Tea for Two and a Piece of Cake

  She is blissful, content, and happy in her childhood, a childhood which is about to change forever, because two people, two mature adults who were once in love with each other, have screwed up somewhere.

  Sorry, your papa has left me, and we cannot be a happy family anymore, but here, have an ice cream.

  Stop it Nisha, you do not want to cry in front of your children and make a scene at the ice cream parlour, for heaven’s sake! Stop it right now.

  I manage to swallow the lump in my throat and tell her it may be a while.

  It is only when I walk back with the children, that something strikes me—I have only three thousand rupees left in my purse. Samir is the one who usually hands me money as and when I need it. I do have a bank account of my own, which I have not used for many years now. I had stopped using it the day I had married Samir.

  I have an add-on credit card and have no clue if Samir has cancelled it. Panic sets in. I need to talk to Samir. I need to talk to him now. I want to ask him about the financial arrangements.

  There is only a small problem.

  No matter how many times I call, Samir does not answer his phone.

  I do not know what to do about the money situation. I send a text message to Samir. It just says to call me as I need to talk to him. I wait for two hours. Then I text him again saying I wanted to talk to him about the money situation (just in case he thinks I want to rant and rave, which I very much want to do, but the more important thing here is to get the finances in order first).

  There is no reply. The children have been given their dinner. Tanya now insists that I read her a bedtime story. It is a little ritual that we have. I read her a story, tuck her in, kiss her, and turn off the lights and head off. This is a time Tanya looks forward to as her exclusive time with me, after Rohit has slept. She has my undivided attention all to herself.

  But today, my mind wanders off thrice while reading The Girl with the Broken Wing to her. It is a book by Heather Dyer and is one of Tanya’s favourites. Even though Tanya can read all by herself and can read very well too, she still enjoys our little daily ritual of reading.

  Finally, when I stop midway through a sentence, Tanya gets exasperated and takes out the book from my hand.

  ‘Mama, you are not paying attention today, I will read it myself.’

  ‘Sorry, baby,’ I say, as I sit there stupidly listening to my little girl reading out The Girl with the Broken Wing. That is exactly how I feel.

  Broken and shattered. I am the girl with the broken wing.

  And two children.

  When Tanya finishes her chapter, I tell her it is time to sleep and kiss her goodnight.

  I sit on the balcony and stare at the moon.

  What am I going to do? I do need to speak to Samir. I call him, my heart pounding when the phone rings.

  He does not answer it again. I call three more times and finally, the call is picked up.

  By Maya.

  ‘Uh, hello Nisha,’ she mutters.

  I picture Samir and Maya in bed. The thought is too much to bear. A mixture of disgust, jealousy, anger, resentment, and hurt fills my soul. It travels through my bloodstream, like slow, molten lava. It makes me blind with rage and pure helplessness. I want to scream at her. And at him. I want to go to whichever place they both are in and I really want to kill them both. I would always read about crimes of passion in the newspapers and wonder why such crimes were committed. Now I know. That is exactly what I want to do right now. But I have no way of knowing where they are, and besides, I have the children. So my burning need for revenge remains just that—a helpless longing, lashing deep inside me, burning me out from the inside. I am like a butterfly trapped in a glass jar whose life force is ebbing out. The lid is tightly shut and there is no escape.

  I go to our bedroom and put the pillow against my face, screaming loudly. The pillow muffles the sound. I scream again and again. It is a primeval cry for help. Nobody can hear me except myself. Even at that heightened state of anguish, somewhere my sanity reminds me that the children are asleep and should not be woken up.

  I pace up and down furiously in our bedroom. Exhausted and trapped, I climb into bed, but I am unable to sleep. The night stretches long ahead of me. In the past, no matter what has happened, I have always slept soundly at night. But now, sleep just evades me.

  Finally, when I am unable to toss and turn anymore, I go to the kitchen and make myself a large cup of hot chocolate.

  Then I go to the desktop and log in to my mail. I have a habit of checking my mail once in three to four days. I usually get only forwards and spam messages. But today when I open my inbox, my heart starts beating at a thousand beats per minute.

  There is a mail from Samir staring at me from the computer screen.

  Leaving on a Jet Plane

  Nisha,

  There is a lot I want to say, but I do not know where to begin. I am going to be honest with you here. I wish I could say the usual line, ‘It’s not you, but me’. But I cannot do that. You have indeed changed a lot in the past eight years. You are no longer the person you were when we first met each other. We have grown apart, and what I feel is so darn pathetic is that you have not even realized it.

  I agree I have changed too, but what hurts most is that you were too busy to even notice.

  We indeed had a good thing going in the beginning. But where it started going sour, I really cannot pinpoint. Maybe it was when you told me you were pregnant with Tanya. I had made my views clear then, Nisha, hadn’t I? You had told me you were on birth control and you had assured me it was safe. We both had agreed that if at all we had children, we would have them only after six to seven years, when we both felt ready. But then you got pregnant, and sometimes I wondered if it was a kind of deliberate ploy on your part to tie me down. Even when I had told you that I had no interest whatsoever in being a father (maybe I am different from most people, I do not know), you still went ahead and decided to keep the baby, hoping that once the baby was born, I would change my viewpoint, even when I have been constantly telling you that having a baby at that point is indeed a disruption in my life.

  For five years after that, I watched in silence as my house slowly changed. From being spotless and perfectly clean, it went to being filled with toys and discarded diapers, and baby powder, and shampoo, and what not. Our sex life became totally non-existent. I had absolutely no interest in Lamaze class or decorating the nursery. I had made that clear too. But you would nag on endlessly until I consented to going with you to them, where the instructor told you how to breathe, while other proud fathers tried to bond with each other. God—I loathed and hated all of it. Even when I voiced it, you brushed my protests aside—so focussed were you on your needs, your wants.

  I know you had your differences with my mother. But when you refused to come with me to London for her funeral, it was truly a huge blow for me. Yes, I know Tanya was only twelve days old, and you were still feeding her, but we would have anyway flown first class, not even business class. The dead do deserve some respect, Nisha. It would have meant the world to me if you had even made a tiny bit of effort to accompany me. But the way you so flatly refused, and the way you made it sound as though my asking you to accompany me was utter drivel, that was what really hit me hard.

  You know how business has grown so rapidly over the past few years and the time when the Singapore branch was being set up. There was so much work pressure on me then, and when I came home at night, it was to a house where I did not even dare ask for a cup of tea for fear of being snubbed, as you were too tired from looking after the baby (which you yourself were so keen on bringing into the world in the first place). And no, I did not mind making that cup of tea for you, provided you cheerfully accepted it. But no—you were grumpy, irritated, and moody most of the time—maybe stress, maybe exhaustion—I do not know.

  And how can I forget the sleepless nights.

  Just as we settled down to bed, the baby would wail, and you insisted on keeping
her crib in our bedroom. There are thousands of parents who have a nursery for their babies, and it is perfectly fine—but no, you felt it was cruel. Still I gave in, I consented.

  I longed to discuss the developments at the newly opened Singapore branch with you, but all you had to talk about was which shop was selling diapers cheaper and which shop was holding a sale for baby merchandise. And then your litany of woes about the live-in help we hired, you had nothing to talk about except how she was not good at her work, and finally you threw her out saying only you are good enough, and that she is incompetent to raise your precious babies.

  Your presence was needed at all the official dinners where I met my business partners. You could have contributed majorly and proved an asset to me. But whenever I asked you to accompany me, you made up excuses involving the baby. Either she had her vaccines, or she was not well, or she had to be fed, or she was throwing up, or something of that sort.

  Slowly I stopped asking you, stopped discussing business with you altogether.

  You even had problems with almost all my friends whom you said were too stuck up and high class. You refused to accompany me to Dev and Vini’s party. You did not want to attend Ranjit’s farmhouse bash. Heck, you did not even want to come with me to a pub for a casual night out, and I have asked you so many times. Even when I had planned that trip to the discotheque (the night when I had also arranged for a babysitter and got the invites as a surprise), you created such a fuss. I began fearing asking my friends over because you deeply disapproved. I threw myself into work to forget about all of it. I had a good set of friends and a good social life. But you ensured that it all came to a grinding halt.

  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 to
ys, 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

  It 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.