When I first saw you, I was already your wife.
You looked at me and asked, very gently, “Are you happy?”
I nodded at once. I do not know whether it was courage or fear that moved my head. Then I said what girls are expected to say, what sounds proper, what keeps the room steady: “I agreed to this marriage. No one forced me.”
You smiled, but there was something searching in your eyes. “Girls in our society do not always choose the boy,” you said softly. “Most of the time, they choose their parents’ choice. You had never seen me before.”
I lowered my eyes. You were right. I had never seen you.
And yet, I had.
I had heard my father’s voice from behind a half-closed door, speaking of your nature, your work, your family, the kind of man you were. From those scattered words, I had made a face in my mind. In the silent privacy of my dreams, I had already met you many times.
And when I finally looked at you, I felt a strange stillness inside me.
You were no different from the man I had imagined.
I wanted to tell you that. I wanted to say that somewhere, without ever knowing your face, I had already begun waiting for you.
But my lips did not move.
That first night after marriage, I closed my eyes before sleep could come. I wanted to know what kind of man enters a room where a new bride waits in silence. I wanted to know whether kindness can walk softly.
You came in quietly, as though even your footsteps did not wish to trouble me. You stood beside me for a moment. I could feel it without seeing. Then you pulled the blanket over me with such care that my heart trembled more than my hands had all day. After that, you lay down a little distance away, giving me all the space my shyness needed.
In the darkness, I kept my breathing even, pretending to sleep. Inside, something irreversible had already happened.
That night, without a word from me, I fell in love with you.
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Then life came, as it always does, without warning.
My parents died in an accident. The world became suddenly smaller and more frightening. In all that grief, one thought beat inside me louder than the others: Bapu. My little brother. What would happen to him now?
Before I could ask, before I could even gather my fear into words, you came home with him. You stood near the door and said simply, “Meenu, Bapu will stay with us.”
As if there had never been any other possibility.
I turned my face away and closed my eyes, not because I did not want to look at you, but because I could not let you see what your goodness was doing to me. When I opened them again, you had already left for the office.
That was your way.
You never stood around to be thanked.
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When I was pregnant, you took one month’s leave to care for me. Even now I wonder if my own mother, had she been there, could have watched over me more patiently. You remembered medicines, food, rest, doctor visits, prayers. You lied to me when you had to, only to make me eat a little more or worry a little less.
And in the labor room, when pain made me forget breath, forget prayer, forget even myself, I heard later that you stood outside folding your hands before God like a helpless child.
When you entered the room after the twins were born, I thought you would rush to them first. I had almost prepared a smile for that moment.
Instead, you came to me and asked, “How are you feeling?”
Not “Are the babies fine?”
Not “What did the doctor say?”
Just, “How are you feeling?”
I cannot explain why that question hurt and healed me at the same time.
Love rose to my throat that day. It rose fully, urgently, wanting finally to become words. But before I could speak, you had turned toward the babies, your face lit up with wonder, and the moment folded itself away.
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Years passed. We raised children, solved problems, counted expenses, welcomed guests, attended ceremonies, endured ordinary days that only later reveal themselves as precious. Somewhere in those years, I kept thinking there would be time. Time to say what lived quietly inside me. Time to place in your hands all the words I had saved.
Then illness came to me.
First, the kidney. Then the heart.
You took me to AIIMS as if there was no question, no hesitation, no fear allowed to show itself on your face. Later, I learned what you had done for my treatment. You sold the village land. You sold the only plot in Bhubaneswar. Property that had taken years to gather left your hands in days, and at a price that would have made anyone else grieve.
But not you.
You became thinner while I lay in bed. Your eyes sank deeper. Your shirts began to hang loosely. Still, whenever you stood before me, you spoke as though everything was under control. As though my life was not costing you sleep, land, money, strength, and perhaps more than all of these together.
One night in the hospital, you sat by my bed and held my hand.
“Do not worry, Meenu,” you said. “If nothing can be done here, I will take you to America.”
America.
As if oceans were nothing. As if money could be pulled out of the air. As if your own life was a thing of no value beside mine.
I wanted to protest. I wanted to say, “No, enough. Think of the children. Think of yourself. Why must everything be spent on me?”
But your hand tightened around mine only a little, and then you tucked the blanket around me, the same way you had on our first night, and said, “Sleep for some time.”
So I slept with tears trapped behind my eyes.
I recovered there, in AIIMS itself. On the way back to Bhubaneswar, Bapu told me in a low voice about the land and the plot, about how quickly everything had been sold and for how little. He spoke with pain. I listened with something heavier than pain.
For the first time in all those years, I decided I would speak.
I turned to you and said, “I am sorry.”
Even now that memory stings.
Not because the words were false, but because they were too small. Too cold. Too far from what I meant. You had given me a lifetime of quiet devotion, and I had answered with apology.
What I had really wanted to say was this:
That love, for me, was never thunder.
It was the sound of your careful feet in a dark room.
It was a blanket drawn over me before I could ask.
It was my brother standing safely beside you.
It was your tired face outside a hospital room.
It was your hand on my cheek, and the peace that followed.
It was knowing your perfume before you entered the house, knowing your presence before your voice arrived.
It was the strange way fear left me whenever you were near.
It was the life I learned simply by watching you live yours.
It was the truth that, somewhere along the years, my idea of home had taken your shape.
I wanted to tell you all this.
But by then, you had turned toward the window, and later, during the train journey, you had fallen asleep on the upper berth, carrying your weariness where I could not reach it.
And once again, the words remained with me.
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Yesterday, people came to see my granddaughter, Neethu, for marriage. Because of my health, I did not sit with them. In the evening, she came to me as she always does, not just as a granddaughter, but as someone to whom I can speak without arranging my thoughts first.
To tease her, I asked, “So, whom will you marry? Is there someone already in your mind? Tell me. I will speak to your father.”
She laughed, that fearless laugh only young girls have, and said, “Don’t worry about me, Grandma. I have already chosen someone. I already told him I love you.”
My heart gave a small, foolish start.
“Who?” I asked.
Without the slightest pause, she said, “Grandpa.”
Then she jumped up and shouted from where she stood, “Grandpa, I love you!”
And from downstairs came your thin but familiar voice, carrying age and mischief together: “Love you, darling!”
For a moment, I could not speak.
I sat there, stunned by how lightly she had crossed a distance I had spent half a century circling around. I laughed, but inside that laughter there was shame, tenderness, wonder, and something that felt almost like envy.
How strange that one small sentence could frighten me more than illness, more than childbirth, more than loss.
How strange that I had lived so much of my life inside love and still stood outside its simplest expression.
I looked at Neethu.
“Can you do one thing for me?” I asked.
She bent toward me at once. “Anything.”
I looked down at my hands, suddenly young in their nervousness, and said in a voice that barely belonged to me, “Can you tell your Grandpa… that I love him? For me?”
She smiled, but this time she did not laugh. Very softly, she pressed my cheek.
Then she ran to the staircase and shouted with all the joy in her heart, “Grandpa! Grandma is saying she loves you!”
And before the house could return an answer, I heard footsteps on the stairs.
Not hurried.
Not slow.
Known footsteps.
Coming closer.
My heart began to beat like that first night again.
He is coming.
And this time, before silence can save me, before shyness can hide me, before another year slips away unnoticed, I will say it myself.
I love you.
3 comments:
Theme and background is quite gud....the way u started the story...the way u end the story...is gud...
Writing style is quite simple...it doesnot give me a feeling so that i can say....Yahoooooooooooooo.....In comparison with ur previous blog "shadow" and "Pearl" this post is not that interesting.let me give u a rating....6 out of 10....hehhheehheh
interesting.. so simple a plot, n beautifully run.. :)
Really a touching story of our Mom & Granny. We should follow their path..:-)
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