Time after college. Girls and boys were coming out of the campus in small and big groups. Mrs. Kurian was taken by her husband in car and Mrs. David were taken by her husband on a bike. Leela Nair had already left. I got out of the staff room and walked on.
Alone…
I’m always alone…
Many a time, I’m left alone…
I walked only for a little distance. A shadow was seen by my side. It was Prakash! He had two or three new books in his hand.
“New import from the library. Latin American Poetry.”
“Why, have you cut your allegiance with British Literature?”
“Hey. Never. I had hearsay about a new power and language. So, I thought of looking into it. Anyway, everything that is Britain’s has lost its market value including its literature, hasn’t it? Now high demand is for things American. After some time, it will also change. I’m afraid if I don’t read something, my mind may get rusted.”
“Prakash it’s sad that you haven’t finished your research. Haven’t you spent some two three years for it?”
“I was interested in research. More than that I had a personal reason to start that work. But when I realized that my aim would not materialize, I lost my enthusiasm and ease of my mind. I didn’t feel like continuing my research.”
“What was that problem that led to your mental unrest?
“It’s what I want to forget—the thing I had buried in my mind. It is useless for anyone if I disclose it other than some to worry unnecessarily.”
“Oh…I’m sorry. Then you need not tell me.”
All of a sudden, a scooter turned the bend and stopped in front. Roy! It was not customary for Roy to come to pick me up. He might come at times when he felt like it. He might have felt guilty about the incident in the morning. That day also, as usual, an incident occurred. The reason was that I had not ironed his pants and shirts. I had forgotten it in the midst of the urgent duties. It was not intentional either. How terribly angry he was! Typical ridiculing and blaming was the consequence.
“Oh…I forgot that matter. I will do it now.”
Then what was Roy’s reply?
“No wonder, you forgot. Your mind is not here. It’s with the guys in the college.”
A word in raised tone was enough to make my eyes wet. Roy knew it fully well. But still…
…He stopped the scooter by my side.
“This is Prakash Mathews. We are in the same department.” I introduced Prakash to him. Roy smiled. But it was not a hearty smile. His shaking hands seemed a mere show without any sincerity or warmth about it.
While we were riding the scooter, Roy did not say anything. It was definite that there would be an outburst when we reached home. Roy had the nature of getting easily suspicious without any reason.
I never had a love affair. Not that I was against the concept of love. I never felt that kind of love for anyone. It was a fact that many made love to me. Roy himself had known about some names through Valsa. Whenever he got an opportunity, he used to wound my heart on this issue. In fact, as I knew Roy’s nature, I was scared to talk to men. But how could I remain silent without talking to my colleagues in the same college?
Roy did not speak even after reaching home. His face remained cloudy. When I called him for evening tea and snacks, a sharp “No” was his response. I felt that his mind was a smoking volcano. He had the same cold attitude whenever I approached him with love. He remained locked inside the room. When he came out, I knew he was fully drunk! He pecked on the food served for dinner.
When I went to bed, his face looked as if stung by a wasp. I felt depressed. I didn’t feel like approaching him with love. Silently, I lay at the edge of the bed. Then came like a thunderbolt:
” Prakash Mathews! Good! Handsome man! Same department. Very convenient!”
I felt as though my heart was bruised when I heard it.
“Oh…I haven’t heard this name among the old fans. Must be among the new ones…isn’t so?”
He went on to say many such abusive words. Finally, when I felt myself at the tether’s end, I made an outburst.
“Roy, you should not speak like a person who hasn’t seen any man.”
“Oho…Do you say that I haven’t seen any human beings? Why? Do you think that as I have no higher studies and a job in college, do you mean that I haven’t seen human beings?”
“I haven’t said so.”
“Then what’s the meaning of what you said? You have seen human beings; I haven’t! I’m a mere ‘spade 7.’ Haven’t you got the head weight of having higher education? If my Daddy were not here you could have seen your education and work.”
“Roy, why do you speak in this way? If I had ego for my higher education and job, would I consent you to marry me? Don’t I know that it was Roy’s Daddy who gave me a sense of aim? Then why should you wound my heart every time?”
“Oh. you married a beggar like me out of your charity, didn’t you? Your large-heartedness in response to my Daddy’s help, isn’t it? Did my Daddy ask you to marry me?”
“Roy, how many times have I told you these matters? I accepted you wholeheartedly. How broadminded Daddy was! He had never asked me for such a matter. You are saying things simply out of misunderstanding.”
“Then I married you out of my selfishness, didn’t I? Did I become as broadminded as my Daddy? I am just cheap. Uncultured. One who hasn’t seen humans. A narrow-minded brute!”
“Roy, why do you say unnecessary things? Have I said anything like this?”
“What is the need of saying anything! Don’t I gather this from one’s looks and expressions?” Roy stopped for a little while. His face had reddened. “I’ve become a bad person. Isn’t that the reason? Did you think that I would come on the scooter? Weren’t you talking and enjoying yourself with him? This might be the usual practice.”
“Roy, don’t say unnecessary things. We are working together. What’s wrong with coming and talking together?”
“Eh…Nothing wrong with it. Very good practice!” There was sarcasm in Roy’s tone.
“He is a married man.”
“What is there? Then it will be more convenient. It’s a kind of license. Nobody will suspect even if you do things as you like.”
“Roy, you know I had all my studies in a mixed college. I know how to control myself. Prakash is my colleague. Don’t mix his name with mine to say nonsense. He is very decent.” I said that in a calm, but firm voice. But it turned out to be another reason for an outburst.
“Don’t throw your English on me, mind you…” Roy used a derogatory term. I felt humiliated. It seemed as though I became a worthless object.
“This kind of trouble is because women have more education. Don’t try to control me. You are a woman and must be subject to men. You have no right to question me and argue with me. Don’t try to rule over me.”
I knew that there was no use in talking to him.
What was unbearable was his habit of getting suspicious of others. There was no need for me to talk to anybody for Roy to be suspicious of.
Once there was a get-together on the auspicious of the Staff Association. Thomas Abraham Sir was the organizer. Sir compelled me to bring Roy to the function. Somehow, I managed to take him to college. Roy behaved like a fish out of water. I knew that Roy did not like people there talking freely and cracking jokes. He seemed to feel nervous and fidgety. While I was with Mrs. David, Mrs.Kurian, Leela Nair, Lalitha of the Department of Economics, and Mrs. Thomas of the Department of Hindi, I was occasionally passing anxious glances at Roy.
Many, especially those of our department, were seen talking to Roy. But Roy did not seem to lengthen his conversation with them. While I was standing near him, I noticed that his conversation was breaking every now and then. Thomas Abraham Sir and others had gone to each group and cracked jokes. When others burst into laughter hearing the jokes, Roy seemed to be roaming in a different world. I felt awkward.
Finally, when everything was over and we were returning on our scooter, Roy’s first reaction came in this way:
“How boring it was! Don’t call me to such a ridiculous thing!”
Though I did not like his remark, I kept quiet. It was not a new experience for me to answer and end up in a quarrel.
While he was changing his dress, came his next retort.
“What’s his name? Abraham? Oh, Thomas Abraham! See his style. Why did he always come to you to crack his nasty jokes? I felt like giving him nice slaps on the face. Bloody Bastard!”
“Roy!” My voice raised a bit unknowingly. It was difficult to explain how I felt then; was it anger, surprise, pain…”
Did Valsa’s brother have this kind of a face too?
It was true that like Daddy, Valsa also tried to dissuade me from marrying Roy.
“Premi! If you become my sister-in-law, I will be the luckiest person in the world. But Roychayan won’t suit you. Roychayan is not as educated as you are. You have got a bright future. I too have great expectations of you. I wish a big man should come and marry you.”
“Valsa, Roy has the qualification you mentioned. Isn’t he fat? A big person indeed.” I turned it into a joke. I remained unwavering in spite of Valsa’s argument against me marrying Roy.
I thought Roy was a good man. I had seen him loving Valsa and Daddy. I thought, a man who loved his father and sister dearly would definitely love his would-be wife as well! I believed that he loved me also sincerely.
How did this kind of change happen in Roy? How happy we were in the first two years after our marriage!
Later he started having many friends. His business failed. Smoking and drinking became his normal habits…. words tinged with an inferiority complex rose from him frequently. Whenever I tried to come closer to him understanding these traits in him, Roy rebuked me and got estranged from me. In the initial days, I sobbed silently without answering him. But Roy’s response filled with contempt came like this:
“Oh…Your father and mother reared you up in a glass case. When a word is uttered, it will wound you.”
Yes. I grew up in a glass case! My Pappa and Mummy never rebuked me like this. Prasad, he dearly loved me. I was the cynosure of my teachers in school and college. My classmates treated me with great love.
The tone of Roy’s ridicule and sarcasm was unbearable to me as I was used to good words and good treatment from my parents and relatives. Though I wanted to go near Roy in love forgetting all about my grief, I could not do it.
In the beginning, I laughed a lot at the comments made by Roy’s friends.
“What drug did you give to lure that girl? Teach us that trick. Let’s try on our own part like this. If we are lucky, we may also get some college lecturers as our wives.”
That day Roy could take it as a joke. But, it seemed, he found a new meaning in it later.
Had Roy’s friends said it in absolute sincerity? Wasn’t there hidden the seed of jealousy in it?
Roy’s friends had come to our home many times. To tell the truth, I could not like any of them. As soon as they came, they would shout and make noise boisterously. I couldn’t find any sincerity behind it. It sounded hollow. An egotistic group that gave importance only to money. I exchanged niceties with them just to oblige Roy. I wanted to draw him back from that friendship somehow. Whenever I gave him hints on that line, Roy burst out.
Once…
“Roy, I feel that none of them has any sincerity towards you.”
“Oho…Then you need not make friends with them. I will manage my friends. I had seen them long before I saw you.”
There were instances that strengthened my feeling that their influence on him was not insignificant. One day, when we quarrelled with each other for some reason, what Roy said was this: “What Suresh and Charles have said is right. Those husbands who send their wives for work are hen-pecked ones.”
I felt the meetings with them and their wives suffocating. Their wives were highly fashionable. A group of women able to talk eloquently about beauty treatment, recipes, and fashions. I didn’t know why, they never said anything that touched my heart. So, I felt reluctant in going to their club.
They were ideals in many matters to Roy. In dress, in gait, in talk, in food matters…. Very often he said:
“You learn from Suresh’s wife. How beautifully she dresses herself up!”
Once when Roy came it was too late.11.30 at night. When I asked him why he was late, he told me, he had to go with Charles to many places. When they returned, Charles’s wife compelled him to have dinner with them. “Then I thought of complying. Aha! What a beautiful dinner it was! I have never in my life tasted such tasty food anywhere, not even in hotels. Charles’s wife has prepared all the dishes. Lucky fellow!”
It hitched me somewhere in my heart; pulled me as though by a thorn. After a while, he said as if in a soliloquy: “ A woman must be like this. She must be able to prepare dishes that her husband likes.”
The arrow struck hard at my weak point. I was not at all an expert in cooking. Mummy never used to call me to help her. She thought I should study. After my wedding, many of my experiments in cooking failed. He used to make fun of it even in front of guests. I used to feel terribly hurt on such occasions.
I got fed up as he used to find fault with anything that was served on the table. I didn’t feel like doing anything. In addition to that, his comparisons…
“You learn from that Charles’s wife…learn from Aunty…”
Roy’s Aunty was an expert connoisseur. Since I did not have that art of cooking, she used to look at me with contempt.
I ought to have become an ‘average’ woman.
In Bishop’s obituary talk on my Pappa and Mummy, he said: “They lived a model of a life together and also died together.”
Wasn’t that kind of married life my own dream?
In our family talk after dinner, Mummy once said: “Pappa!” She also called my Pappa like that. “Our daughter should get a man like you, Pappa.”
Pappa made it a joke. “Oh no. A little older I am.” Everybody burst into laughter.
“And our son should get a girl like you, shouldn’t he?” He retorted.
Prasad and I would laugh feeling ashamed.
What I found in Pappa Mummy’s life was the fullness of love. Authority and submission were not projected at all.
Everybody had high hopes for me. I had heard Pappa’s friends saying: “George! We wonder whom you should get for your daughter! Shall we look for an I.A.S. Officer?”
Prasad used to say:” I will find out a guy for you, Chechy! I know who should be sought. I have a man in my concept. But I cannot explain it.”
Prasad was shocked when I told him that I was going to marry Roy.
“Chechy!” He called in disbelief. I only stood laughing. But he did not laugh. He continued in all seriousness.
“Chechy! Are you mad? I will never allow this to happen. Chechy should not marry him.” He said it emphatically.
I tried to make him understand.
“I can’t understand this at all. How could Chechy like him? I wonder! He might be good. But he won’t suit you. Does he have a personality? A degree?” Prasad flared up. “Hadn’t this happened because of that obligation to his Daddy? I could have worked and paid back that money. I will never agree to make Chechy a scapegoat for this matter.”
“Prasad, you are talking with a misunderstanding. I’m not marrying Roy as an obligation. Nobody has asked me for it either. Somehow, it flashed through my mind. It doesn’t matter, Prasad. Is personality or degree that significant? A loving heart—that I do think Roy has!”
Till the last moment, Prasad did not find the alliance agreeable. He even threatened me that he would not attend my wedding. But the wedding did take place. Out of his love for me he had to attend it as well.
Has my choice gone wrong? Has anyone in the world made the right choice? Yes, of course! Pappa and Mummy had made the right choice. They were a perfect match.
Vinod mon turned around in his sleep several times and came closer to me. It was time to come back to the present from my thoughts. Roy had already slept. As I was embracing Vinod mon and closing my eyes for a forbidden sleep, I tried to barricade my mind against my formidable thoughts.
(Cont’d)