She packed her clothes neatly into the small black suitcase that had faded into gray. She looked back at the walls of the room that had been hers for 25 years. She felt sad, not because she would miss anything but because she knew habits die hard.
She stepped into the verandah and paused near the armchair to look at the man whom she was married to for 25 years. He looked at her through his glasses, his handsome face with the same sarcastic smile that she had got used to for so many years now. She turned and walked out, never to look back.
At 45, at last she walked into freedom, she was leaving everything that she had got used to, everything that she was bound to by duty, yes even the bed that she shared with him. Will he miss the corpse that he used to make love to?
The decision to leave came suddenly. When they returned from the airport after seeing off Arunima and her husband, she had looked at him for the first time into his eyes fearlessly and said “ I am going away”. He had asked quietly as if he knew “When?” and she said “Tomorrow.” For years now, they had got used to this monosyllable conversation.
She jerked from her reverie as the bus screeched to a halt. She got down from the bus into the drizzling night and walked through the foot marks in the wet mud. As she walked towards the light shone in the distance, slowly very slowly her mind filled with joy. The rain that was hesitating in a drizzle now poured in all fury and she shivered in happiness. Why had she hesitated for so long to choose, to break away, she wondered, and she knew the answer, “Arunima” . She felt she could walk no more, she wanted to fly to the door that awaited her.
At last she stood there and even before she knocked, the door opened and she collapsed into those arms saying “I am free, I have come back to you, At last I am free….” Thus went on her rattle about freedom through the night, and thus she slept in her mother’s arms who sat beside her listening, tears streaming down her cheeks. She made no effort to wipe them off for they were tears of joy, rejoicing her daughter’s freedom.
Reshmi
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An unreasonably emotional person is what describes me... well well only people who know me know what this means..:) Otherwise, I am a sounding board who sometimes herself needs a sounding board to sound good!! I believe in love and only love because that is what has seen me through tough times, helped me grow stronger, helped me move forward, helped me flow incessantly even against turbulent currents.
4 comments:
i can relate!
Was the earlier love and life unreal because it was for a small duration? Is the beauty of the body untrue since it is transient? It is curious to understand how love from which freedom emits becomes the chain that enslaves.
When does one start treating the joy of love as a chore? Perhaps that's the inflection point. Can we renounce this cycle of freedom to slavery to new freedom to new slavery? Answers have been sought by many. We need perhaps to find our own answers.
Good one..in fact a little glimpse of past would have added more reality but still a good one :D
Hey, where are you?!
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