“Where are you going?” Tara asked.

“As if you don’t know,” I said.

“Can’t you stay home today? I have a fever.”

“I’m not a doctor, Tara. Whether I stay or not won’t change your temperature.”

I pulled the door shut behind me and took the familiar lane toward Aditya’s house. She had her tricks—small ones, a headache, a fever, a soft reason to keep me home. Two years of marriage and she was still the same. I never stopped her from going wherever she wanted. I could never understand why she tried so hard to stop me.

Aditya opened the door before I could knock. The table was already set—my favourite vodka, one glass, waiting the way a loyal friend waits.

“You’re fifteen minutes late,” he said. “Everything fine?”

“Just a long day at the office.”

“Are you sure?”

That was why I liked him. He always knew when I was lying. I nodded anyway, and we drank.

Two pegs later, I broke.

“It was never fine,” I said. “I cannot even remember Shweta properly when Tara is around. It feels as if someone has come and sat over my memories.”

“That’s not Tara’s fault.”

“I know.”

“You chose not to tell your family about Shweta. Tara stepped into something she doesn’t even know exists. Why is she paying for your silence?”

“I’m not punishing her,” I said.

“What then?”

I stared into my glass.

“I’m punishing myself.”

Tara was at the door before I reached it.

She guided me in without a word and helped me to bed. She kept saying something about my drinking, but I could barely understand her. The room blurred and I fell asleep.

Morning arrived exactly as it always did.

Breakfast.

Office.

Her call in the afternoon asking whether I had eaten lunch.

Then evening.

Then the office cab crawling through traffic.

I remembered Shweta the way one remembers a season—not through moments, but through a feeling. We had imagined a future together. Then my father’s last wish became my duty, and I did not have the courage to oppose it.

After two years of marriage, every day had become predictable.

Tara would open the door and smile.

She would kiss me.

I would change my clothes and make my calls.

She would serve dinner and wait for me to say it was good.

I always knew her hope was never about the dinner.

Then I would leave.

Come back drunk.

And she would wait.

Still believing that tomorrow might be different.

My phone rang.

It was Tara.

“Honey, I’m sorry. My mother is not well. I’m going to Faridabad to see her. I was trying to call you earlier, but your phone was not reachable.”

I listened quietly.

“Your dinner is in the kitchen. Please don’t forget to put my clothes out for laundry. I’ll be back in a day or two. Also, it would be nice if you could come this weekend.”

“I will,” I said.

The house looked exactly the same.

Yet something felt different.

I opened the door and stepped inside.

Nobody kissed me.

Nobody asked how my day had been.

Nobody followed me into the kitchen.

I changed my clothes, made my calls and ate dinner.

Everything was exactly where it should have been.

But the frame looked incomplete without Tara.

Before leaving for Aditya’s house, I thought I should put her clothes out for laundry.

The moment I touched them, something passed through me.

I sat down.

Everything rushed through my mind in a single moment.

Two years.

Two years of her opening the door.

Calling me every afternoon.

Serving dinner.

Waiting late into the night.

Trying again the next morning.

She had done everything a wife should do.

I had done nothing a husband should do.

Every evening I sat with my friend while a woman starved for my companionship.

Throughout the day she waited for a friend to knock at the door.

Throughout the night she waited for the same friend to return.

What was I doing to her?

Was I a human?

No.

Things would be different when she returned.

I did not want to realise her worth when it was too late.

I would try to forget Shweta.

I would face Tara.

I would stay home in the evenings.

I would listen to her.

And I would let her listen to me.

A knock on the door pulled me from my thoughts.

I opened it.

Tara kissed me.

“I thought you had gone to Faridabad.”

“My brother admitted Mom to Apollo Hospital here in the city. He’ll stay with her tonight. I came back because I thought you might be feeling lonely.”

I looked into her eyes.

She looked into mine.

The same unconditional love was still there.

The same care.

The same patience.

I looked away.

Then I bent down and put on my slippers.

“Again?” Her voice trembled. “My mother is in the hospital.”

“I understand,” I said. “But I won’t be able to help her by staying back.”

I stepped outside and took the familiar lane toward Aditya’s house.

Far above the rooftops, the Pole Star was blinking in the same place where it had been the previous night.

© Amit Choudhary, 1997 (Post 21S)

The notebook came out of Michael’s bag with the kind of care usually reserved for injured birds.

“See,” he said, pushing it between his mother and Sandie at the kitchen counter. “See how big she wrote it. All the way across.”

The word “GOOD” filled half the page in thick blue ink, Mrs. Broadwidth’s pen having been generous that afternoon for reasons Michael had been rehearsing in his head since the final bell.

“What’s it for?” his mother asked, not looking.

“She asked questions today. About the chapter.” Michael stood a little straighter. “I answered every single one. Not one mistake.”

“That’s nice.”

Sandie slid the notebook aside with her elbow and set a sandal box in its place. “Mom, I’m telling you, the heel makes the difference. You can’t wear flat sandals with silk.”

Michael put the notebook back in his bag.

—

His father came home after seven, smelling of cold air and cigarettes. The whole family gathered for dinner — father at the head, Steve to his left, Sandie next to Steve, his mother at the other end. Michael sat in the middle, which felt about right.

His father asked about his mother’s health. She said the medicines still made her tired. Steve was asked about the shop. Steve said fine. Sandie was asked about plans for the wedding next month. Sandie listed things she needed money for, sandals among them.

Michael arranged his rice into a small hill and flattened it again.

His father looked at him.

“And you, Michael?”

The air in Michael’s throat moved.

“Dad, today Mrs. Broadwidth gave me—”

The telephone rang. The kind of ring that swallowed a room whole. Sandie was already halfway up, calling “Papa, it’s for you”, and his father’s chair scraped back before Michael had finished his sentence.

Michael sat with his hands folded near his plate.

When his father returned, he looked at Michael with the expression of a man who has left something on the stove and can’t quite remember what. “Yes, you were saying?”

“Dad, today Mrs. Broadwidth gave me—”

“Yes, yes.” His father waved the air gently. “Studies are going well. Good boy.” He folded his napkin on the table. “Good night, everyone.”

And he was gone.

Michael looked at his plate. Then he finished his rice.

—

That night he wrote a poem. He didn’t know why exactly — there was a recitation competition in two days, and Mrs. Broadwidth had told the class to try composing something themselves rather than memorizing another person’s words. He sat at his desk with his geometry notebook open to a clean page and wrote the first thing that came.

He read it back. Erased two words. Kept the rest.

He didn’t show it to anyone.

—

He dreamed of the school auditorium. His family was in the front row — all four of them — sitting alongside Mr. Baptist, the principal, who had the kind of presence that made people sit up straight. Even Sandie was paying attention. His father had placed his phone face-down on his knee.

Michael stood at the podium. His hands trembled and the paper trembled with them. He cleared his throat.

“When the bell rings,

the teacher enters the room.

If homework is incomplete,

punishment comes soon.

 

Sometimes children laugh,

sometimes children cry.

Some words stay inside the mouth

no matter how hard they try.

 

I wish I were a teacher,

calm and kind each day.

I would listen to every child

before sending them away.

 

But I am only Michael.

Small, simple, and quiet.

So I keep my little words

where nobody can fight it.”

The auditorium went still. Then it filled — slowly, the way light fills a room when someone draws the curtain.

His name was called. He walked forward and held a small silver cup. His mother kissed his cheek, and in the way of dreams it meant that everything was fine now, that everything had always been fine —

“Wake up.” Her hand on his shoulder, firm and ordinary. “You’ll be late.”

He opened his eyes to his own ceiling.

He lay there a moment. Then he counted himself back into the world and got dressed.

—

In the evening he took his kite to the terrace. The sky had turned orange at the edges, and the wind was doing exactly what he needed. He let the string run through his fingers and watched the kite climb and pull.

His mother and Sandie were at the far end of the terrace, a chessboard between them. Sandie moved a piece and sat back.

“Check.”

“Mom,” Michael called, “can you hold this a second? Just for a second.”

“Not now, Michael.”

He held both things — the string and his patience — and kept flying.

The kite began to drift sideways. He walked backward, correcting, not watching where he was going. The string went slack, and the kite dropped toward the wall, snagging on something near the low parapet. He walked over. The tail had caught on a cluster of wires that came from the pole below, running along the outer edge of the wall and up toward the meter box. The insulation had worn away in patches. He’d never really looked at them before.

He reached for the kite’s tail.

“Mom, will anything happen if I touch these wires?”

His mother moved her king to the corner of the board.

“Mom—”

“Michael.” Her voice had that flatness of someone who has already said a thing too many times. “Just do what you want. Please. Just don’t disturb us right now.”

His fingers closed around the wire.

—

The terrace was very loud.

The chess pieces swung in the air. The kite flew high again, untethered and free.

And then it was very quiet.

—

The hospital corridor stayed the same grey for a long time.

His father sat with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor between his shoes. Steve walked to the water fountain and back and then walked there and back again. Sandie stood against the wall. She did not move at all.

When the doctor came out, he pulled off his gloves slowly, one finger at a time. He looked at Michael’s mother. He looked at the floor.

Michael’s mother made a sound that didn’t belong to any language. She pushed past the doctor, past the attendants, past all of them, down the corridor and into the room where her son lay under a white sheet in the light of a single tube. She pulled the sheet from his face.

He was very still. He was very young. He had the face of a boy who had wanted, more than anything, simply to be heard.

Sandie came in behind her. She stood at the foot of the bed for a long time, looking at him — really looking, the way none of them ever quite had.

Then she leaned down, very close, as if there were still a chance.

“Please,” she whispered.

“Speak something.”

—

© Amit Choudhary, 1999 (Post 13S)