THE RUSTLE OF THE PAST

Breathe slow, I tell myself as I enter my room in the hotel. A waiter comes to say that dinner is served in the dining room. I thank him and ask him not to disturb me. Breathe slow, I tell myself and breathe deep. I want to be alone with sounds of the past, the rustle of the past.

What’s to be done? This is what is known as shock, isn’t it? Something sprung on you, and the sad part is you recognize the soil it has jumped from. You sit beside your past, or in our case, your husband’s past, which coils around you and leaves its rope-burn for a lifetime. Why should his past be mine? Why must I be burdened? You steal money from someone who had himself stolen from the tax payer—theft from a thief. Even if he had got the dollars from a foreign firm, it was at the country’s expense. But why am I thinking of Budhiraja? Thought should follow a straight line, should not get diverted like a river in a tangle at the estuary. The trouble is I can reach back to this past, feel it, touch it—it is no longer his alone. I have been a part of it—Zurich and Swiss Air and boarding pass, he brought me the Mallorca Pearls, remember, sold on the plane, can picture an eager arm, Nishant’s arm reaching for it, air hostess smiling compassionately perhaps, as she bills him and counts the franks. I can’t get around this easily. I belong to these frayed years, I am there, clinging to one of its tassels.

How do I go on? You move against the current. But this current has already smeared you, not just skin but also entrails. I can imagine people sneering at me and him. Won’t do. No salmon can fling itself against this kind of a current.

The future is a door ajar—to light or murk, I wouldn’t know. I have to decide, must I always shuffle my life between him and me? Always, till death do us part?