‘You think too much,’ he said as she stared into the horizon feeling a great sadness descend upon her. Akhila didn’t know why she felt the way she did. She should be happy, she thought. But all she could feel was the weight of this love pressing down upon her.
‘You haven’t asked me what I want for my birthday,’ he said with a sly grin.
‘What do you want for your birthday?’
Hari inched a finger along her elbow and said, ‘I know what I want but I don’t think you’ll give it to me.’
‘Stop teasing. What is it?’
‘I would like to see you naked.’
A hard fist slammed into her chest. Suddenly she was conscious of the years between them. This was a boy talking. A man wouldn’t be so gauche …
‘Will you come with me for a weekend? There is a nice beach resort on the way to Mahabalipuram. We can go there on Friday evening and come back by Sunday afternoon,’ he said. ‘That is all I want from you for my birthday.’
When Akhila didn’t reply, his tone changed to a plaintive wheedle. ‘Please, Akhila.’ When she felt his eyes bore into hers, she gave in as she had always done. The weight of this love was such.
Two days later, Akhila told Amma that she was going away for the weekend with an office group. ‘We are going to Mysore,’ she said, thinking how easy it was to lie.
‘I don’t know why you want to go with all those strangers,’ Amma said. ‘Perhaps you should ask your brothers for permission first.’
‘Amma, I’m their elder sister. Why should I ask them for permission to go on an office tour?’
‘You might be older but you are a woman and they are the men of the family,’ Amma said, making no effort to mask her disapproval.
‘This is ridiculous. I’m not going to ask them for permission to go on a trip. I’d rather not go,’ Akhila said, walking out of the room.
The next morning, she maintained a stony silence and Amma capitulated like Akhila had known she would. ‘If you are sure about the people you are going with, I guess there is no problem. But do be careful. You are a single
woman, you know, and people need very little reason to put two and two together and come up with five.’
Amma, Akhila wanted to say, Amma, I’m in love with this boy. He must be our Narsi’s age but he truly loves me. He does, Amma. Do you remember how it was with you and Appa? That is how it is with us, Amma. It is him I’m going with. We are going to a beach. He has chosen a night when the moon will be full and golden and he said we could sit by the sea and bathe in the moonlight. He is romantic, Amma, like Appa was. He makes me happy and no one has for a long time. I had forgotten what it was to be a woman and he makes me feel like one. Do you grudge me this love, Amma? Will you forbid me this love?
But how could Akhila tell Amma? Amma would never understand. In Amma’s world, men married women younger than themselves. Women never offered their bodies to men before their union was sanctified by marriage. Women never went away with men who were not their husbands. Women never knew what it was to desire.
The moon shone for them. For Akhila and Hari. Full and golden, cresting the waves with a warm silvery edge. They sat on the beach and Akhila thought: this must be the happiest moment of my life.
A little later, they walked back to one of the huts that stood on stilts on the sand. Akhila could hear the clink of glasses and men laughing. ‘I’m going to have a drink. Do you mind?’ Hari asked.
She shook her head. All young men drank these days. Akhila knew that and besides, she was scared that if she asked him not to, he would think she was behaving like an older sister again.
In the confines of their room, Akhila felt an awkwardness. What am I doing here? Why am I doing this? The chant in her head wouldn’t stop. Hari stood on the balcony smoking a cigarette. Akhila switched off the light and let the moonlight guide her through her ablutions. She crept into
bed fully dressed. When Hari sat down next to her, she could smell the alcohol on his breath. It excited her, that strange fragrance, and she felt a tingling down her spine.
‘This is not fair,’ he said. ‘Where is my birthday present?’
‘What do you … mean?’ Akhila stammered.
‘You know what I mean,’ he said and waited with glittering eyes while she slowly undressed.
That night they made love for the first time. Proper adult love and not all those tentative fumblings that had been the sum total of their lovemaking before. It hurt first and then the sheer rapture of being with him swamped her and the hurt dwindled to content.
In the morning, Akhila awoke before he did. The sunlight streamed in and bathed his face and hers. She stared down at their bodies, limbs tangled in the sheet, clothes strewn on the floor … His face was so young and unlined. In the clear light of day, the mirror told no lies. Akhila could see the age that marked her eyes. The lines that told the years. Akhila saw what they would be. A young man and an older woman. And how it would only get worse as time sped by.
Akhila thought of the stray comments that had floated in the air last night. Wafting in with the breeze to fill her ears.
‘She must be his elder sister.’
‘Don’t be silly. Do men bring their sisters to places like this?’
‘Just an older woman tired of her husband and looking for a stud to fill her day.’
‘More than just filling her day, I’d think.’
Akhila cringed. The words had hurt then. They hurt even more now. She thought of the policeman on the bicycle. She thought of all the strange looks that had come their way as they sat in restaurants, in movie theatres, on the train. They were an anomaly, Hari and Akhila, and nothing he said would ever change that.
Is this what I want? Akhila asked herself. This constant hurt. This constant fear that she would age before he did
and he would turn away from her. That someday he would regret their relationship, regret having spurned his family to be with her, regret being bound to her when he could have been with someone younger and more suitable. This constant weight of an unbearable love that would destroy everything and leave her with nothing, not even her self-respect.
Akhila watched him sleep, favouring his right side so that he lay cradled against her body. Akhila watched him wake up. How his eyes opened and how he turned on to his back and stretched. Akhila watched him as he brushed his teeth, and saw that he shaved his left cheek first and then the right cheek. That he bathed first before he drank his coffee which he sweetened with two spoons of sugar. And that he read the sports pages of the newspaper first. All day Akhila watched him and at night, and after each time they made love, he fell asleep, like a baby. Instantly.
In the train as they sped back, Akhila took his hands in hers and said, ‘Hari, this is goodbye. I will never see you again.’
She saw the shock on his face. ‘Why? What are you saying? Akhila, what is wrong? What did I do wrong?’
‘Everything is wrong, Hari,’ Akhila said. ‘All these days, I tried to tell myself that it didn’t matter. That we could bridge the years between us with love. But I don’t think I can. Every time I look at someone watching us, I can see the question in their minds: what is he doing with an older woman? That bothers me very much, Hari. It bothers me that we are not suited. That I am older and look older, and I can’t live with the thought that some day you might regret this relationship, that you might turn away and I would be left with nothing – neither you nor my family.’
‘Are you done?’ Hari asked. Akhila could see that he was angry. Hurt and upset too. But she was older than he was and it was up to her to sever the ties.
‘Yes,’ Akhila said. ‘I’m done and I will never see you again. Please don’t call me at my office or try and meet me.
You will leave me with no option but to leave this city. I love you, Hari. I will perhaps never love anyone else but this is not meant to be.’
‘Won’t you even give me a chance?’ His eyes pleaded. But Akhila turned away and walked to the door of the compartment.
That night, she wrote Katherine a letter. For a while, they had written to each other regularly. But Akhila had kept Hari a secret even from her. Now, she wrote to her about this love, this sadness that clamped her chest, and as she wrote Akhila tried to explain why she had to do what she did. Would Katherine understand? Akhila wondered. Would Katherine approve? Would Katherine have done the same?
In the morning, Akhila knew that she couldn’t tell even Katherine about this love. She tore up the letter, called a colleague and said her mother was ill and she was going to be on leave for the next two weeks. She told Amma that she was due for some leave and stayed at home. For the next two weeks, she relived their every moment together and then she went back to work. She left by the 6.55 train and took a later train back. Their paths never crossed again.
Sometimes Akhila would see the curve of a cheek or the slope of a head in a crowd and her heart would race: Hari. But it was never Hari and even if it had been Hari, Akhila would have pretended not to have seen him.
Akhila curled up on her side and pulled her knees towards her chest. She suddenly felt bereft and alone. Had she made a mistake when she gave up Hari? Or was it the right thing to have done? What was it that had held her back? How was she to shake off these crumbs of regret that still clung to her?
Perhaps if I let myself, I too will arrive at happiness. A wild warming, a magic content, an inner peace, all from knowing that the past years haven’t been in vain and what lies ahead will bring forth more than what I have resigned
myself to accepting as my lot. Perhaps it is not too late, Akhila thought. That while what she had lost might be irretrievable, life would toss forth a second chance. Like it had for Janaki. And for Margaret too in some convoluted way.
And then Akhila remembered that there had been the makings of a second chance, but she had not known it to be so at that time …
Five years ago when Amma died, the rhythm of Akhila’s life slipped again. What was she to do? How was she to live alone?
After much discussion, it was decided that Akhila would ask for a transfer to Trichy where Narsi was, or to Bangalore where Padma was. Narayan was often transferred so she couldn’t make her home with him.
Akhila’s section superintendent managed to arrange a transfer to Bangalore, and that was the end of her life in Ambattur. ‘It’ll take a while before they allot you a flat. But once they do, you should be very comfortable there. I have seen the flats and they are quite spacious. One of the perks of being a government employee is that you always have decent homes to stay in,’ he said giving her the transfer orders.
‘My sister lives in Bangalore. I’ll stay with her till my quarters are sanctioned. So there should be no problems. Thank you very much, Sir,’ she said, thinking of the pleasures of setting up a home of her own.
Now all that remained to be done was to pack the few things that were hers and give the keys to Narayan. The house was not their own and all they had to do was divide between Narayan and Narsi the few household things that they owned.
Akhila began with the kitchen. There was very little to divide. Padma, during her frequent visits home, had taken away most of the good things. When they saw what was to be their share, Narsi and Narayan’s wives would grumble,
she thought. But she couldn’t help it. On the bottom shelf of the wooden cupboard was a cardboard carton. In it were a few empty tins, knives with broken blades, a box of rusted nails and a giant ball of gunny thread. Akhila took the ball of thread and looked at it. She had thought it had all been used up. But here it was; a remainder of her past. She unrolled a length and tugged at it. It held and Akhila smiled. The thread still had some life in it. Should she throw it away or keep it, she wondered. She decided to put it into the box in which she was taking her few possessions. It would come in useful one day or the other.
In the afternoon, Akhila cleaned out the steel cupboard that had always stood in the inner room. She remembered the day it had been brought in. Amma had wanted one badly for so long; every home in the neighbourhood had a steel cupboard. Every now and then she would throw a scathing look at the wooden cupboard that had been part of her dowry and say, ‘It doesn’t have to be a Godrej, even a less expensive one will do. All our clothes smell musty and your papers are being eaten up by insects. Now, if we had a steel cupboard everything would stay as it was …’
Appa had managed to find a furniture shop that would let him have a steel cupboard on monthly instalments and no deposit. All they asked was that he pay six months’ instalments up front and then he could take the cupboard home and pay the rest in eighteen months.
When the steel cupboard came home, everyone had a particular treasure that had to be put into it. Amma had shooed them away pretending to be angry. ‘This is not a place to put your silly things. We will keep in it only what is important. Like my silk saris and Appa’s shirts, do you understand?’
The locker inside it was exclusively for Appa and it was there he would keep all his important papers, he announced. When Appa died, the locker became Akhila’s.
Akhila took out her service papers and underneath was a small brown envelope with five New Year cards in it.
Akhila stared at it for a long while. Should she keep it or throw it away? Why had she kept it all this while anyway?