by Sid Bahri
It had to be Karma; why else was I enduring this? I knew that I would have to get an abortion because there, simply, was no other way. It was better to do it now than to have Abhinav stare at someone else’s child after nine months. If the child was born, it would only complicate matters a little more than what they already were.
Involuntary tears would well up in my eyes and roll down my cheeks. Even long after my affair with the commode ended, the tears didn’t stop and neither did the agony. I spent the day in anguish, waiting for Abhinav to come home.
The truth was that I didn’t even know him. I didn’t even know how he would react if he found out what I was suspecting. Would I still be married or would I have lost two men in the space of two weeks? I was livid with myself, for my foolishness, for not having used contraceptives and for not having taken this eventuality into perspective when I had made my decision to marry Abhinav.
A large part of me wanted to come clean, to have the courage to walk up to Abhinav and say that I wasn’t sure if he was my unborn child’s father. I longed for the strength and the courage to be able to tell him the truth. Even in the short time that Abhinav and I had been together, I had been able to gauge that he was extremely egoistical. He would never be able to understand that his wife had an affair previously, forgive her and move on. I shuddered at the sheer thought of being truthful. It was just not an option. Where would it lead but to a divorce?
It would give me nine months of a breather, until the truth came out in the open. Wouldn’t everything work out perfectly if the foetus that had once been my egg was fertilized with Abhinav’s sperm? What if the child turned out like Aditya?
These random thoughts tore me until the best option was to not have the child. I would have to handle this with tact. I could not sound unexcited or unenthusiastic lest Abhinav suspect me. I hated myself and detested the situation that had turned me into a manipulative vamp. A woman, that was plotting the murder of an unborn child, based on a suspicion that it had been fathered illegitimately.
Abhinav came home that evening, carrying with him a box of authentic Chinese food. It was completely different than what I had ever had in Delhi, Chandigarh or Solan. It was as if the Chinese had forgotten to grow chillies. The food was bland and distasteful to my spice hungry palate. I waited until the dishes were done and just when he was about to switch on the TV, I finally blurted out, “Abhinav, I’m pregnant.”
It didn’t sound like anything that I had rehearsed over the course of the day.
“What?” he said.
I didn’t understand if the ‘what’ expressed surprise, shock, excitement or indifference.
“I’m expecting,” I said, hoping that he wouldn’t catch the quiver in my voice.
“That’s great news,” he said beaming. My task of being able to sell him an abortion would be a little more difficult. He was only twenty-seven, and who wants fatherhood at that age? I certainly wasn’t ready for motherhood at twenty-two.
“I am not sure if I want to have the child,” I said.
I saw his expression change. It was as if I had dropped a bombshell on him or had committed a cardinal sin.
“I want this child,” he said and walked away.
It was a demand. It was an order. It was a diktat that couldn’t be challenged. He didn’t even want to understand my reasons for not wanting the child. For the first time in the two weeks of marriage, I felt that I had misjudged Abhinav. I wasn’t sure if he was a gentleman that I thought he was.
I tried to raise the subject a couple of times later, with the usual rejection. He would simply walk away, leaving me fuming at not being heard. Slowly, I was beginning to reconcile that this child would be a reality. It would come into this world.
I thought about calling Abhinav in office to tell him that I had slipped in the bathroom. I would tell him that I had had a miscarriage but instead go to the obstetrician and get an abortion. If I had been a little more courageous, I might have tried it. I wasn’t. I must have been at the back of the line when God gave the virtue of courage to all his children.
Three months later, I knew that the child was now a certainty; especially when I had crossed the important threshold of the first trimester. Neither had I been able to convince Abhinav, nor had I been able to gather the courage to get an abortion done on my own. I had resigned to the fact that if doom was inevitable, it would have to be endured.
Through those three months, Abhinav had had enough of me; I could make out from the long sighs and the expressions of exasperation that he gave me. He was probably ruing his fool hardiness of rushing into a marriage with a stranger. When he sighed and let out deep breaths, he would remain polite. I wondered if I hadn’t been pregnant, how it would’ve been. Would he have vented his anger on me? Would he tell me that I had ruined his life and mine?
After all, from his perspective, he could have done without me. Physically, I had graduated from being a log in bed to being a corpse. Mentally, he was years ahead of me. When we spoke, it was as if we were on two diametrically opposite tangents. Emotionally, there was no gratification for him. I still lay strangled in the cobwebs of my heart.
Several times I had imagined Abhinav to be Aditya when he would want to have sex with me. I would switch off the lights, so that he wouldn’t see my face as I shut my eyes and let myself be sucked into an illusion. When he touched me there, I would try and imagine that it was Aditya’s hands; when he kissed me, I would try and imagine that they were Adi’s lips. Yet, when I wrapped my arms around his frail body, the illusion would snap. Why hadn’t I rejected him on grounds of his looks?
The hormones weren’t helping, sending me into bouts of extreme happiness and extreme melancholy a few moments apart. There were days when I would shout at him, not knowing why, then suddenly be over polite in a matter of minutes. I didn’t know if I could just blame the hormones when it could have been the stress of not knowing whose baby I was mothering. Maybe, the stress had brought me to this point of insanity and irrationality.
My pregnancy was turning out to be very far from pleasant. Each passing day brought me a little closer to the day when I would be found out. I didn’t have a way to know whose child I was mothering but a woman’s instinct told me that it was Aditya’s. In my mind, I would imagine how the child would look like when it was born. I wanted him to be a clone of Aditya but I knew that it would only serve to alienate me from Abhinav.
Abhinav backed out the Audi from the basement parking spot and turned on the heat. It was November, the pleasant but short summer had ended and the evenings and mornings were chilly. There was some talk of a blizzard next week and that had started a mad rush to buy overcoats. The malls were flooded, in anticipation of the winter and the holiday season that it would bring with it. We crossed the malls as we drove to the New York Downtown Hospital which was a fair distance away. It was the day of the monthly meeting with the obstetrician. It wasn’t that there were no better obstetricians or hospitals near our apartment but I realized that Americans are a slave to their insurance companies. His insurance only allowed him to visit this particular hospital.
I wasn’t complaining about the distance because Dr Jill Fonda was my obstetrician – a matronly, middle-aged, Caucasian lady in her mid-forties – whose face would cheer me up. She checked the blood pressure reading on the digital monitor and looked directly into my eyes. I wondered if the blood pressure machine knew what I was going through. She asked Abhinav to wait outside and even before he was out of the room, asked me, “Is there something that’s bothering you?”
I wondered if I should tell her, like a good patient should, but I didn’t. Instead, I shook my head like Indians do, which can so easily be mistaken for a nod.
She again took a reading of the blood pressure and then said, “Your blood pressure is a border line high. Reduce your salt intake and calm yourself. At any moment that you have any discomfort, call me SOS.”
She called Abhinav and explained my situation. I didn’t know if
that disclosure elongated Abhinav’s sighs a little more. His dreams of a healthy child were being jeopardized by me and worse still, he had no option but to remain calm, patient and docile.
As fall turned to winter, the hormones were beginning to be innocuous; the mood swings were slightly better and I could hear his sighs abating. The only problem was that as each day passed, I was getting a little more anxious about what would happen. The stress was unavoidable and involuntary. I wished I had a friend who I could talk to. Anyone, who would just hear me, even if they didn’t have a solution to offer. Just someone who could help me get this cancerous secret out of my system.
Aditya
I wake up to the sounds of the rooster. The old watch that sits on the crooked coffee table next to the couch is letting out a shrill sound, faintly resembling a rooster. It is four in the afternoon; I rub my eyes and make my way to the bathroom past the feeble form of Birendra Singh Bhatoliya.
Bhatoliya is bucking in his dreams, making love to the woman in the red skirt, the one who had ripped off his shirt. I push him, careful to avoid the flagpole that stands conspicuously through his boxer shorts. He wakes up beaming, a smile that reeks of sexual fulfilment.
“Wow” (pause), “wow” (pause), “wow”.
A man with a limited vocabulary explains what he is feeling.
I remember the morning after I had made love to Radhika and smile. I dress and am about to go into the kitchen when I think I will complete a chore that I do twice a week. It is more out of compulsion than any other emotion. My wife is still my wife, even though there is hardly any contact between us, except these intentional phone calls. I often wonder if she feels the same way. My emotions are dead and buried.
“Hello,” I say into the cheap Motorola handset. “Hi! How are you?” she asks. I am thankful that cell phones display names; it saves us both the trouble of delving into our memory to recognize the voice.
“Fine and you?” I ask.
Our conversation is the conversation between strangers; formal and measured.
“I am fine. Any plans to come and visit me?” she asks.
“I won’t get leave, but will try to come the soonest I can. Why don’t you come?” I ask her.
I hear the sigh of relief despite the crackling phone line.
“I will try; work’s pretty busy. Traffic cops. Bye,” she says and hangs up.
Either she is driving a lot or lying a lot. The first thing the CIA teaches a new recruit is to never believe in coincidence. It can’t be a coincidence that every time I call, she is driving.
Bhatoliya is still languishing with his memories of the night before. I am doing it for money, but he has found passion. “How much did that woman charge?” he asks referring to Divya.
“Twenty five per cent,” I reply.
“That’s cheating. How come we do all the hard work and she just skims off the top?” he asks.
“You wouldn’t even have known that there was a party on if she hadn’t called me,” I reply.
“Even then, it’s an obnoxious commission,” he says. I agree but between the two of us, we earned fifty thousand last night, net of the commission - A huge amount for a single night’s work. People who don’t have any other source of income can’t complain.
“I agree. Get dressed, I am hungry,” I say, choosing to change the topic.
It is almost half past five in the evening that we leave the house. I can’t help thinking that it is a remarkably awkward time to find breakfast. We take a rickshaw to the Jwalaheri market, and have chicken Momo’s and Indian style Chow- Mein from the Chinese van that doesn’t move. The Chicken Chow Mein is smothered in soya and chilli sauce. I tell the cook to start using sambhar masala in the Chow Mein; he can easily pass it off as South Indian Vermicelli.
It is dark by the time we return to the cigarette shop at the corner of the street that leads up to our apartment. It is almost the end of January and there is still a nip in the evening air. Bhatoliya lights up a cigarette and looks at me. He says, “Aditya, What’s the plan now?” I can’t really say why he lays special impetus on the ‘now’.
“I guess, go back home and sleep or read, in the absence of a TV,” I say nonchalantly.
“Ever wondered why I never bought a TV?” he asks.
“Several times. Why?” I ask.
“I have a dream…” he starts. He has a faraway look in his eyes and sounds like Gandhi when he first envisioned India’s Independence, “…that someday I can have my own business; a day when I don’t need to sell toothpaste to make a living; a day when I don’t have to suck up to a bastard to get a promotion.”
“What business?” I cut short the elucidation of his dream.
“Anything that doesn’t involve me selling toothpaste,” he proudly proclaims, as if he has narrowed down his options considerably.
“So, what’s that got to do with the TV?” I ask.
“I’ve chosen to give up some material things like a TV to achieve that dream,” he says. This guy is on the verge of insanity and needs help.
“And what have you achieved in doing so?” I ask, reasoning with him to check if he actually is mentally imbalanced.
“I have the capital for starting a business,” he says.
“What business?” I ask, repeating my question to hopefully get a more favourable answer than his last response.
“A Massage parlour,” he says. His eyes are gleaming with excitement. In that moment, he is a four-year-old child who gets a shiny red bicycle on his birthday.
Radhika
It was the ninth month of my pregnancy and the monthly visit to the doctor was scheduled at eleven that morning. Abhinav had taken half-a-day off and was in the bathroom when the phone rang. I wished to ignore while I sat snugly on the lazy boy rocking chair. Maybe, I’d just let the call go into voicemail. I hardly got any calls and it was too much of an effort to get up from the comfort of the well-cushioned chair.
On instinct, I answered the phone. I instantly knew that it was Aditya. We had spoken too often on the phone for me to not recognize his voice. My heart skipped a beat. He had found my number.
“Hello,” I said.
“I...I...I just wanted to tell you that I got promoted,” Aditya said.
“Congratulations,” I said. I was so happy for him. I was happy that he had achieved what he aspired for.
“I love you…,” he said and his voice trailed off.
As if it were pre-planned, the door to the bathroom unlatched at exactly the same moment. The small studio apartment could hardly afford any privacy and even though there were a billion things I wanted to say, Abhinav’s presence only made me say, “I don’t know what to say”.
“Say, I love you too,” he implored, begging me to say what he wanted to hear.
Abhinav was almost behind me when I said, “I have to go, bye,” and hung up.
“Who was it?” Abhinav asked.
“Aditya,” I replied, almost whispering through my choked throat.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
His eyes narrowed suspiciously, watching me when I lumbered back to the softness of the lazy boy. I could feel his gaze on my back. I sat down hoping that he wouldn’t carry on this interrogation. His eyes hadn’t left me for a moment. He raised his brows, as if to repeat his question.
“A friend; you met him,” I said dishonestly. It was difficult for me to keep a straight face. I could feel the muscles of my face tighten.
“When did I meet him?” he asked. He just stood there, with only a towel covering his thin, slimy body.
“At Citibank Delhi, remember?” I was struggling to keep up this conversation. I wanted to break down and tell him that Aditya was the love of my life, and just like now, you – Abhinav Chandra – had intruded my life to take me away from him.
“Oh! That fair, tall guy?” he asked.
I just nodded and turned my face away to look out at the boats on the Hudson. They had returned with the spring.
“Does
he call often?” he asked.
I wish he did but I shook my head and turned away to face the window. I knew that my eyes would give me away.
“Are you sure you’re not doing anything that you’re not supposed to do?” he said.
My patience broke down. I had had enough of this nonsense. Yes, I did not love him and yes, I hadn’t told him the entire truth and yes, I had a past. But in the nine odd months that we had been married, I had never cheated on him. I had Aditya’s number memorized and I could have made phone calls when I wanted to but I had never ever done it. And despite being the dutiful wife, he was suspecting me! I did something that was extremely uncharacteristic.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked a trifle louder than I should have.
“Nothing,” he said in an attempt to avoid a conflict.
“Abhinav Chandra, explain that last question. Don’t fucking nothing me,” I shouted.
He was visibly taken aback, for he had always seen me as a docile, peaceful doormat that would try her best to avoid conflict. And here, right now, that stereotype was shattering with my loud pitch. He tried to avoid the question again, but I wouldn’t let go.
“I want a fucking answer right now.” I was shouting loud enough for the neighbours to hear us.
“Calm down. I just wanted to check,” he said, visibly on the defensive.
“Check what? Do you doubt my fidelity?”
Maybe I was over reacting, but the rush of adrenaline and the months of misery that I had undergone and kept within myself came to the fore.
“I never said that,” he replied meekly.
“You son of a bitch! What then did you mean by your statement?” I said, livid and angry.