56. Tia
A week has passed since I showed the door to Samar, but he keeps coming. Every day he knocks on my door. He keeps talking to me from the outside, so I finally open the door for him. Earlier he used to ask me what was bothering me. He encouraged me to share my feelings.
Feelings? I don’t have any. Neither good nor bad, and the hope in his eyes kills me. He deserves someone who can love him.
loving anything.
Now he just sits down on a chair opposite to my bed and tells me all that goes on in the office.
“Devansh has got a promotion. He….”
I don’t care. I don’t even listen to half of the thing he says. I can’t. There is a deafening silence in my head. I had shut the doors to the past but that little rhyme by Ria and Rima had opened the door. I didn’t hear the lisp in their voice, I heard the lost innocence in them, and for a second, it was all dark, I was behind the blind fold. I even felt the same aura around me. It was an uncanny feeling. As if the danger is still lurking around. I know it’s my mind. It has become a dangerous place. I don’t think I can ever hear a kid again without remembering those dark days. Those were the only sounds that filled my days, the sin in those innocent voices will haunt me forever.
“Neena was asking where you got that fake lizard from; her daughter could use it.” Samar is still talking. The fake lizard brings a faint smile to my lips, but it doesn’t last long. Nothing can last long anymore in my life.
“I will come to see you tomorrow. Love you.” His voice catches at the last words.
Will I let him in tomorrow? How long can I ignore him?
After Samar leaves, Kiara comes to see me, she sits beside me on my bed. She occupies the same place Samar just left, and by the way she looks at me, I know she understands my pain. She sits at a distance, she can read me. I have begun to hate any kind of touch except when my mother caresses my hair, there is a strange comfort in her touch that I can never hate.
“Tia, I understand how difficult it must have been for you to come back from a living hell and face the harsh realities of your life.”
What is she talking about? I look at her. I mean, really look at her. It takes me a while to focus. Sometimes I imagine I am still blindfolded. Wait, I don’t imagine, maybe, I sit with my eyes closed or its just darkness around me or inside me. I tilt my head, but don’t ask anything.
“I mean, knowing that you were born out of wedlock because of your father’s extramarital affair. It must have been deadly.”
What the hell? I misheard? Out of wedlock? I was an illegitimate child? Not the child of my dad’s first wife as was told to me. Was that why mom was so cold when I was a child? It wasn’t my imagination. She hated me…
NOOO… I wasn’t capable of hurting anymore. Or was I? And suddenly, I remember that bizarre conversation
“What changed you?”
“You”
…Me?
“Oh, shit. You didn’t know?” Kiara shrieked and I realise I am biting my lips. “I am so sorry Tia. I didn’t mean…I mean…I guess…I thought they must have discussed with you…I overheard it when police were digging for family background from them…but..but…I must have misunderstood something. I am so sorry!” She stands and walks towards me to hug me, but then stops midway. I am thankful she did that, glad she knows me so well. The only person I can lean on. Our friendship is the only thing I can hold on to.
Because… It comes without any expectations.
After Kiara goes away, mom enters with a glass of milk and some snacks. But I push away her hand when she tries to feed me, I don’t look at her face. I can’t. In the night, when she tries to caress my hair, I again push away her hands. I don’t look up to her face to read her expression. I don’t need to. There is no more place for forgiveness in my heart.
Suddenly she has turned into a stranger. Actually, everyone seems like a stranger. Because I don’t know any of these people, it was Tia who knew them. Not me.
The mind is like a deep sea, most people just swim on the surface. Some try to touch the depths and swim back to the surface, but there are some like me who can’t swim back, who struggle and collapse in those depths.
Later in the night there is a screaming silence inside my head. Amid all the noises I can’t make out a thing. So, I just want to live in nothingness. I watch the small ant struggling to make it out of the small pool of water on the table, it’s a nice thing to focus on. I watch as it struggles and then finally, it is about to come out, but I lift the pencil from the table and push it in. A strange satisfaction fills me. Like I took my revenge. I am capable of hurting.
Why should it be only me who is hurt?
57. Tia
My family and Samar won’t leave me. But its only Kiara for whom I wait. Samar has lots of expectations that I can’t fulfil. The maternal instincts in me are long gone. I can never connect to a child. Hell, now I can’t even connect to my mother.
Sometimes in the silence of the night I think about that ring. Did it really belong to Ritesh? It was diamond ring, how could he have afforded it? Or maybe it was just an imitation ring. He might have planned to force on my finger someday, but the ring was huge, maybe he would have forced me to push it on his finger.
Why do I allow Samar to see me? Why? I don’t know. Maybe to smother his hope, before his false hope smothers me.
“I am not the girl you loved. She is dead, she is the past. Don’t waste your time.” I told him few days back.
He was silent for a long time before he replied, “I understand you are not ready for a relationship, but we can be friends. I promise I won’t expect anything more than friendship.”
I nodded to that, the weight of his expectation had begun to suffocate me, but his confession relieved me. He now comes to see me daily, and I let him. It’s him who does all the talking, though I fail to listen to anything he says.
One day he tells me, “I have renovated my house and I want to show it to my best friend.” He uses his words wisely with me. I decline and he doesn’t pressurize, but the next day he again invites me, I again refuse. He keeps on inviting me daily and one day, I finally agree to go to his house. Mom is elated to know that and the hope in her eyes causes me to doubt my decision.
“You don’t need to hurry back, take you time.” She smiles at me. “Take one set of keys, because we might not be home when you return as we are going to attend a wedding and Avinash is going to stay over at his friend’s home.”
I want to tell her I will be back in an hour, but I don’t. I don’t feel like talking much, so I just nod.
I don’t see much renovation in Samar’s house, only the colour of his room has changed from white to peach. Did he do it to invite me? Why does he care so much? I feel something, like a fluttering in my heart, and that sign of life scares me so much that I close my eyes.
“You can rest, I will bring some water for you.” His voice pierces the darkness and when I open my eyes he is walking towards the kitchen and I sit on the bed. I am in my thoughts when an ugly lizard comes flying on me.
I scream and I scream, and I scream. My eyes closely shut, my hands hanging in the air. Initially I hear a small laugh but soon my screams overpower everything.
I am still screaming, shouting at the top of my voice, trembling all over, struggling to breathe with my eyes closed when his warmth comes around me. My defences melts like ice on hot surface, and I shrink into his hug, digging my face on his solid chest. The comfort of his touch is more than what my heart can hold. The first tiny tear breaks the floodgates and then there is no stopping.
His hands stroke my hair so gently that I cry even louder.
“It’s ok.” His voice cracks. “It’s ok.”
I fold into a ball and crumble on his lap, still crying. He strokes my back and my hair until I am calm.
It’s a long time before I stop crying and lay on the bed, leaving his lap. He lays down next to me and we are facing each other. “It’s ok,” he repeats, caressing m
y hair like I am a small girl.
He kisses my forehead and pulls me close, and I let him. We embrace and I am surprised by how his touch comforts me. I had begun to believe I wouldn’t love his touch anymore or love any human touch ever. But now, in the shields of his strong arms, I feel safe, cocooned. His shirt is wet and even the sheet beneath us is wet and they are not only my tears all over the place.
I am not sure if I began it or him, but we are kissing each other on the forehead, cheeks, chin. He is tender when he kisses me on every part of my face. The kisses aren’t romantic, they tell me how much he missed me, how much he longed for me, how precious I am for him. It surprises me how much his touch reconnects me to myself, how much more I crave him.
“Heal me, Samar, every part of my body, every corner of my soul. You were with me, but I wasn’t there. I have missed you, Samar. I have missed me. I have missed us. Help me find myself.” His hope was contagious, it has ruined me. Yes, hope is so scary for me right now that I think it can ruin me, and I let it.
His body stills and the only thing moving are his tears. I pull his hand to me and a dark memory pulls me in the dark stingy room that smelled of sin, but I push away that memory. To erase the past, I need to write a new present.
“Tia.” He swallows. “You are not in your proper mind. I want to make love to you not just have sex.”
“You know Samar, every time I change, I feel his eyes on me, nobody has seen me except him. I want to take it away from him.” My lips are trembling when I pull his hand back to me and he shakes his head.
“Please Tia, you don’t understand.”
“You think I am ugly.” The scars on my face have faded, but the deeper ones on my hands and thighs are still there, and there is one deeper one that stretches from my collarbone to my left breast. Souvenirs of my pain.
“No!” he says sharply and touches my cheeks. “You have no idea how much I want you, but I don’t want to feel that I am taking advantage of you.”
“Samar, you can never take advantage of me. You can only ever love me. Don’t you want me to erase those harrowing memories that gnaw on me every moment?” I press my cheeks on his huge palm and begin crying again.
His soothing touch reminds me of the time I believed in love. And life. The smell of his aftershave reminds me of how I longed for it, how I longed for a lot of things in my life. His arms come around me and I feel safe, I feel at home after a very long time. But the layers of numbness are hard and rigid, and to break free of it I need more. More. And for the first time in months, I actually want to come out of it. I look at him with a desire so strong that he gives in and his lips brush against mine. He has put his soul in the kiss that is desperate, passionate, but yet strangely tender. His kiss is like antiseptic to my wounds. And as the kiss deepens, a light spreads through the dark corners of my soul. I disconnect with the world that took away my innocence and my world shrink in his arms.
He looks at me as if asking for my permission, I close my eyes and nod. With every piece of cloth off me, I surrender the memories of the past to this healing moment. I don’t feel ugly when he sees me with nothing but the scars, and I hope he don’t’ say I am beautiful; I want to hear…
“I love you,” he whispers in my ears and his deep voice travels to the depth of my existence. He caresses my face and his strong hands move downwards, softly tracing my scars as his kisses follow. To me his touch is not seductive, it’s healing. He stops when he feels my body tensing but when I nod, his hands resume carving his magical healing throughout the length and breadth of not only my scars, but my existence. Once the layers of the numbness are wiped off, the familiar feeling associated with his touch begins to resurface.
I can’t name that feeling, but I can compare it to a little seed that just pushed out from the dark shell of the earth and sees the sunlight for the first time. That first breath after a long suffocation, that is how I feel in this moment.
Slowly and gradually his touch fills me with hope and desires I thought I could never feel again. And now I am aware of everything about this closeness, the goose bumps, my breath on him, his on mine, the different textures of our skin mingling into one. Every part of my body is awakened, and his touch burns me and calms me at the same time when we finally unite.
We lie arm in arm for a long time, and for first time in months, I feel content. His heart is beating hard when I press my face on his chest. The sound of his heartbeat is so comforting I fall asleep, and it’s the most peaceful sleep I have had in a long time. By the time I wake up it’s late evening, Samar is in the washroom, I guess. I get ready to leave when he emerges. His hair is a mess and I realise it’s so long after I am looking into his face. His cheeks are hollow, and he has lost so much weight and worry lines are constantly etched on his face, but he has never looked this attractive to me before.
It wasn’t only me who suffered, my suffering is mirrored on the faces of Samar, Kiara, mom, dad and Avinash. I promise myself to get my life back on track. I had been rude to mom too, it’s time to change that.
“Did anyone tell you that you snore?” Samar teases me.
I smile at that. I smile and that expression feels so alien to me that before that smile can escalate to a laugh I being to cry. Yet again.
Samar comes to me and I hug him tight. He strokes my back.
“I am just teasing you.” He says, fully aware it wasn’t his statement that made me cry, it was the smile on my face that did.
“Get used to it,” he says.
“Used to what?”
“My teasing, smiling, laughing and living the life…” his voice cracks. “The life you deserve.” He pulls me away at an arm’s length and looks at me for a while.
“Ok, now listen, I am famished. What will you eat? Lasagne?” With that word, I am again pulled back to the dark scary days, but hadn’t I promised this day to re-write over every part of my past.
I nod and say, “and a cup of hot tea.”
“Ok love.” He strokes my cheek and leaves the room.
I look out from the window. The sky is resplendent with clouds scattered randomly and filtered in different hues of orange. A calm breeze caresses my face and I feel peaceful after a very long time in my life. I walk to the drawer of his cabinet and pull out a photo album.
On the first page a new-born is lying in a cradle. His smile is innocent and full of life. For a second, my arms crave for him. I am seeing a child without thinking of the voices full of lisp and lust mingled with each other.
And page after page the photos are filled with Samar’s innocent childhood. His mother was a beautiful woman. In the earlier photos I can see his dad. Samar has got his tanned skin and tall height from his dad and from his mother the gentleness that can calm an aching soul.
Slowly the photos outgrow his childhood, then his school days, and then his youth. He had so many friends back then, I wonder how I never knew any of them.
I turn the page and he is smiling, he is with his friends in a mall, holding a mug of coffee, and when my gaze travels to his fingers, everything vanishes; the coffee, his friends, his smile, everything vanishes…I feel like a fast moving train has rolled over me…my mind shuts down and all I can see is a diamond shaped ring, the same ring with heart shapes on the sides…I am in oblivion, cut off from reality, from everything. Everyone. And in the other moment, I am in a dark room, though my eyes are open I can’t see anything, as if I am blindfolded. The past that I had just promised to leave has gobbled me up. There is no hope of freedom anymore. I will remain a prisoner of my past, forever. I close my eyes and feel the touch of that ring.
YES. IT’S THE SAME.
“Your lasagne is ready.” The sounds comes as if from far off, and as if on autopilot, my hands push the album beneath the bed, thankfully he was shouting from out the door. He enters carrying a tray with coffee and lasagne.
Though my heart is broken beyond repair, this is not the time to wallow in self-pity. I want my revenge. If at all there is a cha
nce, only revenge can liberate me, not totally, but at least in bits and pieces.
He keeps the tray on the table next to the bed and…how can I still see concern in his eyes? Is this what love does to people?
“What happened Tia?” He narrows his eyes.
“Nothing.” I feel my voice trembling. “Feeling feverish.” I lie.
He touches my forehead and I feel thousand insects are crawling over me, I jolt back wanting to throw up. His presence is suffocating me, and I struggle to breathe, my mind jumbled up with thoughts. What should I do? I don’t have my car and rickshaw stand is far away. For taking my revenge I need to at least get out of here.
“Can I get a crocin?” I can’t avoid the tremble in my voice. He studies my face and I think he won’t leave, but then he nods and leaves the room to get the crocin.
Dad and mom are out of town, they can’t reach me, so I message Kiara. “Kiara, I saw a ring in Samar’s photo album that was there when I was held captive. I am at his place. Please come fast.” I send her a google map location too.
A scream escapes my mouth and I almost jump when he re renters the room.
“What happened Tia?” he sits next to me and I can’t stop shivering.
“Fever…yes…yes…it’s fever.” God, what a horrible actor I am. I need to buy time until Kiara reaches here. “I...I…I…need to use washroom.” I stand up to go the washroom, but he holds my hand.
“What happened Tia?” His eyebrows come together as he stares at me.
“I need to go to the washroom.” I free myself from his stinging grip and rush into the washroom.
Where am I supposed to go from here? What am I supposed to feel? What has become of my life? What mess I have got into? I shut my mouth as tight as I can to shuffle the scream ready to leap out and sit down on the floor. I run the tap in a futile effort to drown the low moans escaping my mouth.
“Tia. What happened? Are you ok?” He knocks on the door.
Beyond Lies Page 16