By Ashvani Sachdev
Vijay felt a mild wave of euphoria brush over his brow as he unhurriedly decanted a generous swig of Jack Daniels into his inviting oesophagus. As his head tilted back, he felt that the star speckled Bangalore sky was inviting him to say something…..anything! His cane chair, snuggling under an overhang on histerrace, had provided him succour for many, many years. He closed his eyes, his head lolling on the chair’s back as old memories played hopscotch in his whiskey-soaked mind.
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Vijay had been madly in love with the Ria he had courted (and married) but, as they changed gears from honeymoon to humdrum marital life, he was in for a numbing shock. The first tremor came in the early days when, realizing one day that he had forgotten his towel outside the toilet, he called out to her. She answered him from the kitchen with a grunt but did not show her face as he expected she would. Finally, after two more shouts, she did turn up but when he asked her to fetch him his towel, she replied, “I am not your servant!” and disappeared again, leaving him to his own devices. And to deal with an almost physical agony that drove him into a day of petulant sulk that Ria did nothing to assuage.
This behaviour gradually became the rule rather than the exception and he found it increasingly hard to accept her disregard for his sensitivities, often wondering how he had not noticed these traits during their eight weeks of courtship . The biggest problem was the way she spoke to him --- he found the tone insulting and overbearing. In the initial days he responded to Ria’s
venomous style of talking with a silence that he hoped would convey his displeasure adequately for her to change. When that did not work, he tried accosting her, which only made things worse as she dug her heels in and retorted in ever raising decibel levels until he backed off for fear the neighbours would hear them. She stubbornly refused to apologise for her
transgressions, or to indicate any intent to avoid them in the future, and he despaired at having to accept that as a lifelong state of affairs.
The thought of a break up nagged him whenever a conflagration --- invariably ignited by her way of speaking --- occurred. But he just could not bear the thought of parting with her. A part of his brain stubbornly held on to the persona he had courted, loved immeasurably, and in a playful courting ritual, named as Ragini. “Your laughter is a silvery melody that touches me deep inside every time I hear it. I am going to call you Ragini!” He had told her, while she coquettishly consented. But her silvery laughter did not last very long.
The first time he and Ria had a serious fight was a vivid memory. In a towering rage, he had come up to the terrace, carrying the cane chair in one hand and a Jack Daniels bottle in the other, and settled down to make an earnest attempt to get sozzled. It was the night that he made two startling discoveries: the first was that there was a tenuous distinction between inebriation and enlightenment (somewhat like the thin line between genius and madness): and the second was the realisation that he now had a bigamous relationship with Ria, a pronouncement he made to the stars the moment he received that enlightenment.
The third personage of his bigamous relationship was Ragini, who now appeared in Ria’s organic body very rarely, and was a fabrication of his imagination at all other times. When alone, his whole being longed for Ragini, and when Ria was around, he fervently wished that she would become Ragini, the girl he dreamt of in his waking hours.
Ragini was the girl he had loved and who would always be a soft, gentle, placid and peaceable icon in his mind. Since their marriage however, Ragini was rarely on display. Only when she was in a real good frame of mind would Ria deport herself like the girl he had fallen in love with and nicknamed Ragini. But preponderantly, she was Ria, with noxious manners, virulent speech demeanor, and spiteful behaviour --- at least with Vijay.
A liberal ingestion of Jack Daniels one night on the terrace after a massive fight with Ria, he realized in a epiphany that Ragini loosely translated to melody, a synonym of ‘air’ which was ‘Ria’ spelt backwards; he had a fleeting moment of mirth when he saw the link --- Ragini was Ria’s antithesis!
She could be an epitome of suave sophistication when she was with her friends, he had noticed. But with him, she largely remained vitriolic in her disposition. On some days, his subconscious mind considered suicide and fantasised about how she would miss him when he was gone. At other times, he day dreamed about life after a split up with Ria --- the freedom from her dominating and menacing presence. The short periods --- a day or two at the most --- when she did return to her Ragini avatara, was what kept him from taking some drastic step. During those days his mind thought of her as Ragini; he made an effort to make eye and body contact, kissed her a chirpy “Good Morning” on waking up, and wanted to be with her all the time. But when she was Ria, he hated even being in the same room with her, maintained silence in her presence, studiously avoided eye contact even when a rare verbal exchange took place between them.
Vijay’s life had thus become an animated suspension with uncharted possibilities ahead of him: suicide, divorce, separation, violent fights……..when providence intervened. He was at work when his mobile showed an incoming call from her. Moving out of his co workers’ earshot, he took the call, not really looking forward to being subjected to her usual, foul mouthed talk. It was a male voice; identifying himself as a policeman, he asked Vijay to come over to the police station as there had been an accident involving Ria’s car. His fears of the worst, planted by the policeman’s steadfast refusal to provide details of the accident, were confirmed when he reached the police station where a gurney with a white shrouded body lay in the corridor.
The next two days passed in a daze for Vijay…..every time a friend, relative or acquintance condoled Ria’s passing, his mind pined for Ragini. To his surprise, his brain very ingeniously
worked on erasing Ria from his memory while making him yearn for Ragini. And every time he thought of Ragini, there was the pain of her going away, but the memories were sweet; her face in his mind was the one he had courted and loved, her voice a silvery melody, her love for him a palpable sensation……His brain shut out the more recent Ria who had no love for him, nor he for her.
Cremation over, guests seen off, and the well meaning overtures of friends and relatives wanting to give him company to share his grief gratefully but politely turned down, he was finally alone……just him and Ragini.
***********
Vijay felt a mild wave of euphoria brush over his brow as he unhurriedly decanted a generous swig of Jack Daniels into his inviting oesophagus. As his head tilted back, he felt that the star speckled Bangalore sky was inviting him to say something…..anything! He closed his eyes and waited for Ragini to appear on his inward eye. Having satiated himself with her vision, he opened his eyes, looked at the stars and said, “Monogamous at last!”
By Ashvani Sachdev
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