“I’ll Call You”

He left her with a light peck on the forehead. “I’ll call you”, he promised. She smiled and nodded at him, understanding perfectly well that he wouldn’t; they both knew it the previous night when he went home with her. Stories of his lifestyle generally preceded him. As he walked away from her apartment, he could feel her looking at his back from where she sat at the window, and he kept walking.

Since he had quit his job 3 years back, every day was a new beginning for him. He had worked like a dog for over 6 years after his marriage to secure the future of his family which he intended to begin after he was sure he could provide nothing less than the best for them. He intended to be able to give them all his time and attention. He intended, without giving any thought to what she would want.

“I’m back”, he said to his wife as he shut the door behind him. “I was with Suzanne last night. I told you about her, right? Nice girl; sounded very lonely. She spent a long time talking about how distant her husband felt. I was thinking about you through the whole time. Is that how I made you feel? You know I didn’t mean it, right? That’s exactly what I told her.” He opened the refrigerator and grabbed a beer. “Don’t make that face”, he said. “I am not drinking with lunch. I’m drinking before lunch.” He winked lightly at her and opened his beer.

“I told her to try communicating with her husband. Tell him about how she felt. Maybe the idiot is just as clueless as I was with you. I know she won’t talk about it, but hell, I told her at least.”

In the evening, he sat alone at a party glancing around. At the bar, he noticed a woman looking his way. As he walked purposefully towards her, he overheard a conversation at the next table. “This is exactly what I was telling you. No wonder his wife had to do that. Which woman would be able to take her husband behaving like this?” He turned and smiled at them, slightly nodded his head and proceeded to join the woman at the bar.

Next morning, as he returned home, all he could think of was the conversation from the previous night. He wasn’t angry, just amused. He couldn’t wait to talk to his wife about it. “You know I would never cheat on you, right? I love you way too much for that. Just wish I could have shown it in a better way.” He glanced her way and smiled, knowing that she could now see what he felt about her.

He would never forget that morning 3 years back even for a second of his life. He knew his wife was suffering from depression, he knew he should have been there with her as he had promised he would be. He honestly intended to. The vacation he had planned for them was just 2 weeks away. But he returned home in the morning after working all night only to find her sleeping and, hopefully, at peace.

She left this world a lonely woman, waiting to be loved and valued. The love that he failed to show couldn’t hold her back in this world. After she was gone, he realised that there were a lot of women like her, who had found affection but the appreciation was lost. He tried to make every girl he met feel a little more loved, admired and desired. This was for her.

"I’ll call you” were his last words to her. He hadn’t.

Picture taken from https://shardsofsilence.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/aping-love/sunset-couple-silhouette/

An Apple A Day

She poured out her regular cup of strong tea and lightly sniffed at it. But it was more out of habit as her ability to smell had weakened with the appearance of greys. She sat heavily with the cup by the window that overlooked the street. While she sat calmly sipping on the tea, everyone on the street passed her by in a blur of movement. There was urgency in every step, a fear in every eye. They were all blind to her withered old structure in the dilapidated construction; their only concern was moving ahead, their eyes only looked upward in the search of a heaven.

She was growing restless by now. Then the doorbell rang. She smiled and gently dragged her tired feet to the door. The young postman smiled, “Sorry grandma, there were a lot of letters to be delivered today.” She smiled affectionately and led him to the old dining table. As the young boy set down his bag and retrieved the letter addressed to her, she neatly started cutting the apples kept on the table.

The postman squinted at the letter, “Your son’s writing is becoming more illegible by the day.” The woman let out a hearty laughter, “Of course, he has become a doctor now.” “It is just the usual. He is fine. So is his wife. Their child misses your stories. He will come to meet you soon.” The woman gave a weary smile as she placed the chopped apples on a platter and passed them to the boy. “Don’t mind grandma but I have been reading out these letters to you every single day from almost a year. It is always the same. But never have I seen your son or his wife visiting you.” The woman stared out of the window for a long while as though wishing an answer to fly past. After what seemed like ages, she looked back at the boy and said, “But you will come, won’t you? You will come whenever a letter has my address on it. You will come when you get married. Your children will listen to my stories if not my own grandchildren.” She looked at him with such intense expectation that he just smiled, unable to speak.

As he picked up his bag, ready to leave, the woman glanced at the full plate. “Take those apples home, son. They are for you.” The boy looked at the plate and forced another smile. He gingerly picked up a couple of pieces leaving the rest on the plate and walked out. The woman took her place at the window as the young postman rushed out of the date in a hurry, pausing only to shove the apple pieces into the dustbin.

The woman’s thoughts zoomed back 8 years in time when her son and daughter-in-law walked out of the same house with her grandchild in their arms, vowing never to return back to her stifling presence. She felt a sudden pang of loneliness as she wrote yet another letter to herself. She had to take immense effort to ensure that the tears didn’t roll down on the letter, so that the young boy wouldn’t have any problems understanding the address.

The evening was spent in cooking her son’s favourite food and watching fatigued people return home to their families from that window. Before she retired to a night of fitful sleep, there was one last chore to complete. She wiped a stray tear as she laid fresh and ripe apples on the table.

Grey Past

Forgetting is the greatest boon granted to man. But like a lot of things in life, we don’t realize the importance of something we have. But she did realize the importance; and this realization lasted every moment of her waking hours. Her past haunted her, quite literally so.

She didn’t remember when it all started; but whoever she could remember entering her life in any way was there, right before her eyes. They appeared from thin air at their own will and then disappeared into nothingness. A horde of grey silhouettes followed and surrounded her everywhere. Her first boyfriend, the man who left her on their wedding day, her illegitimate daughter, her dead best friend, the little girl whose father she had wrongly fired from his job, they were all there. They stared at her through the fog that they were engulfed in, said things to her, mouthed foul words. They also sometimes gently advised her; advices that she never took. She never let too many people come close to her, she never let too many people enter her life because once they entered, they never left.

As a child, she often told her mother about the strange scary people surrounding her, waking her up in the middle of the night. She never understood why her mother couldn’t see them; they were all right in front of her! It hurt her tremendously that her own mother didn’t believe her, she was sweetly told to stop asking for so much attention. When she still wouldn’t give up on insisting that she didn’t lie, she was beaten into silence. She then stopped mentioning it to anyone and lived her entire life in the presence of those silhouettes. They watched her smile, tears, laughter, anguish, disappointment. She never had any emotion for herself, never a moment alone.

Foul language, curses and abuses didn’t really affect her. She had heard a lot of them to reach where she was right now and she didn’t regret that. But having abuses hurled at you during every waking moment is not quite an amusing feeling. She was now a tired woman and so she decided to talk things out with her constant companions. Her past came back to life, not that it had ever completely left her anyway. She realized how many mistakes she had made in life, how many things she had lost just because she didn’t talk things out. She didn’t regret anything; she wouldn’t change anything in her life even if she had the chance now. But speaking things out with her past helped her greatly. She saw her life from numerous eyes.

She lay on the hospital bed all day leaving only to use the bathroom. Bland, tasteless, love deprived food was brought to her thrice a day. No one came to visit her but she didn’t even need anyone else now. She was at peace with her past.

Someone knocked at the door and a pretty young nurse entered with her lunch. “Good morning Mrs. Johnson”, she said nervously. “I am Samantha. I have joined just today. I’ll be your new caretaker now. Hope you’ll be comfortable with me”, she recited the previously rehearsed line and left the room. Mrs. Johnson smiled as Samantha joined her at her bedside, now engulfed in grey mist.

Immortal

She struggled to untie the ropes cutting into her wrists. Her legs were bleeding by now. She looked around trying to squint through the darkness but it looked as if she was locked up in a void. There was an eerie silence all around her. She was suddenly blinded for a moment as a spotlight flashed on her. She instinctively smiled for a moment. Just then, the ground beneath her gave way and she shrieked as she fell deep into the darkness but no one heard her; she didn’t hear herself. There was just a creepy silence.

She woke up with a start, drenched in sweat. Looking around her empty house, a quick tear escaped her eyes and, not wanting o leave her alone again, clung on to her curled lashes. Scared that it might smudge her mascara, she rushed to the mirror grabbing a tissue on way. She quickly dabbed her eyes dry and gazed at the wrinkled face staring back at her. Through all the makeup, you could still make out the beauty that she must have been. Colours, glitz, glamour, camera flashes, she had it all. People of the opposite sex, irrespective of their age, swooned over her. One look at her was all they ever wanted. When she smiled, she left people wondering if anything in the world was more enchanting than her. Her eyes looked like they held a million secrets; and millions would give their lives to know even one of them. Her long lashes fluttered lightly in the breeze.

She never had anyone in her life; she didn’t need anyone, she had the entire world at her beck and call. Her life revolved around her fans and admirers, and theirs around her. Many came to her professing undying love, but it was something she believed she deserved as a right from everyone. All her joy was centered on the applause and appreciation that she received after every movie. Her relationships failed but the fact didn’t bother her because she knew she would never be alone. She knew it all…

She slowly lost everyone and everything as her beauty faded. Her weak smile made people look at her sympathetically with reminiscence of how she enchanted everyone when she was a diva. Her eyes had wrinkles around them that brought loneliness along. She did not need surgeries, she did not need enhancements; she was an eternal beauty as everyone proclaimed and she prided herself for that. But tonight, realization dawned on her as she finally comprehended the truth – it was all over. She had lived her life for people, for crowds; now the empty house troubled her. She had to do it tonight.

She lay, undressed in fragrant water filled with rose petals in her spacious bathtub. Aroma candles flickered as they cast a dim light over her lifeless face complete with makeup. She could suddenly see a burst of light as the spotlight focused on her again. She waited for the rainbow that would take her back again to the life of applause. She didn’t kill herself; she just moved to another world where she could entertain and be loved again.