“Ah, it has been a long time, hasn’t it?” I was thinking to myself. With a glass of chilled beer on my table amongst the beautiful ambience of the Italian restaurant I had come out to spend a solitary evening, I felt at peace. It was a strangely quiet and peaceful evening, one that is a rare opportunity for a busy working woman like me, to notice something as insignificant as the people walking outside the glass door of the restaurant. Some doing their chores, a few young colourful kids laughing away with friends, these women wearing fancy suits clinging on to their husband’s arms, a romancing couple in the corner along the escalator, a gang of geeks wearing old fashioned jeans and simple tees, perhaps celebrating the end of a flurry of exams. They all looked bizarrely familiar. “Oh we all live in the same city, it’s a small city isn’t it?” I dispensed these thoughts.
“Madam, your Farfalle Paprika, do you want me to serve?” The waiter disrupted my thoughts. I nodded. I wanted these guys to leave me alone with my solitude. I am not a cynic, or a schizophrenic alcoholic woman, but I like my lone time, my space outside the madness of the crowd, the responsibilities, the race for accumulating luxuries of life, the betrayals of friends and colleagues, the undue favouritism of the seniors, the expectations of elders, the demands of my grown up kids and my own pessimistic mindset.
Still looking outside the door, I noticed the blue t shirt boy among the geek gang. It was Avi! Wasn’t he supposed to be gone for his engineering coaching class? I wore back my glasses to confirm. Yes it was him. “Disgusting”, I spend 25 grand for his class every quarter and he skips it without even thinking once that it’s his mother’s hard earned money. I cleared the cheque and rushed outside, only to be stopped by another familiar face. “Mrs Kumar! What are you doing here?” it was Mrs Gupta, our nosy neighbour. “Waiting to be bugged by you, 10kms away from our society, for a nice change”, I thought to myself annoyingly. She was blabbering continuously. There are some people who keep hitting on to your shoulders to grab your attention, she was one of them and she did it very, very often, like every 10 seconds. As far as I can remember, the number of household items that she had borrowed from me in the last 10 years ranging from sugar, milk, tea leaves, talcum powder, moisturizer, steam iron, gas cylinder and even upholstery, I almost felt like running two homes as a single mother instead of one.
My eyes gave her a tiny glance and started tracing Avi again. I noticed that he hadn’t come alone; Neeru my daughter was with him. As soon as Mrs Gupta left, I rushed to the other side of the mall. Out of the blue, I saw my mother on the wheel chair coming towards me from the opposite side. “She must have come with Avi”, I thought. She didn’t notice me I think, but I got a chance to look at her morose face. She wasn’t happy being alone, living in our old house, the one that my father built for us. Though both my brother Ishaan and I had made sure that she has enough servants, all kinds of them, a nurse, a caretaker, a cleaner and a cook, but I think she didn’t want all of that. Her expectations were too high, she expected love which we didn’t have, she expected time, which is a luxury and then I saw her servant Govind pushing her wheelchair away.
Someone abruptly kept a hand on my shoulder from behind. It was Ishaan and his wife Aabha. “Didi, how are you”. I was surprised to see all of my family here in the mall, but there was no such look on his face. He seemed unperturbed and peaceful. As far as I can remember, he always took care of me as an elder brother. His wife Aabha was as gentle as him. I remember that I was in a constant denial of accepting my sister-in-law as my family member, not sure for which particular reason. After one failed marriage I think I always thought too much and it has been difficult for me to trust people. He was saying something to me, but I was still lingering in my thoughts.
Suddenly I heard a sound of a loud thud in my ears. A chill ran down my spine as I thought it could be Avi or Neeru. Without saying a word to Ishaan, I started moving towards the sound. I realised that it was followed by a siren, that of an ambulance I think. I took the escalator going to the ground floor which was I think two floors down. As I was going down, the crowd was diminishing. There was lesser number of people there. The loudness of the siren was increasing. I reached two floors below but it wasn’t the ground floor. I took another escalator down, and just next to my escalator was another one going up. I looked at the other escalator only to see Avi and Neeru staring at me smilingly. They were all there, Ishaan, Abha, Mrs Gupta, Mom, and to my surprise, I saw Dad and Vinod too, my husband. Everyone was on the escalator going up and there was no way I could catch up with them, or stop them. There was a peculiar feeling of helplessness and I felt that there could be no way that I would see them again. The siren finally grew really loud now I think I fainted.
........
I woke up with too much light falling on my eye lids and realised it was a dream. I had been sleeping for really long I guess. I got up from the bed to go to the other room where Avi and Neeru were sleeping peacefully. They were all still around, everyone that I love and still had a chance to say the unsaid and reach out to. The fears were all gone and there was no helplessness remaining. The sunshine seemed bright and the morning was beautiful. It was indeed the light at the end, after all the darkness of the night.
Releasing all my barriers, dismissing all the negativity, approaching everyone and opening my heart to the world is the real way to live. Not for time gone by and not for the uncertainty the future will bring, this very moment I am alive, and I will live it.
