Beyond Wrong-Doing and Right-Doing
Meera furtively glanced at the clock, it was 11 PM. She dreaded the 7.30 AM meeting at the office, the next morning. She was on a video call with her fiancé Samir, halfway across the globe. “Oh, the pains of different time zones and love!”, She thought to herself.
“So, you’re finally moving back!” Samir gushed, his voice brimming with enthusiasm.
“It’s too late not to come now, dad has sent the wedding invitations out to guests,” she said with feigned seriousness.
“ Oh yes, you don’t want to disappoint him.”
“ Of course. Besides, I like moving continents.”
They exchanged customary goodnights and she signed off for the night. As she drifted off to sleep she fondly thought of the wedding dress that she had picked out on her last trip home, to India. Meera and Sameer were high-school sweethearts. They waited for two long years, on different continents, so that she could fulfill her professional dreams before she moved back.
Meera adjusts her wedding ring, six months of habituation has not taken away its newness to her. It glints in the morning sun rays that enter her bedroom window. She steps into the shower and lets the warm water run over her youthful body as she thinks of what lay ahead in the day.
She is going to see him.
She dresses carefully, she wants to look appropriate for the occasion. Samir has always admired her dressing sense. She has missed him at home in the past two months. She picks up the Tuberose bouquet that she got delivered in the morning and heads off to meet him.
She holds his hand, it feels a bit cold. She leans over and whispers in his ears “Beyond the ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there”; lines from their favorite poet, Rumi. Tears roll down her cheeks, she is unsure if she took the right decision. The life support system beeps in its rhythmic tone.
Samir has been in this hopeless, vegetative condition since the car crash two months ago. Doctors gave up a month ago. After being torn between hopelessness, and guilt of letting him die, Meera has just signed the consent form to remove life support, thus releasing them both.
I wrote this for Microcosm for the weekly prompt below.
