Just as I was about to raise my hand to him, he caught my eye and smiled, and his gaunt face lit up. I rose as he approached my table.
“Harish,” he said, giving my hand a firm shake. “It has been too long.”
“Far too long,” I said with a broad smile as we took our seats.
Sameer was by our side before we could say much more. “Rahul, do me a favour and do tell Sameer here what we’ll be drinking tonight.”
“Just water for me, thank you,” Rahul said with a tight smile.
“You don’t drink?”
“No, I – I quit, actually.” “Ah, er –”
“No, please, go ahead! Don’t abstain on my account.”
“Well…all right then, Sameer, I’ll have a crack at that Sauvignon you mentioned.”
“Right away, sir.”
“How have you been?” I asked, turning my attention back to Rahul. He started to reply, then fell silent as Sameer returned with the bottle of wine. He waited, tightlipped, as I sampled the wine and nodded my approval.
“I’ve been all right,” he began, once the waiter was out of earshot.
“Still in touch with the old boys?”
“Not really,” he said. “You?”
“Rarely,” I said with a sigh as I sipped the wine. It was delicious.
“Harish, I –” Rahul started. “I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I… need your help.”
“Of course, yes, I was just about to ask why you wanted to meet. How can I help?”
“I don’t know who else to talk to,” he said, and to my horror, his voice shook a little.
“Is everything all right, Rahul?” I shifted in my seat. I recalled that something terrible had happened with him, but couldn’t for the life of me remember exactly what it was. But that was years ago, I reasoned with myself, as he composed himself to speak. How could I possibly help him now?
“Yes, things are all right – much better than they’ve been in a long time, actually,” Rahul said with a wan smile.
I looked at him, nonplussed.
Rahul took a deep breath and went on. “I… I want to get married.”
I stared. I couldn’t be sure, but I was fairly certain that Rahul was married.
“I’m not sure I understand, Rahul,” I said with a nervous smile.
“Of course, I – that was a bit presumptuous of me,” Rahul said. “I apologize.”
I sat back in my chair and waited, thoroughly confused.
“I don’t know if you heard,” Rahul began in a low voice. “But Padma…my wife…” He paused and took a sip of water.
So he had been married, I thought, my heart sinking. I suppose his wife…I couldn’t bring myself to complete the thought.
“She disappeared,” he said simply.
“What?”
“She disappeared,” he repeated.
“When? How?”
“I don’t know, Harish,” he said, his anguish writ large on his face. “It’s been several years.”
He fell silent and stared at the tablecloth. I knew I’d stirred up painful memories, but I was flabbergasted, and wholly uncertain about where I fit into the entire picture.
“Rahul?” I said after a few moments.
He started, and sighed. “I don’t know where to begin.”.
I looked around, unsure of how to proceed. I still couldn’t comprehend why he’d approached me, of all people.
“I’m sorry, perhaps this was a bad idea,” Rahul said, noting my discomfort.
“It’s all right,” I said with a bracing smile, although part of me wished he hadn’t called in the first place. Deciding to take initiative, I said, “Perhaps we’d be more comfortable speaking at my house?”
“Yes,” said Rahul, clearly relieved.
“Sameer,” I said, snapping my fingers. “The cheque, please.”
***
Half an hour later, we sat in my study in silence. I’d poured myself a stiff drink, and fixed Rahul a lemonade. He’d spoken little on the way, and I hadn’t pushed.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I reached out to you,” Rahul said.
“I can’t pretend otherwise,” I acknowledged. “I was rather looking forward to an evening reminiscing about the horrors of sixth grade,” I added with a grin.
He acknowledged my ice-breaker with a tilt of the head and lapsed into silence once more. My misgivings increased. What was I getting into?
“Do you have a copy of the Hindu Marriage Act?” Rahul asked, finally breaking the silence.
“Why, yes…” I said, perplexed, scanning my book cabinet. It was full of row after row of law books: commentaries, statutes and the like. I’d mostly practiced on the civil and commercial side, so most of the books had to do with property and company law. I had, however, advised on a few family matters, so I knew I had a copy of the HMA somewhere. Deciding to humour him for the moment, I began to rummage in the shelves. I’m ashamed to admit it, but by this time his odd story had piqued my curiosity, and more than anything else, I wanted to know what was to come next.
“Here it is,” I said, brandishing a copy after a few minutes.
“Can you flip to…Section 13(1)(vii) for me, please?”
Divorce. That’s all I remember about S. 13. I scanned the provision, and began to read aloud.
“A marriage can be dissolved by a decree of divorce on the ground that the other party…has not been heard of as being alive for a period of seven years or more by those persons…who would naturally have heard of it, had the party been alive…”
I trailed off as finished.
“Harish, I need a lawyer…and a friend.”
***
“24th August 2009. I’ll never forget the date. I’d just come home from work. Padma was away, in the mountains. Dharamshala. She took these trips often,” he added, seeing my raised eyebrow. “She was never a city person.”
“She went alone?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you mind?”
“No,” Rahul said, a warm glow on his face as he spoke. “Like I said, she’d always hated the city. She knew why we had to stay here – my job, the kids’ schools. But a week seldom went by without her speaking of the hills.”
“Had she grown up there?”
“Oddly enough, no,” Rahul said. “She’d just spent a few weeks in the hills every now and then, on holiday. But she fell in love with them like nothing else.”
He paused to take a sip of lemonade. The ice in my drink had melted, and I rose to fetch some more.
“Our lives trundled along while the kids were around,” he continued once I’d returned to my armchair. “But once they grew up and left home, she began to yearn for the mountains. I still had a good many years of work left, so I suggested that she start making trips on her own. She was reluctant at first, but agreed in the end. I did try to accompany her when I could, but my job kept me busy more often than not.”
I remained silent and waited for him to continue.
“That day,” he continued, his eyes glazing over, “It had been several hours since I’d heard from her. Her phone was switched off. I thought it was a connectivity problem, so I tried after every couple of hours, to no avail. I called the kids – they hadn’t heard from her, either.”
“And?”
“That was it,” he said, hanging his head. “I was never able to get through to her. I called the guest house where she’d told me she was staying, and they said she’d checked out a few days earlier.”
“What did you do next?”
“I did whatever I could,” he said, his tone evoking the helplessness he must have felt. “I rushed to Dharamshala. I filed an FIR, followed the police everywhere. Continued to carry out my own inquiries once they’d closed the case as inconclusive. Nobody had seen her, nobody had heard of her. She was gone, Harish. Disappeared without a trace.”
He buried his head in his hands. I gazed into my glass, unsure of what to do next.
“Rahul?” I said a
fter a few minutes, wondering whether I should go over to him. Thankfully, he looked up before I was compelled to take any action.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’ll never be able to forgive myself for sending her by herself like that.”
“Come now, you couldn’t have known….”
“Known what, though?” he asked, unable to keep his distress out his voice. “Known that something terrible could have happened, or…”
I looked away, unable to meet his eye. I felt like we both knew that the likelihood of the unsaid alternative was far more than what he was able to bring himself to say.
“What torments me to this day,” he went on, “is just not knowing. She never surfaced. No accident, no body, nothing. I continued to scan the papers, the Internet, even kept a few contacts in Dharamshala. But I never heard of her after that day.”
“How long were you married?”
“Are,” he corrected me. “We’re still married,” he said with a faint smile.
“Right,” I said. And that’s where I come in.
“It’s been 26 years. 20 happy years,” he said, “And since then…” He sighed, rose, and walked over to the window.
“It was a love marriage, you know,” he said, gazing outside, the warmth returning to his voice. “We married in a hurry, and never looked back. We had everything we needed, and wanted for nothing. Did you ever marry?”
“No,” I said, relieved that he appeared to have regained a semblance of composure. “Came close a couple of times, but never found the right person.”
“I knew I had,” he said, his voice bristling with conviction. “Padma was everything I wanted. And I thought I was everything she wanted, too.”
“You don’t know what happened,” I said, my heart reaching out to him.
“Yes,” he said, turning around. “And now I guess I never will.”
I was silent for a moment, thinking back to my own sordid love affairs. I hadn’t come close to the depth of Rahul’s feeling in even one of them.
“What happened next?”
“I broke down,” he said, returning to his seat. “I stopped going to work. I barely noticed when they terminated my services. I took to drinking, I…” He stared at my glass with hungry eyes. I followed his gaze, embarrassed. I ought to have picked up on it when he said he’d quit.
“I became an alcoholic, Harish,” Rahul confessed, looking me in the eye. “I withdrew into my house, stopped speaking to anyone. And I drank myself into oblivion for weeks on end. My kids thought I’d gone mad, and offered to take me in, but I refused. I couldn’t leave that house. I liked to be around her, you know,” he said, and his eyes softened.
“Every evening, I’d take my bottle to her side of the bed and drink till I fell asleep. I didn’t care to live anymore, I really didn’t care…”
His pain reverberated throughout the room, unmistakable in its intensity. I was at a loss of words.
“That was when Parvati came into my life,” he went on.
“Parvati?”
“She was a good friend of ours. Lived a couple of blocks away. We knew her well…she’d never married either, just like you.” He paused, smiling. “Padma knew her better than I did, of course. All I remember is that one day…maybe about 6 months after I returned from Dharamshala, I woke up in the hospital and she was by my side.”
“Hospital?”
“Yes. She’d called on me, and found me unconscious outside my door. Drove me to Fortis herself,” he said, grinning. “She’s a strong one.”
He spoke of her with a fondness that colours one’s voice while speaking of a dear friend.
I glanced at the calendar. 16th August 2016. I finally understood my role in the entire affair.
“After the hospital episode, she virtually took me in. Ensured that I couldn’t get close to a drop. I was ungrateful…I even asked her to leave me alone. But she wouldn’t hear of it. She made sure I stayed with her for a few months, and nursed me back to health…and sanity.”
“She sounds like a formidable woman, if she could get you to quit drinking,” I said.
“It’s not like I didn’t try. I even tried to return to my house a couple of times. But she always brought me back, saying that she’d let me go when I was ready.”
“And when were you?”
“I don’t know… One fine day I finally came to my senses. Cleaned myself up, and went back to my company. They were kind to me, and found me a position. When I went back and told Parvati, she said I was ready. And I suppose I was.”
“So you went back home?”
“Yes…The first thing I did was flush all my alcohol down the toilet. I thought I might clean the place up a bit, change some things. To start afresh, you know? But I didn’t have the heart to. I left our room as it is and began sleeping in the guest room.”
“I suppose work helped,” I offered. “To start afresh.”
“Yes. Once the job began, life went slowly back to normal. I still perused the news, of course. But to be honest, once a year passed, I gave up hope.”
“And Parvati?”
“Well…” Rahul rose again, and began to pace. “I suppose we became a bit of a scandal,” he said, his voice harsh. “I didn’t care to understand what was happening. But she stayed around. Sometimes she stayed the night at my house. On bad days, I’d go to hers. Without my knowing it, she became an integral part of my day, my life.”
“Over so much time, I suppose it was inevitable.”
“I didn’t realize that so much time had passed!” Rahul said, as if I’d chastised him. “I didn’t know. I didn’t care to question anything, just went along with it. I suppose I needed her…but I didn’t stop to consider what I was doing, whether it was right or wrong…”
He paused, wringing his hands. “Occasionally I overheard the neighbours gossip. Oh, the things they said, Harish! The way they spoke of me, as if I was a dirty old man, as if my pain was no more than pretense. It stung…but I knew I wasn’t in the wrong, so I didn’t change anything.”
“Why don’t you sit down, Rahul, and tell me the rest calmly.”
“When my children found out,” Rahul continued, appearing not to have heard me, “They were…relieved. They even suggested that I marry Parvati. I thought they were no better than the neighbours, and scoffed at the idea.”
“But…?”
He looked around, startled, as if noticing my presence for the first time.
“But…” he continued softly. “Parvati asked me to marry her last week.”
***
“I have to say, I haven’t come across – or even heard of – a case like this,” I said.
“I doubt anyone has,” Rahul said with a weak smile. “Which is why I decided to approach a lawyer I knew.”
“Well, you made the right choice,” I said, hoping I sounded genuine. I had mixed feelings about getting involved, but I decided to keep them at bay.
“Perhaps I was a fool not to expect it, but I honestly didn’t,” Rahul said, speaking much more evenly.
“I thought we were just two lonely old souls giving each other company. But I suppose she began to feel differently as time passed…we’ve virtually been living together for a couple of years now. She handles all my affairs, takes care of me. And…I suppose I, too, take care of her.” He smiled as he finished, as if the realization was still very new to him. I decided not to interject any more till he had finished.
“When she finally asked me, it came as a bit of a shock. The feeling of being married had never quite left me, Harish. Despite the years rolling by, despite life going on, even despite my comfort with Parvati…at some level, I was always conscious of the fact that I was a married man.”
“And now?” I asked, unable to hold back.
He was silent for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said, troubled. “I didn’t respond immediately – I didn’t say that I wouldn’t. You’d expect that that would be my natural response, but I…I said I needed a bit
of time. I tried to tell myself that I was simply being kind to her, but…” He took a deep breath.
“Once she’d asked me, the idea didn’t seem as ridiculous as earlier,” he said, lowering his eyes. “I began to notice things, realize how dependent we’d become on each other. I let it happen, of course, I never reflected on it. But she…she chose for it to become this way. And I don’t know where I’d be without her.”
He lapsed into another moody silence. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. While I sometimes regret my solitary existence, I’ve never suffered as much as him.
“I’ve noticed a restlessness in her with each passing day that I vacillate. It scares me, Harish.”
“Do you love her?” I asked, painfully aware that he must have asked himself the same question many times over.
“I don’t know,” he said, and the truth in his voice sent a chill down my spine. “I don’t know what we’ve been over these few years, I never cared to find out. But now…I couldn’t bear for her to leave. Is that dishonest?” he asked, his eyes hollow.
“I’m nobody to judge,” I said, avoiding his eye.
He, too, looked away. It was nearing midnight, but I had no idea when or how this meeting would come to a conclusion.
“After asked me, I became conscious for the first time that this is the seventh year. Each day, I became more and more aware that the clock was ticking, and that I couldn’t delay much longer. When I told her I was going to see a lawyer, she was overjoyed. She tried to hide it, but I could tell. When you’ve spent this much time around someone, you always can.”
“So you’ve decided, then.”
He looked in my direction, distracted. “Did you study Hindu philosophy in law school?”
“Er…” I’ve enjoyed reasonable success as a practitioner, but I can’t say I was the most attentive student. “I think they touched upon it in jurisprudence.”
He gave me a queer smile. “Sometimes, after we fought, I quipped to Padma that I’d get a divorce if she fought with me again. I never meant it, of course. It was unthinkable. They say Hindu marriage is a sacrament…”
Razor-Sharp: 13 Short Stories Page 9