My Funny Valentine...?

MY FUNNY VALENTINE…?

Note: Last year, around this time, I wrote ‘My Funny Valentine’…this year, the same theme came with a pause and a question mark…probably, fiction is getting closer to truth.

I could have stopped my husband when he left me. Why didn’t I? Answers to that keep popping up frequently, sounding correct and true. I nearly convinced myself with one answer, the one which said that I had been praying for it. Did that help me understand why he left on Valentine’s Day six years back? He was trying to be vindictive by choosing that day. For him, it is a special day.

The six years started feeling long and tedious when the separation ended and the loneliness took over. It seemed familiar, a lot like those days after the death of a close one – there is always that day when the living bid farewell with hasty promises to be around; and, the dead are truly gone, even the memory like an old bulb fades fast lingering intermittently for a while before the final blackout. Memories and promises wilted with fading light but that decaying bouquet was comforting before the long empty days marched in.

It is not really true that the last six years were lonelier than the rest. In fact, the first few months were quite crowded. I had frequent visitors arriving at their own convenience without intimation or invitation assuming that I was free and ready to receive them. They wanted to know my story or to tell their own story. They were keen to advise or sympathize or empathize or whatever. Some did not disguise their interest in the fall from grace and some found in it a balm or an energizer for their own needs and purposes. Some were in the same state and happily welcomed me to their club - a club with members waiting to end their membership. I know that I am being harsh. I am sure I would have felt thankful if I had derived some comfort or benefit from any of them.

After that casual lot had lost interest, the insistent barged in - those who felt they had to help actively, a trouble really but nothing severe, most mildly irritating, some even amusing. One section of the ‘concerned’ lot spread the news of my apparent need for company via gossip and printed media. My reluctance, selectivity and lack of cooperation confused them. How or why could I be selective and especially in my state, they wondered. Another section took the easier way to help and advised a single life. It did sound appealing to me since maintaining status quo involved only manageable troubles on my own rather than the traumatic risks that I expected with another. That is the excitement of life – isn’t that how people brush aside such fears? When that life destroys income, security, dreams, hopes and even the will to dream or hope, is it still excitement, I would like to ask those who pontificate without experience.

Two years trudged past and I was settling down to a comfortable tedium when life suddenly changed by pure chance. I bumped into Rekha at a mall. Just like in the old days when we were inseparable best friends, she gave a whoop of joy and hugged me. I felt drab and unkempt next to her. It was always like that, even in school. In those old photos of us, I look scruffy and she appears unruffled. I knew that she was still single. I could not make out how much she knew about me. After leaving school, we used to meet at get-togethers but never managed to be together, just the two of us. We could not talk for long at the mall since she had prior engagements. But, we quickly made plans to meet for lunch at the best Chinese restaurant in town the next Sunday.

  Though we had each other’s mobile number and email address, we did not contact each other till that Sunday. I was nervous and I could not trust myself with any contact that was not face-to-face. The nervousness excited and troubled me and left me dazed and dissipated. I could do little else, restless and sleepless. I dredged through old carefully forgotten or carelessly remembered memories. In the last year at school, we used to sleep over at each other’s place after combined study for the board exams. I tried to remember how it felt having her soft body next to mine in my bed. She had kissed me once, on my cheeks and lips. She did that only once, the once that recurred in a million thoughts. I guess she expected me to reciprocate and when I could not, she must have decided not to pursue it any further.

I went for that Sunday lunch trying my best to look good and elegant. We sat at a corner table which offered privacy. We joked and laughed about irrelevant stuff and leaned towards each other while we chose from the menu. I tried to name her perfume and I watched her face closely while she smiled.

I am not too sure if I continued to watch her face when she started talked about her love, or rather, loves. She told me about how she was being torn apart by her love for a Muslim colleague and her duty towards her family. I muttered the expected questions mechanically. I listened to her and comforted her when she cried. She told me that she has to marry the man her father had chosen. A good attractive man she has learned to love in couple of meetings, she added very quickly. As soon as we shared the expenses, I used some excuse to escape from there. During the rickshaw ride back home, I could not hold back my laughter any longer. That night, I must have cried. I remember only the laughter over that joke about a love that turns out to be something worse than unrequited, nearly comical and hardly original. To say that I was not bitter then would be so evidently false. But I can say truthfully that I did not realize that bitterness till a few months later when love showed its face yet again, though in a very different avatar.

 I can’t remember a time without Anand. We grew up together. We kept in touch even when his family migrated to the US. The contact between us was never frequent but the friendship was always there, like a reassuring and supporting hand. When I had told him about my marriage, he had wished me well. He gave me a lovely wedding gift and then, for the first time, disappeared from my life. I did not try to reach out to him during those years even though I needed his friendship. He did not get in touch even after my husband left. I contacted him after my debacle with Rekha. During our first call, Anand confessed to me that he had never married because he had been waiting for me. He called me his soul-mate. It sounded romantic and lovely. He was doing well in Switzerland and I dreamt of living over there. Our e-mail communication increased, we talked lots on the phone too and confided nearly all. Most veterans would advise wisely that it is not a great idea to talk too much to a love before marriage. That did not seem to be true.

 It did not seem true till the edifice started crumbling. It is tough to pinpoint the source of fracture. Divergent views on rather inconsequential matters, mismatched expectations, old fears in new guise, intuition or bad omens, whatever – I have tried hard to bracket the exact cause but without success. The memory of the final act still remains quite clear. He had come to India for a brief official visit. I suggested a dinner at that favourite joint, the best Chinese restaurant in town. As if to challenge a jinx, I led him to the same corner table. It was quite romantic when we held hands. During the break between the main course and the dessert, he casually mentioned a brief and old flame which he pursued while I was still married and described that ‘the highlight of her profile was her Adam’s apple’. I interrupted his loud guffaw over his own joke with ‘and yours is a pot belly’. Even today, I do not know if that acerbic retort was pre-planned. Anyway, from that moment on, it was nearly a race to the exit. I didn’t get to laugh in a rickshaw that time because he dropped me home. But laughter did follow later that night or during the many post-mortem of that failed love.

After that, I have stayed true to an old recurring dream. He came to me first when I was thirteen. I wrote poems about him. He then came to me the night before my wedding. I wrote about him in my diary. When my husband read that diary without my permission and asked for details, I refused to divulge anything. Now, he comes to me more often. He was mine, he is mine. I will not let the bitter world without touch within our relationship.