Tea for Two and a Piece of Cake (15 page)

I have worked really hard to give you this lifestyle. Every single year, we have holidayed abroad. We have stayed at the best of places and gone to the most exotic locations. But there too, you hardly came out of the hotel room, hardly got into the water or did anything remotely fun, saying Tanya was too small and it was her nursing time. All the time, Nisha, and I do mean all the time, it was Tanya this, Tanya that.

It was as though I ceased to exist for you after Tanya was born, being relegated to the role of merely the money provider.

On the rare occasions that we had sex too, it was always hurried. You were so disinterested and half the time, your ears were on high alert to hear whether Tanya would wake up. You could not stop worrying even while having sex?!

And then it happened a second time around. How in the world can a same mistake happen TWICE, Nisha? Again you assured me that it was okay and that you were taking the pills. How then, I would like to know, did Rohit happen?

And we went through the same cycle again; the only difference was that now it was with two kids instead of one.

Never once did you bother to ask what I want out of all of this.

You were happy being a total mother. I kept quiet all this while for the sake of maintaining
peace in the house. You did not seem to care that I was slogging my butt off to provide you the comfort you have so got used to. You don’t even have a clue about the Singapore office project and how much it means to me.

My house seems to have turned into a goddamn nursery, with kids walking in and out all the time, and on weekends, when I most want to relax and chill out in front of the television with a beer, there would be Tanya’s friends, ringing the bell, creating a ruckus as usual.

I think life is too short to not grab what you want out of it. I truly cannot live like this, where I yearn for even five minutes of peace. If after working so hard, I cannot have that much, I really think it is not worth it.

Then of course, all the travel which the new project involves, all the deals we did, it was Maya who played a big role in helping to make it happen. She has been around for me, and she is indeed a smart woman. I am in love with her now and she is with me.

Look, I know you need money. I will pay for the kids’ education and will give you a good sum for your monthly expenses. Please activate your bank account. Please apply for your own ATM cards and credit cards. Let me know the account number and I will transfer the desired amount to your bank account.

I am sorry this might have come as a rude wake-up
up call, but this was the only way to break it to you. Maya and I have been growing closer and closer over the last one and a half years. You were too self-involved to even notice or ask me. Now, isn’t that unusual?

Think about it and text me your bank account number.

Samir

I
read it, each sentence hitting me with the force of a gale wind. I read it with my fists clenched. I read it with tears welling up in my eyes. I read it biting my lip. I read it once, and then I read it again.

Out of all the things he stated, two things seemed to have pierced my very soul. He had said ‘MY house’ and ‘YOUR precious babies’.

Gosh, how could he? When I had refused to accompany him for his mother’s funeral, it was because I had stitches between my vagina and anus, and they hurt like hell—I could not even sit up, unless it was on a special cushion. How could he not understand my physical pain? And there was the newborn baby’s constant need to suckle. I had not slept five nights at a stretch—it had been such a hard labour where he had not even bothered to come into the delivery room. Yet, I did not complain once.

I read it once more and his words make me feel like a worthless piece of shit. I feel truly terrible about the foreign vacations (which he insisted we go on, as the company paid for a package once a year). If he was this unhappy in our marriage, why in the world had he kept silent so far?

I feel so angry and so hurt that I wished I had a truckload of money to go and throw on his face, to pay him back for having stayed in HIS house and raising MY kids. I am blinded with fury, hurt by the injustice of his words.

Everything always has two sides. I am completely shocked at the side he saw and the side he has chosen to believe. The way I had been seeing it was totally different. I had accepted him as a part of ‘US’. I had never even thought of him as only the ‘provider’. I had presumed that he did not talk about work because he had indeed mentioned it on various occasions how he prefers to leave all his worries back at work and not bring them home.

I had thought that by handling all of Tanya’s and Rohit’s needs on my own, I had been giving him the space he needs. By not asking for his help when it came to kids, I had presumed that he would get his time to do his work, and that he would appreciate my taking care of every single thing at home.

I look around this place which I have called ‘home’ for the past eight years. With each passing second, the walls of the house with the colour-coordinated paintings on them seem to be mocking me. With each passing second, all the expensive things in the house—the fixtures, the furnishings, which I had not even given a second thought to, now seem to be telling me that I am not worthy of them.

I feel cheated and betrayed. I feel insulted. But most of all, I just feel like an idiot who has climbed on to a wrong bus, thinking that it is going to Disneyland, when in fact it is headed to the junkyard.

Let him keep HIS precious house. All I want are MY two precious babies. Yes, my children mean the world to me. I know the bitter pain of growing up without a mother. All I had wanted to do was to give my children a great childhood and a mother’s affection, both of which I had been denied as a child. I had naturally been overjoyed to finally have my own children. How could I abort, just because he was not ready? Since when did wanting to raise your own children and shower them with love become such a crime?

I know right then that I cannot live in this house for even a minute more. I know what to do. I have made up my mind.

I tiptoe slowly to the children’s room. I use a wooden stool and take down the three large suitcases stored in the cupboard space above the walk-in closet. Then I meticulously pack all their stuff. I drag the suitcases to my bedroom and pack all my clothes in. I pack my journal too, which has been my lifeline whenever it was hard to cope. I also pack the most important of the children’s toys, the ones they absolutely cannot do without. My calmness surprises me.

Finally, I call up dial-a-cab and book a taxi.

Alone in a Crowd

I
t is nearly midnight when I make this life-altering decision. When the cab arrives, I request the driver to come upstairs and carry the suitcases to the cab. I wake up Tanya who is bleary-eyed and dazed. She has no idea why she is being woken up in the middle of the night. Rohit is fast asleep and does not even stir when I carry him.

‘Mama, I want to sleep. Where are we going now?’ asks Tanya groggily, barely making sense as she mutters.

‘Shhh, baby. We have to go. Come quietly please,’ I reply.

Tanya is too dazed to even protest, and she follows meekly behind me, as the cab driver loads our stuff into the cab.

I have only a vague idea of what I am doing. But I do know that staying for even a minute more in that house would have been oppressive. I truly cannot bear being there after reading Samir’s mail.

The children fall asleep in the cab almost immediately, and I give the cab driver the address of my old flat, which was where I had been living when Samir had first walked into my life. I have not been to that place for more than a year now. The last I had visited was before Rohit was born. After my father passed away and I got married, I had initially wanted to give it out on rent. But Samir had insisted that it was too much trouble for the pittance of a rent it would fetch.

It still had all the furniture, the beds, and the implements in the kitchen. I would visit the flat about two or three times each year and get it cleaned. Then I would spend a little time in my old room, reminiscing about how much life had changed for me. Occasionally, a memory would glisten like a drop of dew on a rosebud in the early morning. I would pause and soak it in, memories full of loneliness and pain and years of being ignored by my father, as I secretly nursed my dreams and hopes, disguising it with a big, fake smile, and carried on as if nothing mattered. No one could tell.

Samir had come along and changed all that. My life had taken such an upward spiral when he had entered it, it was as though somebody had pressed a button on the elevator to the penthouse and it had zoomed nonstop ever since.

Except that the elevator, the penthouse, and everything else had been fake, like a movie set.
I had nothing now, except my two children.

There is barely any traffic on the road at this time of the night and the driver zooms at breakneck speed. I don’t even feel like telling him to slow down. Like little
Tanya, I am also too dazed to care. We reach my old apartment in exactly twenty-two minutes and the cab driver assists me in getting the luggage out.

As I pay him his fare, I find myself mentally counting the amount of money left in my purse and I hate it. Since my marriage to Samir, I have never ever been in a situation like this, and it pinches me. When Tanya is woken up again the second time that night, she starts protesting loudly and crying.

‘Hush, my baby, hush. You can sleep now, nobody will disturb you,’ I say, as I lead her to the double bed in what used to be my father’s room. She climbs on to the bed, collapses, and falls asleep almost instantly. One of the perks of being a child is the ability to fall asleep so quickly, free of any worries. I place baby Rohit beside her. I look at the innocent, trusting faces of both my children and I feel a pain that I have never felt before. It is the pain of being rejected, being betrayed, being kicked in the gut by a person you gave your heart and soul to.

The person who is the father of my children.

Most of my life, I have trusted my impulses and my instinct, and it has taken me along. My decision to move into this home too was made in a spilt of a second.

Just like the decision I had made to kiss Samir on the moonlight beach in Bali all those years ago.

I grit my teeth, fighting back the tears. I feel devastated, but I do not want to cry yet again. I have done enough crying for the night.

I toss and turn and keep replaying the contents of Samir’s letter in my head. I wince with the fresh wave
of hurt that strikes deep. I feel like a prisoner being tortured and hit from the back with arms tied, without knowing where the next blow will land. I desperately want to turn off Samir’s thoughts, his words. I want to block him out. I do not want to think about it. But it is as though a demon has gripped me in his clutch and is taunting me. A thousand thoughts swirl around in my head. Why didn’t Samir at least try once to make matters right? I hate Maya with every pore, every cell in my body, even though I know it is not solely her fault.

Rohit stirs in his sleep, and this brings me back to earth, forces me to stop thinking about Samir. Suddenly I realize that the first thing in the morning Rohit would want his milk. I remember that there is nothing in the house. I panic for a few minutes. How foolish of me to walk out of the house in the middle of the night with two children in tow? How terribly immature and silly of me. Yet, when I think of Samir’s words, I know I cannot bear the thought of staying there even for a few seconds and feel I have done the right thing by walking out.

I take a deep breath and force myself to calm down. I decide to stay awake and ring the doorbell of the person who lives in the opposite flat as soon as it is dawn. I have no idea who lives there, but I decide that whoever it is, I would explain my situation and ask to borrow a glass of milk. Surely that would not be a problem?

Then I think about Tanya’s school. She always goes by the school bus, and I know that the school bus does come to this area too. I decide that there is no point in Tanya missing her school, just because her parents are busy messing up their lives. I decide that as soon as it is
around 7.30 a.m. (which I figure will be a decent hour), I would call the assigned bus-teacher and ask her where the pickup point for children in this area would be, and also whether it would be possible to pick up Tanya from here on a daily basis.

I feel calmer having solved two immediate and practical problems and then set about unpacking the stuff I have carried in my suitcase, putting it away methodically, simply to distract myself from the pain of Samir’s actions. Also, Tanya would require her school uniform the next day. The faster this place feels like home, the better it is for all of us.

I cannot help but feel like I am in a dump of a place after the opulence of my previous home.

Samir’s home, Nisha, not yours. He stated it himself.

The painful realization feels like I have inadvertently touched a burning ember. How can someone you consider your own, end something like this, a meaningful marriage without so much as an iota of guilt? How can someone walk out on his wife and children? I am angry and upset all over again, but I control myself as I hear a noise outside the flat. I glance at the clock and am surprised to see it is nearly 5.40 a.m. I go to the balcony, the same balcony where I stood all those years ago, as I waited, watching out for Samir’s car the day my father passed away. I peer down and see the milk-delivery man unloading the crates of milk from his bicycle. This is good, as it means that I don’t have to ring my neighbour’s doorbell for milk.