It was a time when Ira and I had just got married and moved to Shahpur Jat, and happy as I was about that, I was also more than a little upset about having to leave behind the neighbourhood strays I had befriended when I lived with Yusuf. They were wild outdoor creatures who wouldn’t have taken to our new third-floor flat. And though I did not say anything to Ira, she must have noticed I was moping about the separation.
Then one day, as we were returning home from our weekly vegetable shopping, we stopped on the way for momos at a Chinese cart. It belonged to a Sikkimese fellow called Sonam, whom we knew well by then since we were regulars. At first we didn’t notice the pup sleeping at his feet, but when Sonam took the lid off the container to serve us momos, the tiny thing stood up and started wagging his white tail at us. Ira backed off quickly but came closer when she noticed that the pup looked too weak to attack. He was a dirty, scrawny thing, his nose encrusted with dried snot, and she dropped him a piece from her plate since he looked so malnourished.
‘Do you want to take him?’ Sonam asked instantly.
‘What? No, no,’ Ira said before I could reply.
‘He toppled over the wall yesterday,’ Sonam said, pointing at the fence behind him that separated Shahpur Jat from the Asian Games Village, ‘and fell on my cart. All my momos fell on the ground. I kicked him but he ate up all of them. He looked so hungry that I did not have the heart to stop him. But I can’t look after him.’
I wanted to take him. Shahpur Jat is full of violent stray dogs and I knew, without a home, he wouldn’t live very long. I turned hopefully towards Ira, though I knew what her answer would be. But the moment I looked into her eyes, something passed between us. And I knew I wasn’t imagining it—something really did. Her eyes seemed to acknowledge what was going on in my mind. I could tell she knew I wanted—needed—to take him home. And I could tell she knew why.
‘We can’t take him …’ I began to tell Sonam.
‘No, we will,’ Ira cut in firmly.
I looked at her. ‘You don’t even like animals.’
But she brushed me off again. The girl who had never been within barking distance of a dog then warily picked up the pup and we returned home, Ira cradling him in her arms. It was she who found out that he was yet too young to be fed meat and it was she who discovered we could give him a dog milk replacer. This put an end to his yelping and whimpering that kept us up in those first few nights. And once we were sure he would live, we decided to name him Momo—after his favourite delicacy.
Over the next few months Ira fell so completely in love with him and he with her that I forgot there was ever a time when she did not like animals. It is only now I remember this not unimportant detail and it makes me glad and grateful to think that she brought him home that day—agreed to share her home with a creature she knew would destroy all the furniture and upholstery she had lovingly put together for our first home—just because she thought he would make me happy.
*
I understand now. All that I have been fretting over for one year. All that caused Ira to leave me and go.
I asked myself the wrong questions and ended up with the wrong answers. I asked myself what it means to be married and the answer I got was that marriage is when two people live together and work hard to make their lives better and richer and bigger. I was so caught up in trying to live up to the answer I had got that I did not see it wasn’t an answer Ira shared. I did not see I was letting her down on the promises on which we had decided to build this marriage. Even when I did ask myself the right question, I did not come up with the right answer. I asked myself what it is to love and the answer I got was that love is when two people are so like each other that they can’t but be together. So when our paths diverged, I thought Ira and I had fallen out of love. In the divergence I saw a parting as inevitable. But I forgot that ours was never an orthodox love. I don’t know why I tried to conform. It was never going to work for us.
But I see the truth now. I see now what Ira saw long ago. Love is not when two people are alike or when they try to be alike or when they can’t bear to be away from each other. Nor is it when they decide to live together or set for themselves common life goals such as a house, a child or a retirement plan. Love is, once you are truly in its grips, a capacity for change. And once you have that figured, everything else will simply fall into place.
I drift off to sleep with the dawn of this truth, and when I wake up I see it’s morning and Ira is standing at the window with her back to me. And beyond her in the distance, though we were told it hasn’t been seen in a fortnight, is a cloudless view of Mount Kanchenjunga, looking every bit as resplendent as it did the first time I fell in love with it ten years ago in this very village.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ Ira whispers to me as I join her at the window.
‘Happy anniversary,’ I say in response.
*
Ira looks up at me and smiles, almost as if she had forgotten what day it is. She then walks up to our backpack and comes back with an envelope in her hand.
‘It was all I had money for when I left New York,’ she says, handing it to me. ‘Thankfully, I put it in a folder when I packed and that saved it from the rain.’
Inside, there is a simple greeting card. At its centre, stuck against a plain yellow background, is a floral-patterned robe that might be a kimono. It hangs from a stapler pin that’s been made to look like a wardrobe hanger. The belt of the robe twirls around the sleeve of a man’s white-and-blue-striped robe that hangs next to it from a similar stapler pin. Between them, stuck to the card, are two tiny heart-shaped beads.
I open the card. ‘Dear Rohan,’ it reads. ‘I love you. I know I don’t say it often enough. But I want you to know that I do even when I don’t. Everything happens in its time. The important thing is that we look out for each other. I hope I have your back covered and you have mine. Always. Happy anniversary. Love, Ira.’
At the bottom of the card is the line: ‘P.S. We’ll always have each other to come back to.’
I think of the first time she had said those words to me on the night she left for New York and I smile as I see that she has finally put them down in a greeting card, as a keepsake, so that I can go back to it every time I miss her. Importantly, she has stayed true to her words.
I stare at her for a few seconds and then, overwhelmed, I engulf her in an embrace. ‘After all that has happened?’ I say.
‘Yes,’ she stares back and says. ‘You never believed me when I told you before, but I did know it when we first met that we’ll get married and grow old together.’
‘Come on.’
‘Don’t believe me. But that’s how it is.’
‘The first time we met?’
‘Yes.’
‘There must have been something I did or said?’
‘Not really,’ she says. ‘I mean, nothing extraordinary. It was the first day of college and you sat in the first row as the bell rang and everybody trooped in. I was behind you and at some point you turned around. You told me your name is Rohan and asked me for mine.’
‘You remember it so well?’
‘Yes,’ she says.
‘What did I say really?’
‘You said—Ira, what a beautiful name. May this be the start of a new era.’
‘And it was.’
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘and that’s when I somehow knew we’ll grow old together. That we’ll have a marriage that lasts the long distance—you know, the long distance of time.’
‘Instead we ended up with the long distance of space.’
‘That’s no matter. I have a feeling we’ll have time too.’
*
We are in the car now. We are driving down the beautiful mountains on a clear morning. Ira sleeps. We will go back to Delhi and some months later she will return to New York. I won’t resent it this time because I know this is what makes her happy, this is what is good for her. She will not leave me this time because she wants to leave me. This time,
the divergence will not be a parting of ways. If she wants to stay there, I won’t ask why we are even married if we are not together. Years may go by but I know love will hold us together even when we are apart. No matter what, I know now, we will always have each other.
This marriage, this time, is for the long—and full—distance.
Acknowldements
Life, much like this book, would be nothing without the people who shape it. For that reason I would like to express my deep, deep gratitude to:
First and foremost, Shakeel, who became Yusuf in his entirety. Thanks for being a friend, brother, best man, source of sleaze, voice of wisdom and the catcher in the rye. And for coming back for me in my Second Peloponnesian War.
Jayashree Khulge, most direct ancestor, who will remain my staunchest champion for all time to come.
My parents, Shubhada and Jagadish Inamdar, whom I will never be able to thank enough for the life they have given me.
Arcopol, dear friend during some desperate times.
Swati, for seeing merit in an anonymous submission and deciding it was worth publishing. And for helping me make it better.
Diya, for the timely, tremendous and heartfelt vote of confidence, and for championing this book along with Swati. I could not have hoped for a better publisher-editor team to work with.
Bidisha, for her careful read of the proofs.
Paru, for the lovely cover illustration, and Bonita, for translating what I had in mind on to the canvas so well, both visually and conceptually, and for the absolutely stunning final face of the book I’m proud to show the world.
Subhashree, Percy, Rahul and the entire sales and publicity teams at HarperCollins, for all the enthusiasm and help in navigating the big, bad market out there.
Sturdy pillars of support: Krishan, Shantanu and Ananth.
Trichy, Baga, Eliot, Juhu, Jeevaan, Kochi, Strip, Poker and Nemo, for all the conditional love.
Blessy, the one who never left.
Finally, Rumi, the light at the end of the long-distance tunnel, in the hope that you become Blessy. You make everything worth it.
About the Book
We’ll always have each other to come back to.
Rohan and Ira’s life takes an unexpected turn when Ira decides to leave for New York to study. They’ve been married for only fifteen months, but this is the opportunity of a lifetime, and Rohan is not going to come between his wife and her dream. So, sad but supportive, he stays back in Delhi, where he is on the brink of a promotion at a national daily. After all, his relationship with Ira is strong enough to survive the distance—they are new-age lovers who don’t let marriage come in the way of careers and ambitions.
Rohan prepares for a year without Ira, getting by with a little help from his friends: Yusuf, his on-call confidant who lives in Bangalore; Alisha, a colleague he likes catching up with over tea; and Tanuj, his new role model at work. Life without Ira is going surprisingly well. Until the day, that is, she reveals the real reason she left.
Beautifully written and unflinchingly honest, this is the love story of our times.
About the Author
Siddhesh Inamdar is a writer and editor.
He studied English Literature at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and Delhi University, and journalism at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. He worked with The Hindu, DNA and Hindustan Times and is now in publishing. He lives in Delhi with his wife, daughter and three cats.
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First published in India by
HarperCollins Publishers in 2018
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Copyright © Siddhesh Inamdar 2018
P-ISBN: 978-93-5277-589-7
Epub Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 978-93-5277-590-3
This is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Siddhesh Inamdar asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved under The Copyright Act, 1957. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on—screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse—engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers India.
Cover design: Bonita Vaz-Shimray
Cover illustration: Paru Ramesh
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The Story of a Long-Distance Marriage Page 13