I'm extremely tired
and messed for a note at the beginning. I'll communicate when I update next.
Till then, thank you and stay tuned, okay? Enjoy. 😳
Chapter
Ten
Chapter Eleven
"We are homesick most for the places we have
never known." - Carson McCullers
Mr.
Shikhawat was frail, his breaths rapid. His sons were standing, rooted to the
spot by the side of his bed. Swayum looked pallid and Reyansh, unfeeling. When
color arose in their cheeks it was hot scarlet, the mark of devastation. The
brothers looked in opposite directions so none could see the insipid tears
spilling out of each other's eyes. Everything was wasteful. Everything was
falling to smithereens before their eyes. They tried to avert seeing the dying
silhouette of their father but they could see it. Their father jerked in his
bed, he shivered and mumbled their mother's name. Then the black shape of his
body on the ground was still.
The
scene shifted. Swayum was holding the hand of his bride's corpse. Her skin felt
cold, her thin fingers prickly. Her tiny chest showed no sign of vitality.
There was barely any hair on her scalp. Her lips were breathless and cracked.
They did not feel like dew drops on lush rose petals when he kissed them. But
he kissed them and everywhere his lips could reach until she was taken away.
Their next meeting was at the church. Clad in a long-sleeved white frock she
rested peacefully inside a coffin. That was the last he saw of her physically.
When
the scene shifted a second time Swayum was partially awake. For, he could feel
the agitation innumerable beads of sweat across his face were causing to him.
Sharon's tattoo was visible above a grey sports bra. Her hair was held in a
very tight ponytail. She was dancing to very loud, very groovy music. Having
been a dancer himself in his college days, Swayum identified her dance at once
as a therapeutic one. Digression took over and Swayum was sitting with Sharon
on the bonnet of her '67 Chevy Camaro, kissing her on the mouth. Swayum was
awake before he could find whether he allowed his hand under her shirt or not.
Such
were Swayum's dreams for three months. In a nutshell Swayum's life was office
and nightmares after Sharon left town to visit her father. On weekends while
his father would watch the news or a game he'd go through Rhea's photographs,
trying very hard to ignore her appearance from when she was about to die. For,
he was not afraid of what became of her afterwards. He revisited the sight
every night inside his head. On one such Sunday Swayum's phone started to ring
and vibrate. His father glanced at him nastily because it was disturbing his
game. "Sorry," he mumbled and picked up his phone. It was Simmi.
"Hey,"
he said hoarsely, clearing his throat.
"Hello,
there!" she greeted him and informed him that she'd put him and Sharon on
conference. "Okay, fine." Swayum grimaced. He couldn't hear Sharon, she was silent.
Simmi went on for five minutes during which Swayum discovered that she was
marrying an English investment banker named Rich Baker. "Keeper is what's
written all over this description." Sharon commented and her voice filled
Swayum's ears and warmed his insides. She was laughing but it was outwardly.
Then, he heard Simmi apologizing to him for forgetting he was there too.
"That's fine." said he.
"So,
I'm calling to invite you both to my wedding." Apparently Simmi did not know
Swayum and Sharon were not in the same town at the moment. Swayum informed her
to which the girls said "we know, shut up." in unison. Swayum could not catch
the rest of the conversation. He only remembered later that he had promised
Simmi to see what he could do and had hung up. Was Sharon returning, then? It
occurred to him that maybe she was.
And
she did. She arrived in town the following Thursday morning. They'd arranged to
see each other at the Airport itself because Swayum had offered to pick her up
and she had agreed. When Swayum saw her reaching him he noticed that she looked
petite. Her hair looked as though it were thinning and there were dark circles
under her eyes. Her eyes looked rather fiendish, like she was not a creature
that took any sleep.
"What
the hell is up with you?" was his greeting for Sharon when he pushed her into
his chest.
That
caused her bags to fall out of her grip. She took a while to reciprocate.
Swayum was choking her and he did not let her go even after it struck him that
she might be feeling smothered. She was hugging him back now and he was
ecstatic to hold her, his best friend of more sorts than imaginable. Grief and
fear like he couldn't explain were knotting his stomach. It had something to do
with the way she looked, unwell and grave. Rhea had looked like that for two
years and Swayum could not endure seeing that unhealthiness even on a
stranger's face. Therefore, that he felt horrified and frightened to see Sharon
look the way she did would be no understatement.
She
tossed her hair out of her eyes as they broke apart. Swayum took one her bags
and she took the other, the older silver one and they walked out together
without a word. Sharon asked him if it was okay of her to take the backseat and
lie down a little. He nodded curtly, unable to explain why he was so averse to
the wish she expressed. Later he understood that it again had everything to do
with her looking so unwell. He acted like she wasn't allowed to.
"I
miss my babe; she hasn't been washed in three months." Sharon exhaled. She
sounded every bit as healthy as unhealthy as she appeared. Swayum had to bite back
the urge to stop driving and get into the backseat to hug her out of relief. He
drove on and she lamented about her separation with her car some more.
"Is
it okay if I say I missed you?" he asked, unloading her luggage, refusing to
let her do it.
"Nay,
I missed you too. It's all good." she beamed at him, ruffling his hair.
"So,
are we putting it past us?" he asked uncertainly, dragging her bags now.
"You
are." she said casually, walking slowly behind him.
"And
not you?" he asked, nonplussed.
"I
can't." she reminded him. And he decided to shut up lest he would hurt. Neither
of them could take the blow of it.
"So,
why do you look so ghoulish?" he asked, ringing her bungalow's doorbell.
"Nice
choice of words," she chuckled and he chuckled back, unnamable warmth washed
over him. "Why?" he pressed and she took her time in replying. They were in her
room now. Sharon was already unpacking and Swayum was telling her every ten
seconds to give it a rest. Gradually she started looking more fatigued than was
in Swayum's might to overlook. He panicked and very sternly got her to sit. She
thus began, "I had to have a minor surgery."
"When
were you going to tell me about it?" he spat. "What had happened?" he quickly
added, looking ashen.
"My
shoulder, I resumed dancing and something clicked and another broke and I was
in the ER." She giggled and continued thus, "I should have taken it seriously.
The injury intensified after I began dancing again and so, I needed the
surgery." Swayum looked pale but felt relieved. It was not anything as serious
as he had seen already.
"You
look like a shoulder injury isn't enough." she noticed laughingly.
"From
where I see it, it isn't." he smiled satirically at her and got up to leave,
saying he had got to get back to his office. She nodded and got up too. He side
hugged her and left, after which they hardly ever met. Swayum couldn't put a
finger on any reason that explained why. He could not requite her for how she
felt but she was not the kind of person to do away with somebody she loved. She
cannot have even if it pained her in more ways than tangible. Swayum had heard
in stories and read in books and watched in movies that people changed and
friends broke apart. It came to him as a wee bit of a shock that even when
people did not change something between them sometimes just broke. He
understood that he missed whatever it was that had broken. He yearned for the
irreparable to feel like it did before that something had broken. Swayum
decided he could not describe what he was missing.
He
was now standing in front his old penthouse. It was locked and unoccupied. On
enquiry from his old neighbours (all of whom made sympathetic noises in his
face) he learned that nobody knew the whereabouts of the present owners of
Swayum's home. Vivid images of his life inside that house with Rhea flashed
across his mind. He wanted to have a look inside but he did not and left, again
without looking back once.
He
feared when he now entered his home somehow he might begin to consider it a
haunt. The problem was the nature of his plight. Alone and lonely were two
different things and Swayum was big chunks of both. Homesick, miserable and hopeless,
Swayum went to sit in the backseat of his Ford Taurus. He stretched out his
legs on the seat, rolled up all the windows of the car and dialed his brother's
phone number on his cell phone. Over the next fifteen minutes Swayum explained
to Reyansh that he sucked for not turning up at Rhea's funeral. He told him
something of Rhea and how he coped with her loss. He told him that he had
chanced to reunite with an old friend from college called Sharon and how she
became his best friend but she ended up falling in love with him. His lips
played host to a very light but heartfelt smile when his elder brother informed
him that he had one hell of a life.
"This is the part where I either say I'm flying down to town or you come over
here to unload a gun in my brain, right?" Reyansh confirmed and his brother
answered in the positive. Five minutes later, Swayum was on his way to his
apartment, considering different ways of breaking the news to his father. The
possibility that Reyansh may visit them soon was not going to go down well
between any of the Shikhawats.
Edited by epiphany. - 10 years ago
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