A Handful of Sunshine
Page 21
‘What is it?’ I asked him, my voice barely a whisper.
He went to the dresser and pulled an envelope out and handed it to me. It was addressed to Mr and Mrs Varma. I threw him a question with my eyes and he gestured for me to fish the contents out. I did.
It was a picture of Veer and me. It was from the Mirror Lake Lodge. I had no idea when that picture had been taken. It had both of us with our welcome drinks in our hands, smiling. ‘Do visit again!’ The words were scribbled by hand on the lower right-hand side of the picture.
‘This came to the office, and the office sent it home,’ Akhil informed me. He was impassive. I had no idea what he was feeling.
But how the hell did it come to the office? Then I remembered the survey. We had signed it and put it away. The Indian Food Company address was scribbled on it.
‘When did this come home?’ I asked hesitantly. My nightmare did not seem like it was going to end any time soon.
‘Two days before you were to leave for Inverness . . . with Veer.’
I had nothing to say. He knew all along.
Then Akhil sat down next to me and held my hand. ‘I am not doing this to prove a point to you, Mira. I am doing this to put you out of your misery. I know what you have done for me, for us. I know the reason for this migraine. I know what you have let go. I know what it has taken out of you. You might think that in all this I am trying to be some kind of hero, acting all forgiving. I really am not. I am just grateful, grateful that you picked our marriage and me. Thank you.’
I had no tears left in me. All I could do was put the bowl of soup away and put my head in Akhil’s lap. He gently ran his fingers through my hair. In that moment I knew why I had married him.
It was late on Sunday night. Akhil had gone to bed while I did the dishes. I liked to do that on my own—it was almost therapeutic for me.
I was a little taken aback when my cell phone rang. Pretty late for a call. It was a number I did not recognize, though it seemed like a local London number.
‘Hello?’ I wiped my hands on the apron as I answered the phone.
‘It’s me, Veer. Please don’t hang up. I am at the airport and I just wanted to talk to you one last time.’ He sounded like he did not have too much time to talk to me.
I sat down on the kitchen stool. I still did not have all my strength back and hearing his voice made me weaker.
‘I am leaving London, Mira. I am going back to India—for good. My flight takes off in about forty-five minutes. So I thought . . .’
‘Oh, you are leaving?’ I couldn’t believe what we had done to each other.
‘Yes, I cannot live here any more. Too many memories, too much pain.’
‘I am so sorry, Veer, I really am.’ In my mind, he was walking away from my front gate once again, sad and defeated.
‘I called to ask you not to be sorry, Mira. The Mira I loved would have never run away with me. I am glad you are still that Mira.’
My eyes started to moisten. He knew me. He knew me so well and he respected me for it.
‘You know, Veer,’ I said, half-choked with emotion, ‘the problem with youth is that it feels it can find that soul-shattering love again and again. The tragedy of growing up is that you realize that it comes only once, and if you let it go, it will never come back.’
He did not say anything immediately. I suspect he was too moved to say anything.
‘If I could rewind life and if destiny gave me a choice between not ever meeting you, Mira, not having to deal with all this pain, this misery and meeting you and reliving all this pain, I would choose meeting you. A lifetime of pain has been worth the way you look at me, the way you say my name, the way you hold my hand . . . well, I can go on . . .’ He forced a laugh to belittle himself and his emotional diatribe.
‘Should we believe in reincarnation then?’ I asked with a smile.
‘Yes. That sounds like a fabulous idea,’ he answered lovingly.
We held on to the phone, both of us, for what seemed like a long while.
‘I think they are announcing my flight. I must go, Mira,’ he said with a sigh.
‘Be well, Veer,’ I whispered.
‘You too,’ he whispered back and hung up.
I held on to the phone for a long time after the call ended—staring at the washed plates in the kitchen sink. At last, I put the phone away, switched the lights off in the kitchen, and walked to the bedroom, keeping quiet, trying not to disturb Akhil.
Then I lay down on my side of the bed, turning away from Akhil, but he seemed to sense that I had come to bed and wrapped his arm around me.
I lay awake, waiting.
Forty minutes after I had spoken to Veer, I heard a plane roar over my house, and then slowly the sound faded away. He was gone. Veer and Mira were finally a finished story.
I closed my eyes. Veer’s face revealed itself slowly in my mind. He was bathed in the early morning light that stole in through the windows of the hotel in New York. He smiled at me. I ran my hand over his sunlit face.
In the end that is all we had—a handful of sunshine.
THE BEGINNING
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This collection published 2017
Copyright © Vikram Bhatt 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Jacket images © Devangana Dash
ISBN: 978-0-143-42630-1
This digital edition published in 2017.
e-ISBN: 978-9-386-49505-1
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.