After my little outburst on Friday, the entire weekend had passed with hardly a word exchanged between the two of us. Later that evening, when I had finally stopped sobbing and had let him into our room, Vijay had made some halfhearted attempts to ask me why I had reacted this way to what seemed to him a perfectly innocuous question about our little daughter’s well-being. Finally, I composed myself enough to give him the standard explanation that if he didn’t already know, there was no point in my telling him. He looked frustrated for a moment but then, to my chagrin, instead of coaxing me to open up and talk about what was really bothering me, he simply shrugged his shoulders and walked away to play with Peanut. I even heard him muttering something like the tamper tentrums weren’t cute any more, now that we had a real child in the house.
This statement had the effect of hurting my feelings so much that I withdrew completely and barely spoke a word the entire weekend – which really was no mean achievement for me. I only talked to Peanut in a quiet murmur as I breastfed her, assuring her that no matter what happened, I would always love her; that I would do my best to ensure that even after the divorce, her relationship with Vijay would not be impacted adversely despite his treatment of me; that we couldn’t forget the fact that he had played a role in her creation, even though it paled into insignificance when you compared it to what my role as the mother had involved; and that I would never allow her to be unduly influenced by my feelings towards the incredibly insensitive pig that he was. She paused her sucking and looked up at me with strangely intelligent and compassionate eyes, and then proceeded to apply all her might to clamping down hard with her newly sprouted teeth on my nipple, causing me to squeal in surprise and pain.
I knew she was probably just teething, but took this act as an ominous sign that she would take his side in the future. This only added to my misery, and so I floated about the house in a mournful yet martyred manner – a cross between a depressed zombie and a younger, clad-in-shorts version of that wonderful queen of misery, Nirupa Roy.
In the meantime, Vijay kept himself busy by ignoring me. He was unusually quiet too, showing signs of animation only when talking to Peanut. Even though I lurked in corners waiting for him to pass by, and made dramatic sounds like melancholy sighs and stifled sobs as soon as I was sure he was within earshot, he just pretended not to hear me and went about his business as if I wasn’t there.
In all our three years of marriage, this had never happened before.
It was inexplicable.
It was maddening.
And, as I was increasingly convincing myself, it marked the beginning of the end.
And so it came about that now, on Monday morning, Vivi sat by my side on the sofa as I gazed tearfully at the floor. She had taken the day off to be with me – I thought what a good friend she was. And also, how completely unconscientous about her official duties. Still, it was clearly a matter of prioritization. People and feelings mattered more than work to her. Vijay, on the other hand, had got ready in the morning just as usual and gone off to work – not even pausing when I answered his casual ‘Bye, hon’ with what I thought was a particularly masterful and heartrending goodbye, my voice catching and breaking between the ‘good’ and the ‘bye’. He had just sailed out the door without so much as a backward glance.
‘I think,’ Vivi said with sudden inspiration, and I stiffened at the tone and these opening words from her because they usually spelt trouble, ‘you guys should see a counsellor. I recently ran into an old friend from college – she told me she is a marriage counsellor and practises somewhere in Bandra – her name is Reema, and I’m sure she’ll be able to help you guys out.’ She became more and more convinced about her idea as she spoke. ‘I’m going to give you her number. Give it a shot, yaar. You guys are so great together. Don’t give up so easily.’ The situation was apparently arousing the drama queen buried not-so-deep-beneath-the-surface and she added with feeling, ‘A love like yours … could never die.’
As I tried to place the Beatles song from which she had shamelessly lifted that line, I found myself wondering whether it was such a good idea to take advice on serious life issues from someone like Vivi. After all, much as I loved her, I couldn’t help but recall her response to my suggestion a few days ago that we all go out on an early morning walk to see the sunrise. She had said with charming logic, ‘But the sun rises in the east and we are in the west, na? So how can we ever see a sunrise in Mumbai?’ I quashed the memory with the thought that it would be unfair and ungrateful for me to equate a person’s understanding of relationships with something as mundane as common sense.
I gathered myself up and looked straight into her concerned face. If counselling was what was required to save our marriage, then counselling it would be.
‘I’ll do it,’ I said, with great determination.
‘I’m not doing it,’ said Vijay, with great determination.
I had broached the subject when he had come home that evening. Too late, I realized I had sprung it on him with the delicacy of a sledgehammer, getting straight to the point with a cold ‘Vijay, I think we must go for some sort of marriage counselling – I’ve found a number …’ even before he had his first sip of evening tea.
Despite having been poster-girl for the use of tea to spread harmony in the family, I had made such a rookie mistake. You never spring things suddenly on a person right after work until they are at least halfway through their evening tea. It just went to show how agitated I was by the whole situation.
While I had expected some amount of resistance from Vijay, I had been unprepared for a point-blank refusal.
‘But WHY?’ I demanded, despair creeping into my voice. ‘Don’t you see how bad things have become between us? We don’t even talk nowadays.’
‘Yes, but going to a counsellor? That’s like trying to talk through a third party. I think our problems are between the two of us and we need to sort them out ourselves. There’s no room for another person in the conversation.’
‘But Vivi said …’ The three words were barely out of my mouth when I realized that I had made a tactical mistake. I paused and hoped that he hadn’t registered what I had said. After all, it happened often enough on other occasions.
No such luck now, of course.
‘VIVI?’ Judging by the tone and decibel, he was clearly not happy about this. ‘You’ve talked to VIVI about OUR problems? How could you?’
In panicked self-defense, I blurted out the first thing that occurred to me. ‘I didn’t say Vivi. I said … Shivi.’
After an incredulous pause, he enquired, ‘And who’s Shivi, now?’
I sensed that this was not working very well to throw him off-track and quickly abandoned the idea. ‘Oh all right. I said Vivi.’ I adopted a more assertive tone, since taking the high ground usually worked. ‘Of course I’ve told her. She’s one of my best friends. And it’s important for me to have someone to talk to – and anyway, it’s not as if she wouldn’t have figured it out.’
‘Vivi,’ said Vijay evenly, ‘says the sunrise …’
‘Oh, all right!’ I cut in. ‘That’s not the point, though. I think her suggestion made a lot of sense. Why should we not try going to a counsellor? It might help save our marriage.’
‘Save our marriage?’ he repeated, the note of incredulity thick in his voice. ‘You really think that things are so bad that our marriage needs to be “saved”?’
‘Of course I do,’ I said, surprised by the question. ‘You think our problems of the last few months are not serious? We’ve barely talked all of last week. You think that’s healthy? And even when we do talk, it usually results in a fight. And …’
I noticed that he was now looking thoughtfully out of the window and assumed he was tuning me out. My irritation rising again, I continued, ‘And clearly, you are not listening, which is only one of the things that really gets to me …’
He turned back to me with a resigned expression on his face and said, ‘Fine, fine. Let’s go to the counsellor. Let�
��s “save our marriage”.’
I took a deep breath and ignored the sarcasm in his voice. He really was impossible. But at least he had agreed to go with me to Reema.
I silently quoted to myself an inspirational line from a movie, which I wistfully remembered that Vijay had made me watch back when we were still a happy young couple.
‘I’m okay … I’m fine … I’m feeling better. Baby steps.’ I had never been a Govinda fan, but it made me feel better. Only marginally, though.
6
A Little Counselling Never Hurt Anyone. Much.
Two days later, Vijay and I found ourselves on the way to the counsellor’s office. We didn’t exchange a word on the way, just carefully observed the scenery outside our respective windows. Vinod, tactful as ever, cranked up the radio to drown out the heavy silence between the two of us.
Reema’s office was on the sixth floor of a commercial building. We waited outside her room in a tiny waiting area with two plastic chairs. We had arrived at the appointed time of 6.30 p.m. but there was no sign of anybody else around. We sat down on the plastic chairs and I decided to try and make some conversation.
I murmured, half to myself and half to Vijay, ‘The rent here must be a bomb. I wonder why she doesn’t just practise at home – doesn’t look like she needs much of a set-up for counselling.’
Apparently, he had been thinking along the same lines and had already resolved the question in his mind because he responded almost immediately. ‘Maybe she is afraid of being murdered in her bed by the psychos she deals with.’
I hissed at him, ‘It’s not psychos she deals with. It’s people like us.’
Vijay chose not to respond.
At that point, the door creaked open and a short, fat, round ball of a woman with thick curly hair rolled in. She stopped when she saw us and raised her eyebrows questioningly.
‘Hi, I’m Yashodhara – Reema?’
Vijay added, ‘And I’m Vijay, Reema.’
She repeated blankly, ‘Yashodhara-Reema? And Vijay-Reema? That’s rather unusual.’
This was not an inspiring start, and I could feel Vijay’s scepticism growing by leaps and bounds. Then Reema seemed to recall something and spoke again. ‘Oh yes, of course, of course. We talked yesterday on the phone. Come in, come in, let’s get started. What are you waiting for?’
We had been waiting for her, of course, but I assumed this was a rhetorical question. She ushered us into her office and waved us into the two chairs that were in front of her desk. She rolled behind the desk and sank into her chair, although the difference this made to her height was imperceptible. I noticed that she had terribly thin eyebrows, which made for a strange contrast with the thick hair on her head. She opened a notebook and held her pen poised as if to write. She looked at us expectantly.
We looked back at her expectantly.
The seconds ticked by. Somebody say something, I thought, clearing my throat a couple of times. Next to me, Vijay was fidgeting and looking very uncomfortable – just about ready to bolt, in fact.
Finally, Reema seemed to realize that we expected her to open the conversation, and started speaking. ‘Okay, then! In this first session today, I’d like to understand the challenges in your marriage, as you individually see them. Just one ground rule – please respect the other person’s point of view and do not interject. When it’s your turn to talk, talk – when it’s your turn to listen, listen. After this, I will draw up a plan based on my assessment of the situation today. Would you like to begin, Vijay?’
She turned towards him enquiringly and he immediately sank lower into his chair as if hoping that by this act, she might somehow miss seeing him there. ‘Not really,’ he mumbled.
I expected her to turn towards me and ask me to start instead, but she just continued staring at Vijay as if something had just occurred to her.
‘Do you, by any chance,’ she asked him, ‘have a drinking problem?’
While Vijay sputtered indignantly, trying to respond, she added, ‘No offense meant, of course. It’s just something that I sometimes get a feeling about – call it intuition, maybe – and it’s best to check upfront as it helps me to assess the mental health of my patients.’
Vijay looked as though he had a thing or two to say about her intuition, but just answered her in an excessively polite tone, ‘No. I do not have a drinking problem.’
She continued to stare penetratingly at him and asked, ‘Are you sure?’
I realized this was not going very well and interjected on behalf of Vijay, ‘Er, Reema, really – he does not have a drinking problem.’
She immediately turned to me, as if resentful of my interference and asked, ‘Do you have a drinking problem?’
I said as evenly as I could manage, ‘No. I do not have a drinking problem. Neither of us,’ I added by way of clarification, ‘have drinking problems.’ I was only too aware of Vijay stifling an exasperated sigh and quickly said, ‘So, could we just get on with the session, please?’
Reema seemed surprised by the suggestion that she was in any way responsible for delaying the progress of the session. She said, ‘Of course! So then … what is the problem with you two?’
I decided to take this opportunity to launch into my well-thought out and articulate speech. ‘Well, Reema – the two of us have been married for about three years now. We always knew we had a lot of differences, in terms of background, the families we come from, tastes and so on, and an age gap of almost seven years. But ever since our baby was born a few months ago, we’re always arguing about everything. Even before that, we had issues – such as he promised to quit smoking after marriage but hasn’t; and the fact that I sometimes felt he wanted me to put up some sort of act to match up to his family’s expectations. But of late, this major distance has crept up between us and we’re hardly talking any more. We’re usually just arguing about something to do with our child’s care and upbringing, which is an area in which I was expecting a lot of support from him. I feel that he’s being totally insensitive to my needs. On top of which, there is no uh, romance between us any more and he doesn’t seem to think that it needs to be a priority. I feel lost, lonely, confused and I just can’t get him to communicate with me on anything any more.’
Reema appeared to have been listening intently, and even though she never broke eye contact with me while I was speaking, her pen was continuously moving and scribbling in her notepad, as if it were separate from the rest of her body. She never even looked down once while turning the pages to scribble on the other side and frankly, I didn’t see how any sort of coherent note-taking was possible like this. Also, she had been raising her thin left eyebrow at me at regular intervals and I knew that when I was alone at home later, I would be spending a lot of time trying to master this feat.
She finished scribbling a few seconds after I stopped speaking, and looked up at Vijay again. ‘And what would you say is the issue, Vijay?’
Vijay cleared his throat and responded after a thoughtful pause. ‘Nothing.’
I could have sworn I heard him add the words ‘Your Honour,’ under his breath.
Reema, whose left eyebrow and pen had been raised expectantly, lowered both and said, ‘Vijay, I may be wrong about this, but I am picking up a sense of reluctance and negativity from you in this session. Is there any reason you feel you can’t open up here?’
Vijay looked deeply unhappy about having to actually talk to the counsellor. After clearing his throat once or twice, he finally said, ‘Actually, I didn’t want to come here at all. I was just going along with her because I thought she would get even madder at me if I didn’t.’
I stared at him in disbelieving frustration while Reema said, ‘I see. And may I ask why you didn’t want to come?’
Vijay answered in a sudden burst of frankness, ‘Because I don’t think our marriage is falling apart the way she does. We only have a few little problems. She’s always been like this, getting worked up about the smallest things. It’s nothing
that we can’t sort out ourselves. And I don’t believe that some random outsider – er, an outside party – should get involved. I find it a little … intrusive, I suppose.’
Reema had been listening very carefully to him, continuously making notes without looking down, but she jumped in at this point to say, ‘Oh yes, that reminds me – how’s your sex life?’
I watched as Vijay turned a delicate shade of purple. This time I decided I was not going to jump in and rescue him, and just waited for him to respond.
He sputtered a bit before answering her, ‘Well, mine is just fine.’ He realized that this statement was not putting him in the best light and hurried to elaborate. ‘As in, I know she complains that we don’t really … you know …’ He mumbled a few words incoherently and continued ‘… often enough, but I really don’t know whether it’s reasonable to expect that we’ll be able to find the time nowadays … We’re both so tired all the time with all the work with the baby around and besides, it’s been such an unpleasant atmosphere, so you know …’ His voice trailed off as he ran out of steam.
She finished scribbling her notes with a flourish and sat back.
There was a long pause while she glanced through her notes and then announced, ‘So, here is my assessment of the situation. You, Yashodhara-Reema, are clearly an overly dominant personality with self-acceptance issues, who has a problem listening to your husband and understanding his point of view. However, in purely psychological terms, I would say that despite your various mental health issues, you would be considered the more psychologically sound of the two, because you at least appear to be in touch with your feelings – unlike Vijay-Reema here, who has self-awareness and communication issues, is obviously in denial about your problems, and has failed to accept the fact that you are both disconnected from each other and obviously headed for a separation, if things are allowed to continue like this.’
She looked at each of our stricken faces in turn and said, ‘But the good news is …’ I felt my expression changing to one of hope as she scanned through her notes ‘… actually, there isn’t any good news yet. It’s only when the two of you jointly decide that you will be coming for my Twelve Step Relationship Rehabilitiation Program, that I will be able to help you make any progress with your relationship.’
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