The Story of a Long-Distance Marriage

by Siddhesh Inamdar

  The next day I take a picture of Momo looking grumpy in a Santa Claus hat I bought outside the church. Using Photoshop I write ‘Merry Christmas from Ira & Rohan’ on it in a cursive font and post it on Facebook, tagging Ira. It’s the first thing I have posted since she and I fought. As usual, I get scores of comments and likes within minutes, but there’s nothing from her.

  It’s eleven in the morning, I haven’t brushed my teeth or shaved, and I haven’t had breakfast, which is going cold in the kitchen. Instead, I slam my laptop shut and go back to sleep, the thick rajai pulled over my head. My phone rings around lunch time and I wake up hoping it’s Ira. It’s Ira’s mother.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Rohan,’ she says.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Mummy.’

  ‘Are you sick?’

  ‘No, no. I just woke up actually.’

  ‘At one?’

  ‘Yes, got back late from the midnight mass.’

  ‘Good you went. It must be really cold in Delhi, right? Are you sure you are not sick?’

  ‘Yes. All well, all well.’

  ‘And how are things? What did Ira send you for Christmas?’

  That’s when it occurs to me she hasn’t sent me anything. ‘Nothing so far. Maybe the mail is slow because of the holidays. Anyway, there’s no need for us to be formal with each other.’

  ‘It’s not a formality. It’s your first Christmas away from each other. Did yours reach her?’

  ‘Mine what?’

  ‘Your gift. You sent her something, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I realize I haven’t sent her anything either, and I lie. ‘She hasn’t mentioned it, so I figure it hasn’t reached yet. And what’s special at home today?’

  ‘I am baking a cake. Daddy is making prawn curry and rice.’ By the time I hang up after the conversation drags for a while, the taste of the food I won’t have is on my tongue and I skip lunch too.

  The parcel arrives in the afternoon and I know Ira didn’t forget. Ira never forgets. It’s a pineapple upside down cake. Of course, she hasn’t made it herself, like the one she baked last year. She has had it sent from Potbelly, her favourite restaurant here. But I know she chose it to stand in for her. She calls half an hour later.

  ‘Merry Christmas.’ There is a soft edge to her voice and I am transported back to all the times my body would melt under her kisses and caresses. I feel my being seeping into the bed as I close my eyes.

  ‘Merry Christmas. Thanks for the cake.’

  ‘You got it?’

  I am cold with anticipation as if she were in bed next to me, closing her mouth over my ear—the sound of the ocean in dry Delhi. ‘Yes … Ira?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Let’s not fight. I don’t feel good about it. It’s been such a sad month. It’s Christmas and I haven’t eaten anything all day. I won’t have the cake till you tell me we are good.’

  ‘Don’t be this way. It’s not a fight. I don’t want to upset you but you need to make an effort to understand.’

  ‘I’ll work towards undoing all of it. Just come back.’

  ‘How? If you don’t know what it is that needs fixing?’

  ‘You tell me and I’ll fix it.’

  ‘It doesn’t work that way. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about this. What have you sent me?’

  I consider lying and then sending her something on Amazon using one-day delivery. But I don’t want to lie. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry I forgot. I’ll make up for it. Tell me something you really need. I want to give you something that’ll be useful.’

  ‘Unlike the cake?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. You know that.’

  ‘Just stop, Rohan. The whole country has shut down. Nothing will be delivered for another ten days.’ She takes a long pause as if to gather her thoughts. ‘That’s not even the point,’ she says. ‘I loved you for ten years. How long are you going to play catch-up? When we got married, I thought you’d love me without me loving you first. Didn’t I deserve it?’ She takes a deep breath. ‘What will you fix, Rohan? How will you fix it when you don’t know what’s broken? Fine, I’ll tell you. I’m broken. And I know you don’t have it in you to fix me—fix us. I came here to mend myself. At least let me be.’

  And yet again we lapse into a brooding silence.

  *

  The next week passes without any contact between me and Ira. I decide to keep myself occupied with other things. I start leaving for work early. This means that the first couple of days, Alisha and I don’t meet in the cafeteria for tea as our timings differ. But, on the fourth day, I see her walking up to me out of the corner of my eye as I sit at a table with an empty cup, lost in thought.

  ‘I thought you had gotten over tea,’ she says with a smile as she pulls up a chair and sits next to me.

  ‘Could one ever?’ I smile back, realizing she has altered her routine too, and I feel glad for her company.

  My section of the office is empty when I reach at two-thirty. The editors start arriving only around four. Until then I go through the front pages of our rival newspapers to see how we compare. I look out for stories we may have missed and study the display the others have given them. I go through the wires to catch up on the news for the day. I haven’t been asked to, but I put together the important stories from different agencies and pass them on to the team which brings out the early edition that goes to the states around Delhi. I like this time I have to myself. Being entirely focused on work helps me take my mind off Ira.

  We have an early deadline on New Year’s Eve. We have been asked to be in office by three, but I reach at one-thirty. Around two, I’m finishing the sandwich I had ordered from the canteen when Maran calls out and asks me to meet him in his room.

  ‘Sit, sit, Rohan,’ he says. The news is playing in the background and he looks relaxed. It’s the last day of the year after all. ‘How are things?’

  ‘Going well,’ I say tentatively.

  ‘Just wanted to chat with you.’

  It’s difficult to say what I have been called for. ‘Am I in trouble?’ I ask with a smile.

  ‘No, no, of course not. Just that for the past week I’ve been observing that you come to work really early and stick around for a while after the edition has gone to press at night … As I told you during your appraisal, we will be promoting you next year.’

  ‘Um, thanks for the reassurance,’ I say, unsure about where this is going.

  ‘What I mean is you don’t need to make an impression. You’re past that stage. I know you’re a hard worker.’

  ‘What?’ I’m taken aback. ‘No, I’m not doing this to make an impression. Just to keep myself occupied.’

  ‘Why, what happened? Listen, how are things with your wife—Isha, is it?’

  ‘Ira. Things are well. Thanks for asking.’ I cross my hands and remain seated in front of him with the stubborn look of someone who doesn’t want to say more.

  ‘Yes, all right,’ he says. ‘Get back to work then.’

  That day I take my time with the stories assigned to me and give lousy headlines, though I have perfectly good alternatives written down in my notepad. But by the time we wind up, I think about Maran’s words again and reason that I could take my mind off Ira in other ways too. After all, it is the last day of the year. Time for new beginnings.

  ‘What’s your plan for the evening?’ I ask Tanuj as he is packing up to leave.

  ‘For the night, you mean. It’s almost ten. Nothing, will go home and get some sleep.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Because it’s the thirty-first? I’m boring that way,’ he says with a smile. ‘I don’t like partying. At most I’ll start reading a new book perhaps. I was thinking of Amy Poehler’s Yes Please. I hear it’s good.’

  ‘I think I’m a little bit in love with her. Have you seen her show?’

  ‘Parks and Rec? No, I meant to download it but didn’t get around to it somehow.’

  ‘I have it. Do you want to come over
? I think I’ve some Old Monk left too.’

  Tanuj looks like he really just wants to go home and sleep. But he looks over my shoulder at something behind me. I turn around and see it’s Maran. I don’t know what has transpired between the two, but Tanuj agrees. ‘Sure, it’ll be great. But there’s another thing you should know about me.’

  I look at him curiously.

  ‘I don’t drink either,’ he laughs.

  As we reach home and I turn on the lights, I realize it’s the first time I’m having a guest over in the four months since Ira left. Momo has thankfully not ripped open the sofa or anything like that and the house is presentable. I change, hand Tanuj a spare set of clothes and go to the kitchen to prepare a peg for me and fill a glass of Coke for him as he connects his hard drive to my TV. Instead of Parks and Recreation, he suggests we watch an old crime comedy—The Smell of Fear in the Naked Gun series starring Leslie Nielsen. I haven’t heard of the film but I agree. As I enter the bedroom, he shushes me and asks me to take a photo of him. Momo has snuggled up to him and gone to sleep with his head in his lap. I take the photo, rather amused.

  ‘I didn’t know dogs would take to me this easily,’ he says. ‘Never interacted with one before.’

  ‘Momo was never faithful,’ I say as I hand him his glass and turn off the lights.

  As the film starts and I take small swigs of the rum, I’m surprised by how funny the film is. Its high point is a hilarious sex scene, which shows, as a soft, romantic song plays in the background, a montage of shots that are euphemisms for the act—a flower opening, a sausage being inserted into a long piece of bread, a performer shooting out of a cannon in a circus, a train roaring into a tunnel, an oil rig pounding the earth, followed by oil spurting out of the ground, a shell shooting out of a submarine, water bursting through a dam, crackers exploding in the sky and a basketball player dropping a ball through a hoop. But I don’t think I stay up through the entire film. I have had too much to drink.

  I am superstitious about what I do at midnight on the thirty-first of December, because I feel it sets the tone for the rest of the year. But, in spite of that, I don’t try and stay up until midnight to call and wish Ira. With more than twenty minutes to twelve, I doze off or pass out—I’m not sure. Either way, I sleep with the knowledge that this is the best time I’ve had in months.

  7

  Influence

  My resolution for the new year is to find a new role model. For years, Ira has been the only person I have looked up to and tried to be like, so much so that I don’t remember now which likes and dislikes of mine are my own and which ones I’ve acquired from her. We started at a point of convergence—we both loved to read, were on the same side of political divides and were idealists who thought we’d become journalists to change the world. But then our interests started to diverge. I stayed in the field I had chosen while she decided to return to academics. Her interests became intellectual while mine remained pragmatic, almost pedestrian.

  To be honest, we reached a point where I put up with things I didn’t exactly enjoy just so I had her approval—like going to see an art opening on my off days instead of staying home, or helping her in the kitchen on days Shobha didn’t turn up instead of ordering in from the local dhaba. I suppose it comes with being married. You do what your spouse likes so that you’re in it together. But there are times when you don’t want to keep up.

  Now, I begin to admit to myself that I like white wine, not red; post rock, not classical music; Friends over Seinfeld; that I don’t get magic realism and can’t appreciate Rushdie and Marquez and Pamuk though I can’t get enough of Tolkien and Rowling. I need a new role model—someone I can identify with, observe and emulate. Someone like a life coach. And before I know it, Tanuj becomes that person.

  Tanuj and I had always got along well since the time I joined the Estate, but it’s only now, as I make an effort to get to know people other than Ira, that I realize how much he and I have in common. We come from a similar middle-class Bombay background and stick out for our quiet, hard-nosed approach to work in a brash profession where people are constantly trying to pull each other down. If anything, he’s the more sorted one. We are the same age but he is already two rungs above me. Which also means he earns more than me, but I try not to think of that. He is Maran’s favourite; the equanimity with which he can handle the lead story on the front page changing half an hour before deadline on a breaking-news night is hard to find. And he is that rare desk hand reporters actually like.

  In the time we have every day before the evening meeting, I try to draw Tanuj out of the newsroom and pick his brains during walks around the building about how he has come so far in his career in such a short span of time. I discover that he does not think of work as just editing stories and building a rapport with the seniors. In his spare time, he meets editors and journalists from other papers and magazines. He doesn’t do it to consciously build a network or increase his odds of getting better job offers—even if that is the intention. He does it naturally. He meets them at book clubs, cultural events or on jaunts around town to discover good places to eat.

  On the other hand, I had all along thought of my job as a means to make just enough money to get by every month while my focus was either on completing my master’s or convincing Ira’s parents to let us marry. Now I realize that being hard at work in a corner of the office isn’t going to get me anywhere. All that Tanuj does is as much a part of shaping one’s career as crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s in the stories I edit.

  I decide I want to be more like him and start with the superficial things. From floaters, jeans and round-neck T-shirts, I switch to black formal shoes, cotton trousers and full-sleeve shirts, tucked in. And I can tell the difference immediately. Not only do the reporters take me seriously but I myself do too. My approach to those around me becomes more professional and I feel more engaged with my work.

  There’s one problem, though. The young interns do not turn around to take a second look at me when I’m walking by. They do that for Tanuj. I can see their eyes linger on him and hear them giggle. And it’s not just because they know I’m married while he’s still single. I see myself in the glass door of the office gym one day and decide to follow Tanuj in there for an hour every afternoon before work.

  The first time we stand before the mirror in the changing room does not do good things to my self-esteem. Tanuj’s clean physique is enviable. He has the body of a swimmer without the bulk of a gym junkie, while on my puny frame I can only see scraggly hair and loose skin. It’s not like I’m seeing myself like this for the first time, or that Ira has never made fun of my love handles. But I’ve never before measured myself against a benchmark. I quickly put on my gym clothes and scoot out, hoping Tanuj did not see what I did.

  I’m a little unsure of what I can do without exposing my rookie status. I’ve been on a treadmill before, so I go for that. But just five minutes on it, even at a speed of 5.0 and at zero incline, and I’m gasping for breath through my mouth. Tanuj, on the one next to me, has headphones over his ears, and I can hear faint strains of ‘Zinda’ from Bhaag Milkha Bhaag as he runs faster and faster at an increasing incline and continues to breathe normally. If I were in high school, I would have been ragged and molested all the way out of the gym. Thankfully, Tanuj is more sympathetic to my plight and realizes I might need some help. But even he can’t stop himself from laughing when I slowly lift my knees and stomach off the floor during my first push-up, tentatively look like I’ll dive back to complete at least one, and then fall flat.

  Next, he goes for the 15 kg weights. He sees me reach for the 5 kg ones and says, ‘Those are for wo—’ but it’s too late. I’ve already picked them up and am grinning. It’s hard to keep up with Tanuj as he rests his hand on his knee and raises the dumbbell to his chin, or when he stands up, holds one in each hand, and raises them first to his shoulders and then over his head. He has clearly been doing this for a long time. Not only do I manage to lift the
weights only ten times against his twenty, but I’m also doing it all wrong. He notices that I’m bending my arms at an odd angle and helps me hold them tighter. I feel the pull in my muscles but persevere.

  ‘It’s okay, you know,’ he says encouragingly. ‘You don’t have to kill yourself on your first day.’

  ‘It’s—high—time,’ I groan as he props up my elbows with his hands so I can complete a decent number.

  ‘I’ll tell you the same thing my first gym instructor once told me,’ he says. ‘Imagine there is a party and you’re walking into a big hall with your girl. All eyes will be on the two of you as you make an entrance. She’ll be a little shy and will hold on to you for reassurance. Now think which part of your body she will hold and focus on that. Do weights and push-ups if you see her holding your arm. Pull-ups if you see her placing her hand on your shoulder in a ballroom dance. Crunches if you see her putting her arm around your waist.’

  It’s sensible advice, no doubt, but I cannot see myself walking into a room with any woman in the foreseeable future, least of all Ira. And I cannot for the life of me imagine her holding on to me shyly. So I just soldier on without much motivation. Despite the agony and the trauma of not having functional limbs for the next one week, I do everything Tanuj does: squats, half-squats, one-legged hops and forward kicks, succumbing finally to reverse crunches. I end up merely sitting on a bench and studying him as he lies down and raises his legs perpendicular to the floor.

  *

  ‘Have you been working out?’ Alisha asks as I sit in the chair opposite her. We are at a table on the terrace of Diggin, a new place opposite Gargi College. It’s the end of January and the sun is out after a long time.

  Alisha was shocked when I mentioned to her one day while driving past the cafe that I haven’t been here yet. ‘It’s the best thing about our neighbourhood right now,’ she had said and offered to treat me. I had looked it up on Zomato and, taken in by its wooden flooring, the low-hanging lamps, the tree mural, the spacious seating and the cost for two of Rs 1,350, agreed gladly.