eyes.

‘Silly Mama! You slept on the floor. Wake up. Have you been drinking wine, Mama?’ she says, admonishing me in that tone she adopts when she feels she is right. She is precocious for a seven-year-old. I have always felt that she is an old soul in a young body.

I am up with a start, hearing her voice. It takes me a few seconds to figure out why I am there, and then all the events of the previous night come rushing back in. I feel like somebody has punched me hard in the face. But I have to put up a calm face for Tanya.

‘What nonsense you talk. You know Mama never
drinks when papa isn’t home,’ I say and I wince inside, for I know what she will ask next.

Sure enough, she asks, ‘Mama, where is Papa?’

‘He is travelling. He has gone to Germany and will not be back for a while,’ I say. I have no idea from where Germany has come up. I hurriedly help Tanya get ready for school, by which time Rohit wakes up too.

Taking care of Rohit is not much of a challenge (although a little time-consuming), as his is a pretty set routine consisting of the usual sleep-eat-bathe-play-sleep pattern. He is a real darling and is no trouble to look after at all, unlike Tanya who was a cranky, fussy, colicky baby as an infant.

I am able to get through most of the morning because Rohit needs my constant attention. Finally when he sleeps, I get some time to myself, as there are still a couple of hours left before Tanya comes back from school.

I still cannot believe Samir has left me. Is this all a dream? I go to my phone and read his text again. A fresh wave of pain floods me. I look at our couple picture on the mantelpiece clicked during our honeymoon in Seychelles eight years back. The picture shows a younger and slimmer version of me. He still looks as gorgeous as he did on the day we got married. He has never missed his gym routine and still has a body that most men only dream of having.

Which Maya must now be discovering.
I feel sick and nauseous at the very thought. She means more to him now than me. I have been discarded, thrown out. I have lived my ‘use-by date’.

In the photograph, his arms are around me, hugging me lovingly from behind. We are looking into the camera and smiling the smile of newlyweds, oblivious to the world around them, who need nobody but each other. Where, or when, did it all start going wrong? Why has he taken this drastic step of walking out?

I think back about all our years together. He did change a little after his mother’s death and was not his usual self and for a while had stopped communicating with me. But then, I had presumed that it was the normal depression that everyone goes through when they lose a parent. When had he changed this much?
How had I been so darn oblivious to it?

Then I remember the journals which I started writing after my father passed away.

I am gripped with an overwhelming urge to read them now. They are in a suitcase, stored in the loft above the study. I drag the aluminium ladder towards the loft, climbing up to reach the dusty suitcase which contains all the journals, my college magazines, and some old, sentimental stuff which I did not have the heart to throw away. There are also at least eighty cards in there which Samir had given me in the early years of our marriage. How then can love die? Isn’t marriage supposed to be a ‘happily ever after’?

I find my journal and begin to read.