The coast is a medley of strangers surfing just in time before the season soars and monsoon eats away the shore. Looking over the menu at Le Forris, you recede into the quicksand of your mind and do not hear me arrive. This place has always been low lit and barely ever full. I am bad with greetings and worse at announcing my presence. I clear my throat. You break away from your trance, drink in my ghastly sight and smile.

“Sorry for calling you,” you apologize but do not sound penitent. I tell you not to worry about it. You twist the wedding ring on your finger; it has become loose. Perhaps, you should get rid of it, but I take too long to form an answer and the moment passes.

“I am leaving tomorrow,” you speak quickly. “What should I tell our—my family?”

“The truth.”

Slowly, you mimic my words. “The truth,” you say it back. I am half embarrassed at the pomposity of my words. I can hear their hollowness, now that the words hang in the air without meaning.

“Make it believable,” I add gingerly. You give me a nonchalant smile.

“How is Ashish?” you pronounce each syllable carefully, mindful of not losing any, as if it was not your idea to name him after my dead brother.

“Good.” I am careful with my words as well. “Joe is helping around. He has a play coming up at school. Guess what his role is?”

“What?”

“Barrister.”

“What is it with you and barristers?” you laugh and suddenly, the discomfort fades, we are twenty-five again.

We had met at this diner; it was my favorite respite after classes. Ahead, the sea gurgled with the evening tide when I caught you stealing glances at me before you went surfing with your friends. You surfed for three hours that day, and later told me how you did not want to leave before I did, waiting for one divine moment of privacy when you could come and ask me out. But I was surrounded by my girlfriends and only when the coast guard announced that they were closing for the day did you muster the courage to approach me. You could barely walk back to the car, your feet wrinkled from the salty saturation.

“Do you remember, Snehal?” I ask.

You straighten your back, shaking your head at my reverie. “That was not our first meeting. We met at Borkhapara Fun Fair, remember? The one they decided to organize in July instead of December?” you try to convince me of a non-existent memory. Your conviction baffles me, puts me in a vortex that refuses to topple. I try hard to reconstruct everything that has led up to your account of our first date, but I fail.

“Snehal, I did not live in India. The only time I went there was right after our wedding,” I try to dissuade your memory. “Remember how I could barely follow up with the post-nuptial rituals?” I realize my memory confuses you more, and you slowly bite the inside of your cheeks, afraid of making another glitch in your recollection.

“Anyways, here are the keys,” you slide me the keys of our first house, the one you are leaving me as a “gift,” or so you say. We had once built it together, hoping to create a world devoid of all things grim. We chose the suburb, because the city was suffocating for you. Your illness was an illusion that we expected would vanish with the change of air. It did not. Your episodes, as you liked to call them, became frequent. Doctors, medicines, even a priest could not help. There was nothing I could do against the malevolence which became your given. I take the keys and they jingle as I push them into my purse.

“Here, sign these.” I take out the papers, signing which, you will officially transfer Ahsish’s custody to Joe and me.

“So, this is it. We are done, finally,” you say as you sign them. Your voice breaks and you sound defeated. I force a smile as tears well up in the corner of my eyes.

“Thanks. I wish we had more time together. I wish we had the chance at growing old together,” I cannot contain my words and they loom thick between us.

For another month, I delay visiting our suburban house. When I finally decide to go, it is on the pretext of collecting all of Ashish’s photographs from when he was a toddler. Here, the hallowing wind is a familiar phenomenon, especially around this time of the year. I pull up my SUV next to the only convenience store in the vicinity. A new owner has taken over the store. He tells me how, in the last couple of years, many people have left the suburb, mostly because the cliffs have become unpredictable. Last year, a rockslide buried ten teenagers who were out hiking. The sea has stood sentry to the tumult, bemoaning the inevitable predicament of the impulsive highlands. I asked him about John, the former owner of the store. The grocer scratches his head, saying, “John? I don’t think I’ve heard that name.”

“It was a different name perhaps,” I say back, fighting back my urge to pry. I still remember John’s warm, familiar smile, his kindness. He was more than a grocer; he made sure everyone in the vicinity was safe. In fact, he was the one who called the medical team the day you were taken to the therapy center. He was the one who stayed back that night, outside, on the porch, guarding our house and us. Yet, this man tells me he never knew John.

“No, there has never been anyone else,” he adds, offended that I still thought there had been a different seller. I nod, unwilling to argue. The impending excursion to our house leaves me no vigor, the thought as precarious as this predicament. I excuse myself, shielding my recollections from falling apart any more.

The pavement to your now vacated house sits in the boscage of purple bachelor’s buttons. The grass gleans, snaking their foot long blades through the air. I stomp over broken bricks, peppered unevenly over the driveway leading up to the stairs. It takes me three aggressive twists to unlock the rusty knob of your door. Your house looks acutely macabre for something vacated only a month ago.

What once used to be our living room is now a moldy lodging for pests. Rats feed on the couch, scurrying into corners the moment I pull away the cushions. The divan stands at the same ugly spot, making an odd angle with the table. You had turned the furniture into this strange scaffolding, preparing the room for Ashish to crawl. The cockroaches in the sink, startled at my uninvited presence, fly and fan out over the coffee table. Everything concurs into an exposition drafted in the mayhem that our shared life was, ready to haunt me one last time. What kind of alimony is this? Why has the onus of cleaning after you always been mine?

At the other end of the hallway, the bedroom is affronting. I am a little surprised to find it exactly how it was the day we left. The unmade bed, your desk floored with stationery, my dressing mirror broken at the rims, and the dented almirah are ghosts of the past conjuring before me, laughing at my resentment and grief. The almirah has started to rust, its iron surface corroding the white paint, exposing blots of black. I skim my fingers on the dent formed by the enormity of my head slamming against it. You were worn out of your sobriety and had decided it was appropriate to violently project your displeasure at my infidelity.

I open it and I am ensnared by the familiar smell. I dig my nose into one of your shirts and inhale your waning fragrance; holding my breath briefly for breathing out would mean losing you again. I gulp on the knot that tightens around my throat and it hurts. Once I gather my strength to breathe you out, my eyes fall on the copper-tinted vanity box your mother sent as a keepsake. Inside, I find a bundle of photographs, wrapped in a transparent plastic bag. I recognise some of them, especially those taken in your childhood. I take my time and look through the pictures, and it hits me.

You have the widest grin in the polaroid I hold. Clinging onto a friend’s neck, you point towards the camera. Behind you, a Ferris wheel is on display, a queue of passengers waiting excitedly for their turn. To the left, far behind, is a series of makeshift shops where people are examining overpriced wares. Out of all the candid faces, mine stands out. I am holding a painting and smiling at the vendor. A sage green salwar kameez is my outfit. I flip the photograph to look at the date the photo was taken: 5^th July, 1990. The location is Borkhapara, Assam and the occasion is a fun fair.

There are a dozen others, likewise perplexing. I see you with Ashish, my brother. Both of you are either playing cricket, or are at the movies, or eating at roadside stalls, or hiking on the terrains of Meghalaya. Each photograph is annotated and, from what I can gather, they are from the early ‘90s, much before you came to England, before we met and collided.

At home, you were an incomprehensible mystery, a jigsaw puzzle undone. “You do not see, Aru. You do not,” these were your last words before rehab. “Tumi pagol, Snehal. You are mad.” I accused you of fabricating lies about my brother’s death, of trying to kill our son in your unhinged frenzy. “I was protecting him, Aru. Please, trust me,” you pleaded as they tied you to a wheelchair, a vial of anesthesia jabbed into your arm. “He has come for you… from the other world.” And you trailed off.

The only person we needed protection from was you, Snehal. Your sickness at seeing, feeling, believing things that never existed. You grew fanatical, you manipulated us, camouflaging your rancid obsessions with the veneer of love. My brother had evaporated in a car explosion, his body churning into smoke before we could trace him, yet, you spoke of him as though he were alive.

As soon as I reach my apartment, I rummage through my drawers, digging out the photo albums from my college days. I spread them over my desk and I see you. It is summer. I am at Le Forris, dining with my girlfriends. The diner is lit with dandelion fairy lights. You are sitting at the table adjacent to us, raising a toast, cheering at another camera.

A memory resurfaces. On the day of our wedding, my mother had summoned me, going over and over about the anomalies that bind us, bring us together. She talked about choices, especially the one I made. She spoke to me in jargon—or that was what I heard—for I could not comprehend her. “We are consequences. Every decision we make is our true north, at least in this world. Nothing happens otherwise. Stick to it, will you?” I agreed with her, nodding my approval. For another seven years, I allowed love to override common sense. I stayed, cosplaying the accomplice to your gnawing violence, entombing my anxieties into an paraphernalia of antidepressants until love lost the fight. Devoid of love, our union looked obnoxious.

I pick the photograph, bring it closer to my eyes. The lump in my throat morphs into a stone. I fling the picture away and it swirls before coming to a rest at my feet. My hands shake as I dial your Indian phone number.

A woman picks up the call.

“Is… Is this Snehal Gogoi’s place?” my throat hurts as I ask.

“Baideo? Oh, baideo.” The lady seems to recognise my voice. She sighs.

“I just want to speak to—”

“Why did you not inform us? Twelve years… twelve years we tried contacting you, communicated with the Indian embassy, too, but there was no response. Jyoti bou even went to England but she could not find you. Oh, Aru baideo, the thoughts we had! We assumed you were dead!”

“I’m sorry, Jyoti who?”

“Why, your daughter-in-law. Ashish baba’s wife.”

“What?” My world swoons.

“You said you would call once you reached England after Snehal dada’s funeral. Why did you not call, baideo?”

My son steps into my room. “How do I look, Ma?” he asks, flaunting a tuxedo I bought him for his school play. His eyes mirror the emerald of my brother’s as they glint in the dying daylight. All I can do is smile, raising a thumb. I see Joe opening the door, leading Ashish out for the evening, leaving me alone to deal with all the anomalies undone. 

What did you do? I hear a listless whisper of my mother’s rage.

Why did you not stick to your decision? Don’t you know what happens to people like you? You suffer.

“Hello! Baideo? Are you there?” the phone screeches and disconnects.

AUTHOR BIO
AUTHOR BIO
AUTHOR BIO
AUTHOR BIO

ILLUSTRATOR BIO
ILLUSTRATOR BIO
ILLUSTRATOR BIO
ILLUSTRATOR BIO