That is when the first good thing of the day happens. Sharmila tells me there is a third option. A shared taxi. She says it is the locals’ most favoured mode of transport to get to Gangtok and guides me over the phone to the place in the market from where we can get a shared taxi the next morning.
I sleep uneasily despite the exhaustion and we set out early soon after breakfast. The taxis are old Boleros that seat ten people plus the driver: two in front, four in the middle and four at the back. The first six seats, which are likely to be the least shaky and jumpy in the uphill drive on bad roads, are all taken, but Ira is not willing to wait for another taxi. Finding enough passengers before it departs would mean we would have to hang around for at least an hour, and she is eager to reach Gangtok and get some proper rest. So we accept the seats in the back, booking all four to ensure comfort, and our taxi sets off.
The drive is quiet and uneventful and lasts all morning. Ira sleeps through most of it, her head resting on my shoulder as I idly fiddle with my phone. As we stop and step out for lunch at a small wayside restaurant that also doubles up as the owner’s house, I breathe deeply in the hope that we have left the bad part of our holiday behind along with the plains. The dense green of the mountains is encouraging and I feel like I can be upbeat.
But this new optimism lasts only a few hours. As has happened since our flight took off from Kolkata, I am let down soon enough. When we enter Gangtok I realize that the town is more touristy and less undiscovered than I remember it to have been ten years ago, a drizzle if not a downpour has followed us here, and the mountain air isn’t refreshing. It is heavy with diesel fumes from all the ancient shared taxis converging from the plains and the different parts of Sikkim into the capital of the state. Our hotel room overlooks a valley all right, but the view is broken by the roofs of several hotels further down the slope, and there is nothing remotely as spectacular as the Kanchenjunga on the horizon. As Ira steps into the bathroom to freshen up, I remain standing in the sunless late-afternoon light on the balcony, feeling miserable that my estimations of the weather, the cost and, most importantly, the destination have all gone wrong.
*
Ira and I have nice, relaxing hot-water baths and sleep cosily through the afternoon under the rajai. With the lights out and curtains drawn, I’m a bit disoriented when I wake up to find myself in darkness several hours later. I am uncertain if it is late night or early morning, but when I check my phone, I see it is only six-thirty in the evening. I have a childhood tendency to feel blue if I wake up at dusk from deep sleep, and it happens to me now. Something feels off, so I go out on the balcony without waking Ira and dial Amma’s number.
She sounds pleased to get a call from me. She enquires about the journey, the cold and, after asking in detail what I had for breakfast and lunch, tells me to be careful about what I eat while travelling. She reminds me that I am prone to falling sick with the slightest change of weather and asks if I am wearing enough warm clothes. I answer all her questions tediously, mostly in affirmative or negative grunts. She then passes the phone to Appa. I talk to him about this and that for a few minutes and then hang up. But it’s reassuring just to hear their voices. They belong to a time when nothing felt out of place.
Pinpricks of lights come alive in the valley. As I can’t make out much else in the dark, I stretch an arm beyond the balcony railing to see if it’s still raining. It’s not. I go back in and see that Ira is awake. Turning on the lights, I realize it will be too depressing to order dinner to the room, so I suggest going to the main market in the town centre instead. Ira splashes her face with water and puts kohl in her eyes. We wear our thermals and sweaters and step out, our hands dug deep into our pockets. We ask the girl at the reception to call us a cab but she says it will cost us two hundred rupees for the short distance of two kilometres. It is like this in touristy hill stations, she says sagely, and we decide to walk.
There is an awkward silence between Ira and me for two minutes as we start on the dark road that slopes up and down in the distance. Then in my infinite wisdom I dive head-first into the conversation I have been trying to avoid ever since Ira returned.
‘Do you want to talk about the D word?’ I blurt out.
‘The D word?’
‘Divorce.’
Ira doesn’t stop walking but looks round at me and merely smiles in her usual pithy way that makes me feel stupid. ‘Do you?’ she asks.
‘Not really. But I feel like there is something hanging between us. So maybe we should talk about it.’
‘Okay, let’s.’
After the abrupt start, I’m lost for words. ‘Are you having a good time?’ I ask tentatively.
‘I’m all right,’ she says. And before I know it, she veers off in a different direction with, ‘But what were you thinking getting us here!’
I want to cry. ‘You don’t like the place?’ I ask.
‘It’s not that I don’t like it. But we are in the hills right at the start of monsoon.’
‘Monsoon’s arrived early this year,’ I whine, parroting our Bagdogra driver. ‘Not my fault.’
‘It’s still June and the rains are unpredictable in the north-east. You should’ve read up a bit, no?’
‘But it’s monsoon all over India at this time. You should have listened to me when I was saying we should get married in December—such wonderful weather everywhere.’
The smile again.
‘You know,’ I say, ‘sometimes I think you insisted on June just because the only place with good weather at this time for anniversary vacations would be Europe.’
Ira laughs and I feel at ease. ‘Of course, that was the reason,’ she says.
‘Listen, I can’t afford Europe, okay? I can barely afford Sikkim.’
‘How much are we blowing on it, by the way?’
‘I had estimated forty, but now I think fifty, which means we’ll end up spending something like sixty.’
‘You could’ve bought a return ticket to New York in that much, I hope you know that.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘You should legally never be permitted to handle money,’ she says. ‘Just send it all to me.’
‘Don’t rub it in now.’
‘Rub in what?’
‘The whole money thing. You know, sometimes I think we’ve been fighting so much because … we wouldn’t have fought so much if I made more money. There’s a reason why Tanuj can marry a stranger and know he can make her happy. There’s a reason why my brother has and my parents have had the perfect marriage. Money. I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve decided I’m going to switch to corp comm or something.’
‘Sure. Because that’s what you want to do in life.’
‘No, it isn’t but …’
‘Rohan, why are you always like this? Why are you always looking for answers in the wrong things?’ I now regret having started this conversation. We may not have been having a good time earlier, but things are positively heating up now. The dark road is also winding endlessly and only making us pant; the market is nowhere in sight.
‘What do you …?’
‘Rohan, have I ever complained to you about money? Have I ever asked you to make more money? It’s all in your head. You used to complain when I used to give you all my income. And you complain now because of the cutbacks we have to make because of the small loan you had to take. There are days in New York when I just have a block of cheese for dinner, but I don’t badger you to send me more money. I know I’m doing the best I can and so are you.’
‘So you wouldn’t have minded if I hadn’t taken you on an expensive anniversary holiday?’
‘I would have liked to go away with you anyplace we can afford. I did not want you spending a bomb on coming all the way to Sikkim when it’s raining.’
‘And you don’t want me to do a job that’ll pay more?’
‘Of course not if that’s not what you want to … I don’t know where you’ve got this idea that you need to be this man—t
his provider of the family. You’re supporting me today and some day I will support you. We were never going to be this traditional couple with traditional gender roles … This is what I don’t like about you, Rohan.’
‘What?’ I sound timid even to myself.
‘You blow up these things in your mind that I’ve never said a word about because you find it easier to wrap your head around them. While the things that I do discuss with you—the things that actually matter to me—you never seem to get around to those.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘We haven’t been fighting because you don’t make enough money. We’ve been fighting—I went away to New York—because I didn’t feel you cared for what is good for me. You promised me a life of happiness, Rohan. I wanted to marry you because I felt you will always look out for me and with you I will be able to grow. I always think about what’s good for you, don’t I? I tell you not to move to corp comm even if it gets you more money because I know it won’t be good for you. But you didn’t do that for me. That entire time I was upset about my job, not once did you say—Quit if you are that unhappy. Not once did you ask yourself if it was good for me—if it would make me happy. That is why I thought about it and took the decision myself without taking you into account. Even after I got accepted for my course, did you help me with the paperwork? Did you help me pack? You took a loan for me and let me go, so you thought you had done your bit. But I know deep down you were angry at me for going. You may not admit it to yourself, but you resented me for leaving you behind alone. And all the anger and resentment came to the surface the first time we had a fight. You felt entitled to ask me to keep my work aside and make time for you because, in your head, you were the good, understanding husband who had been wronged.’
We fall silent. For a minute I don’t know what to say. Then I start thinking of things to counter what she has said. Then I feel all she has said is correct and wise. ‘I’m sorry. Things will be different next time,’ I say lamely.
‘I don’t know what this abstract next time you keep talking about is, Rohan.’
‘Next year when you are back for good. I won’t force you to do any job you don’t want to do. You can take all the time you want to figure out the right thing for you.’
‘I’m not sure I want to come back.’
‘What are you saying? Stop punishing me, Ira.’
‘I’m not punishing you. It’s about what will be good for me and my growth and my career.’
‘So what’s the answer?’
‘I think I want to do a PhD. Or try for a job there.’
‘But that means you’ll be there for six years. Or forever. I could come there but I don’t want to change my life entirely once again and then realize we can’t make it work. Maybe we should spare ourselves the trouble and divorce right away.’
‘There you go again!’ Ira rounds on me and says. ‘No, I don’t want a divorce. You want a divorce because you see all these happy unions around you and feel bad that you don’t have one. But marriages don’t come templated, Rohan; you’ve got to figure out your own. You can’t think of ours in terms of other people’s. What worked or did not for your parents, what will or will not for Tanuj and Tanvi—these are not the same things that will hold true for us. Instead of talking about divorce, Rohan, let’s talk about marriage and what it means. When I married you, I chose to experience life with you—good or bad. What marriage is it if it veers towards divorce after just a few hiccups? A marriage takes years to shape. It will happen in its own time if we look out for each other, if we help each other grow, if we make the effort to think about and act on what will help each other grow—even if it means dealing with, as in our case, the long distance.’
And with that, once again, we fall silent. In time, we reach the main market. We choose a nice Tibetan restaurant overlooking the town square and order red wine, chicken momos, pork shaphale, rice and lamb in bamboo shoot curry. And through the silence of a sour meal, only Ira’s final words ring in my head: ‘Instead of muddling up so many things in your head, why can’t you simply be with me? Here. In the moment.’
14
Togetherness
Gangtok grows on me once I accept that it can’t be what it was ten years ago. And it responds by giving us two days of only occasional spells of rain. Ira and I use the time to do touristy things. We hire a shared taxi, this time managing to get the front two seats next to the driver, to go to Nathu La, the mountain pass that connects Sikkim with Tibet. The sixty-kilometre drive takes us five hours as we move along slowly behind a long line of tourist buses, vans and cabs that wind their way uphill on the single-lane road built by the Border Roads Organization.
Even though it’s cloudy and hazy, the weather is the clearest it’s been in a week and Nathu La is anyway one of Sikkim’s biggest attractions, our driver Sanjib tells us by way of an explanation for the swelling crowd. I discover that he worked in Mysore for some time a few years ago and knows an impressive amount of Kannada. I also get the feeling that he has taken a liking to Ira and me, because while he responds impatiently when those at the back ask him how long it will be before we reach Nathu La, he offers us extra helpings of rice and chicken curry for free when we stop for lunch at his family’s restaurant on the way. So the long and somewhat uncomfortable drive does not feel all that bad.
Nathu La is teeming with more people than the number of cars prepared us for. There are sturdy honeymooning men with coy wives wearing red and white bangles up to their elbows, and there are older, less shapely couples with wailing babies—groups that I had thought the tough terrain would keep away. But, inspiringly, there are also old men and women who have braved the high altitude and low levels of oxygen just to tick a final item off their bucket lists. In the midst of these visions of what might have been our past and what could be our future are Ira and I, panting but doggedly climbing the steps to the Indian outpost at the top.
When we get there we see that the one on the other side is bigger, swankier and better maintained, with delicate Chinese motifs painted on the walls, but it is also desolate and manned by humourless soldiers. The Indian jawans reluctantly double up as travel guides and indulge the tourists’ questions about Nathu La’s history but absolutely refuse to let anyone take pictures, even the young women and children who think they might use their charms to get the army men to relent. So Ira and I come back down and find Sanjib, who is by now cursing our fellow passengers for taking far too long just to get a glimpse of ‘the enemy’.
His short temper gets shorter on the drive back as the sky becomes overcast and his taxi starts to make sputtering sounds that he stops by and by to check. He allows us a halt of only ten minutes at Changu Lake, but it is enough to catch somebody and ask him to take a photo of us against the placid stretch of blue water. I am happy with the shot, as also with the day so far, so much so that I reinstall Facebook on my phone despite the unsteady network and immediately post the photo. My jeans pocket is abuzz with the vibration of new notifications as we reach Gangtok early in the evening. Ira ignores my juvenility. The rain starts just as we step into the hotel. And I end the day with a relaxing one hour, for the very first time, in a bathtub.
*
The next day is not so eventful or remarkable, but it is nice in a quiet sort of way. It is the day for local sightseeing, and since we are going to be in Gangtok, we decide to hire a private taxi instead of a shared one. For the rest of the day we listen to the driver’s collection of hill songs and forgotten Hindi tracks from the 1990s as he drives us from the Ban Jhakri waterfall a little outside the city to the sprawling Ranka monastery and back to the Tibetology museum close to the main market.
The market is a two-hundred-metre-long and thirty-metre-wide cobbled stretch on which cars are not allowed, and on either side of which are two- or three-storey buildings painted in soft shades of green and pink. They contain restaurants, hotels and shops. The divider that runs down the middle of the road has wooden benches for t
ourists to take a break. It is on one of these, following an early dinner at a Nepalese home food place, that I ask Ira again if she is having a good time.
I’m hoping that her answer would have changed after the two good days, but ‘I’m all right’ is all she says.
‘You’re so hard to please,’ I say. ‘Tell me now where you want to go next year so I don’t waste money.’
‘Umm,’ she says with a playful smile, ‘Tokyo.’
I give her a long stare. ‘Do you know everything costs like a million yens there? Tell me a place in our budget.’
‘No. Tokyo,’ she insists, the smile still on her face.
‘Why?’
She seems to consider the question for a few seconds and then says, ‘Okay, come. Let me show you.’
We walk back to our hotel, and although I am tired and want to sleep when we slip under the rajai, I agree to watch the film Ira wants us to see because it’s been a while since she was so eager to share something with me. She opens her laptop and keeps it between us. It’s a German film called Kirschbluten—cherry blossoms.
Only a few minutes into the film and I’m no longer sleepy or tired. I’m affected by the film’s beauty—not breathtaking landscapes but what unfolds before us on the screen in the dark. The story is about an old, long-married couple, Trudi and Rudi, who live in a small Bavarian village. One day Trudi finds out that her husband is terminally ill, and the doctor suggests that they go on a final adventure together. She decides to keep the disease secret from him and convinces him that they should go see their children in Berlin. But when they arrive, they realize that their children are caught up in their own lives. So, from there they decide to drive to the Baltic Sea, where, even though Rudi is the one who is terminally ill, it is Trudi who suddenly dies.
The Story of a Long-Distance Marriage Page 11