Here’s the third part of the four-story novella, by Meenakshi. Ravi tells his story, in the weekly column, exclusively for Different Truths.
Hi! I am Ravi. I work for a large multinational corporation that is trying to integrate modern mechanisations to our handloom industry and help restructure and rebuild the weaving community with modern techniques. The attempt is to deconstruct and reconstruct the handloom network. If that makes any sense to you.
Yes, I am married and have two wonderful boys and yes, we are a small happy family. My wife is a brilliant cook and she is so talented. She composes poetry which, to be very honest, I don’t understand. It’s very vague what she wants to communicate through her poetry. It’s always full of pathos and loss and I keep telling her that she must change the lines to something that’s fun and don’t we all hear that poverty only attracts more poverty? Anyway, I can’t understand her sadness because she is genuinely happy as a person! She loves decorating the house, she is amazing with the boys. The marks they get in school are entirely her effort. And oh! She is super good with gardening. I could never grow a weed, leave alone plants and trees. But she manages to turn everything green under her watch. My garden is the one place I love being in because of all the exotic birds that have made their nests there! It takes me to places I used to love fantasising about as a child. You know my favourite pastime used to lie on the grass and build adventures around the places I could visit as an adult. I love travelling. I love exploring places. You know what the best part about the travel is? It’s the planning, the anticipation, the journey, the conversations, oh man! I love packing my bags and just going away.
Did you know that I always imagined just taking a backpack and walking across the length and breadth of this country! This country and basically all countries where human beings have settled, have stories to tell. You just have to listen closely to what the night watchman has to say or the traffic cop has to say. And you will experience history flowing through you. Sorry, I am rambling. This is my greatest joy and my biggest weakness. Also, this is what has led to an almost demise of my life as we know it.
Let me tell you something, I know you have spoken to my wife. She mentioned about it. And I also know you have spoken to Rishika. She too told me about it. Now, before you go around making your theories about what exactly happened, let me tell you, in belief, what happened. I met Renu at a relatives function and as she has always told me, she fell in love with me and wanted to know more about me and eventually marry me. At that point, I was struggling with a girl who broke up with me and my job wasn’t exactly paying me enough to even remotely consider marriage. Incidentally that was the reason that girl told me when she left. She said I couldn’t afford to feed myself three decent meals, how will I afford to feed her and her ailing mom. I tried my best to convince her but she moved on. Immediately after she left, a crazy stroke of luck lead me to meet my then CEO who doubled my salary and allowances, suddenly tipping the balance in my favour. At this point, I met Renu and didn’t really want to start a relationship because I was emotionally confused, mentally not up to it and generally was not in any frame of mind to commit to anything. But with Renu, she made things look easy. She would just breeze in and announce what she felt was good for us and at some level, I was just too caught up in her whirlwind to notice anything. She turned out to be very loving, very caring and basically everything she did was genuinely good. She somehow magically changed how my life was this far! She was great with conversations, she would write poetry, she was everything I wasn’t and I knew that that is what we need in a marriage. Someone who is the exact opposite! Friends would tell me that when two opposites meet is when there is fire and there is something to look forward to everyday. Each day is a new day, they said.
Today, I am telling you, all that is bunkum. I tried so hard to fit into Renu’s image of what she needed from a marriage only to realise that I was losing my identity. I stopped planning trips because she hated them, I would sit through three hours of utter cacophony because she loved movies and I would be so dead inside that I’d only keep looking at the exit signs hoping there was fire or an earthquake and we needed to evacuate! Her poetry was nice but really not something I could understand! And she would sulk that we couldn’t have intellectual conversations at all! But tell me, how can we when we are so poles apart? The areas I can talk about, she hates, the topics she wants to talk about I can barely keep my eyes open.
Then comes the intimacy bit. We had stopped playing the husband wife role ages ago! Initially I missed the physical closeness, and felt very angry and hurt, then I reconciled to the fact that we at least were still living together. And later I resigned to the fact that that chapter in our lives was finally closed.
After many years like this, I met Rishika at a conference and Oh man! She was fantastic. It was like I saw a best friend in her. I wished she was a man! People would have been able to understand us better. Two men can hang around together for hours together and no one bats an eyelid but a man and a woman hanging around together is blasphemous and to add to this was the fact that she was a divorcee! It made matters worse because suddenly out of nowhere she became the “other woman” in my life.
But let me clarify this one point to you. In all of this last one year that Rishika and I are friends we have never had physical intimacy on our minds. We would talk for hours about so many things but never did we feel the need to get in bed. We just enjoyed our time together just being there with each other. Now that you are asking so many times, maybe we would have slept together but that was not the point of our relationship. We just loved each other like best friends. If you can understand that. She was a female version of the best buddy. We could hang out together, indulge in our favourite pastimes and talk with zero filters. That was the best part. She was the only one who let me be me. She didn’t make me feel less of who I was and she made me feel like I mattered. And I think I did that to her too. I respect her so much and really amazed with her skills and her attitude.
What is the future? No idea. I don’t want to lose a best friend. It breaks my heart that I will have to let her go if I have to stay in this marriage. And I have tried so hard to explain to Renu that there was no physical intimacy. That I still love her and the kids. I don’t want to lose them. That this is a platonic relationship. That it would be so wonderful if they both met and accepted each other. I don’t want to continue being friends clandestinely but yes, if there is no option, I’ll end up doing that. Which will hurt even deeply. Why? Why can’t relationships be simple? Why do we have to choose? Why can’t society accept such relationships? And bastardise a genuine friendship?
(To be continued)
©Meenakshi
Photos from the Internet
#Relationships #Fiction #ShortStory #ComplexRelationship #ManAndWoman #Friendship #Understanding #DifferentTruths
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