Rajiv and I were of a similar age and both of us had not faced a situation such as this one before. Yet, I could understand how he might have been feeling. Choosing to stay silent, I ambled to kitchen and boiled water for tea.
“What is the matter?” I asked.
He was still fuming. He did not say a word and kept looking down at the floor.
“What is with you?” I continued to ask, intrigued by the sudden burst of anger, and started to flip through a daily newspaper, left a while ago by a local distributor.
“My mother is getting married,” he said after a brief hiatus. The confession nearly shocked me as I diverted my attention to Rajiv. I couldn’t think of any right, proper words I could use at the precise moment to communicate with him, and hence waited for Rajiv to resume the talk.
“I had gone to surf the Internet and found out through one of my relatives that my mother is getting married later this month,” he said with a sudden glum expression on his face. I knew about the terrible accident that had cost his father’s life some three years ago. A year after the tragedy, his mother had won a lottery and had shifted to the United States of America as an immigrant.
“Are you angry because of the fact that she is getting married or because you discovered the fact through your relative and not her?” I asked not realising that the question might irk him. It did, as he had looked exasperated by my query.
“I know it is difficult for her alone and that too when she is abroad. But, I can’t believe that she is getting married,” he said, while his face remained buried in his palms. Rajiv and I were of a similar age and both of us had not faced a situation such as this one before. Yet, I could understand how he might have been feeling. Choosing to stay silent, I ambled to kitchen and boiled water for tea.
I came back to the room with tea and found Rajiv smoking a cigarette. Passing the cigarette over to me, he started sipping tea.
“As you said, the more disturbing thing is that she did not inform me in person. I should have been the first person to know this thing,” he said, as he distorted his mouth to make swirling billows of smoke that were now heading towards the ceiling in a remarkably circular form.
When I said that his mother might call him anytime to let him know about her decision, he laughed an instant laugh, one that had more elements of mockery in it than humour. A few minutes later, I was in the kitchen again, making egg curry this time, the kind he liked. I had to placate him the best way I could. I was not so formidable with advice or words, and hence decided to please him with my culinary skills. Before washing the rice, I threw a glance at him from kitchen. He was staring at a picture in the frame that lied on his table. It was of his mother and his late father. His face looked sombre, and it looked as though tears would trickle down his eyes any moment. But they didn’t. He took the frame in his hands, touched it for a while and wiped the layer of dirt that had accumulated through the tail end of the shirt he was wearing. By the time he lit another cigarette, the meal was ready. Rajiv now looked calmer than he did a couple of hours earlier.
“The meal is ready, shall we eat?” I asked him to which he nodded.
“How would you have reacted if you were in my position?” Rajiv asked while we both were eating silently. The question was abrupt, but perhaps relevant. I gulped the food, drank water and said, “I am not quite sure how I might have reacted, but it is her life and she should be the one who makes this decision for her. If you are asking me if she made the right decision, then I would say yes for she is not that old, and it is good for both of you.”
He nodded and continued to eat.
“It would have been better had she told you earlier about what she was planning to do,” I said.
“She might have been worried about how I would react to the situation,” he tried to console himself as he said these words. The afternoon passed as usual Saturday afternoons do. Rajiv and I read newspapers and magazines, and take a quick nap on Saturdays, and we did all of these things on that particular Saturday as well. The only difference was perhaps Rajiv’s state of mind as he was yet to fully reconcile with the fact that his mother was getting married again. I was about to head to the kitchen when Rajiv’s phone rang. It was his mother. He picked up and, unlike the other times, went inside his room. Almost 15 minutes later, he emerged from his room looking stoic. He seldom gave away anything with his expressions.
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
“Do you have any work this evening?” He threw a question at me without answering my query.
“No, nothing.”
“Let’s go outside for dinner tonight,” his face gleamed all of a sudden as he floated the proposal. And later, during the dinner, he confided that he actually did not care about what his mother did or whom she married. All Rajiv cared about was the money his mum sent him every month. “She said she will increase my monthly imbursement, and that is what matters to me,” I was looking at him in surprise as he looked at me, amused.
- Kumar Sharma
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