Reclaimed Verses

It was the usual; run of the mill Sunday where Shoma could get her weekly quota of a lazy morning, a break from the frenetic pace at which she would work on weekdays to ensure her husband and daughter reached their destinations on time. Sometimes, she imagined herself as a train that had to reach at every station dot on time or risk the ire of the waiting passengers. Sunday was the only day that she could afford to arrive a little late.

But this Sunday, if one noticed closely, not that anyone in her household did; one could make out a sense of anticipation about her. She glanced at the Sunday supplement and then at her husband, like she was waiting for something to happen.

Shoma leaned over the coffee table to look into her daughter’s crossword attempts. “That’s extricate” she offered helpfully as Piu erased another failed word with vengeance. “As if you would know!” she snapped at Shoma, without even looking up from the paper. Shoma retreated back into the couch as if stung. She should be used to it by now, she mentally chided herself.

“You should not interfere in affairs you know nothing of” advised her husband sagely, as he emerged from behind his newspaper. Shoma had just composed herself when this piece of wisdom floated, feather light, and settled like lead upon her.

Mr. Rai opened the supplement to the page where they published poems sent in by the readers. He loved this part of the paper and it had been his Sunday ritual ever since Shoma had known him. He would read and comment on the writings, as if the editor himself had asked for his opinion. Even today, as he was halfway through the first poem, “not much depth” he had pronounced; and moved on to the second one.

The air of anticipation around Shoma that had momentarily dimmed was back in full force. She eagerly waited for her husband to finish reading the second poem, her hands knotting up the pallu of her sari. “Could you sit still, this one is good!” Mr. Rai chided her. Shoma beamed at this. Not that her husband noticed, but she beamed nevertheless.

“Hmmmm” droned a contemplative Mr. Rai, as he finished the poem. Shoma knew from years of observation that this sound was reserved for pieces her husband really liked. But she wanted to hear him say it, so she asked, “Do you like it?”, the excitement leeching into her voice and a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “This one has a dreamy quality about it, really nice” he said, still reading the paper, “Oh look, it’s written by a Shoma Rai!” as he looked up at her.

She was smiling now, waiting for him to make the connection. He smiled at her, a smile that was at once patronising and condescending, “Same name, but what talent the woman has!”. Shoma’s smile faded, scattered into the winds of indifference. She opened her mouth to say something. “Would you make some paranthas for breakfast today” her husband said, looking back at his paper.

She stood there for a second more, swallowing her words, picking up the empty cups, before turning back towards the kitchen. Her husband hadn’t seen her smile minutes before, nor had he seen that smile fade. He could not see the tears that gathered at the corner of her eyes now. In fact, Shoma wondered if her husband had ever properly seen her at all!

Monday morning brought with it all its attendant haste and misplaced accessories. “Shoma, have you seen my file?”, “Mom, where did you keep my geometry box”, “Shoma, where is my breakfast? I am getting late!”. Shoma ran about like a freight train dropping off lost files, geometry boxes and breakfast at their respective stations, always feeling a little behind schedule.

Mr. Rai sat at the breakfast table, looking disapprovingly at a piece of toast that had gotten a tad crisper than how he usually liked it. “This is just about the only work you do, is it too much to ask for that you do it right?” he directed at his wife, reluctantly biting into the offending piece of toast. Shoma stood there pouring a glass of juice for Piu, her lips sealed from years of practice. She put the glass near Piu’s plate and went back to the kitchen.

“Piu, please go get the newspaper” Mr. Rai asked of his daughter. She came back with the paper and an envelope and handed both to her father. Mr. Rai set aside the paper and looked at the piece of mail. “It’s addressed to your mother…..” he told Piu, his tone sceptical of the fact that someone would write to his wife. He tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter. From its folds slipped out a handwritten note of appreciation.

Shoma was busy slicing the cucumber for Piu’s sandwich, the sharp knife tapping the chopping board at breakneck speed. As always, she felt her train running late, almost feel her impatient daughter tapping her feet, waiting for the sandwich. Breaking through her studied haste, comes in her husband’s voiced, laced with surprise. “Oh!! So it was your mother who had sent in that poem”, Shoma heard her husband say. But even before she could faintly smile at this acknowledgement, the rest of her husband’s statement came floating up to her, “I wonder where she copied it from?”.

Her hand jerked at this blasé dismissal, the fast moving knife placing a neat cut across her index finger. “Copied!” she thought as she watched a thin trickle of blood stain a slice of cucumber. She closed her eyes and let a tear escape as she put down the knife and rummaged in a nearby drawer where she kept the band-aids. She was just about to peel off the wrapper when Piu screamed for her sandwich. Shoma’s fingers stilled and then she threw down the band-aid. She watched it flutter down to the floor and realised that it just won’t be enough today.

Moments later Shoma came out of the kitchen, a plate of sandwiches in her hand, to find Piu irritatingly tapping a fork on the dining table. Her husband was draining his cup of tea, the letter of acknowledgement from the newspaper tossed carelessly beside his plate of unfinished toast. Shoma put down the plate in front of Piu with a thud, the cut on her finger leaving a red smear on the edge of the plate. She started to pick up her husband’s plate when he remarked, “You cut your finger?” Shoma looked him right in the eye and snapped, “How does it matter to you?”, and turned to walk back to the kitchen.

Mr. Rai sat at the table for a few seconds, utterly puzzled. In his eighteen years of marriage, he had could never recall his wife ever looking straight into his eyes. It unnerved him. He shook his head, as if to shrug off the incident, to forget that it ever happened. He got up, put on his coat, picked up his briefcase and left for office. Piu left for school soon after. Shoma never came out of the kitchen to see anyone off.

After the house was empty, she went into the bedroom. From behind the stacks of neatly folded clothes in the almirah, she took out a sheaf of paper tied together with a piece of string. She sat on the bed riffling through the pages, some were old, with the ink almost faded, some were new, some had yellow stains from when inspiration had struck her in the kitchen, and she had rushed to put it down on paper, completely forgetting to wash her hands. These pages held within them years of feeling and emotions that she had painstakingly arranged in verses, these are the pages where she poured her heart out when no one in her house ever had any time for her. She finally let the tears flow, falling on the pages, dissolving a little of the ink as they meandered across.

Shoma reached the last of the pages, where scribbled across, in a handwriting that wasn’t her own, was the first and only praise for her verses. She read the letter once again, as she had done countless times before, always hiding inside the silence of an empty house, when there were no husbands or daughters making demands on her time. She traced the lines of the name at the end of the letter, a name that wasn’t her husband’s, a name that felt comforting, a name that was lost in the waves of time. Today the name suddenly gave her strength, gave her the will to follow through on something that she had contemplated several times along the course of her marriage.

She carefully folded the sheaf of paper and put them in her bag. She came out into the living room and picked up the letter from the newspaper and the note that they sent the readers whose poems get published. Next, she took the lock and the key for the front door and cast a glance around the house. The used dishes and empty glasses from breakfast still sat on the dining table. In the kitchen, she saw the half peeled vegetables that were supposed to be today’s lunch. A cushion from the couch lay on the floor. Her husband won’t like this at all. But her finger had stopped bleeding, she had stopped hurting; and that was all that mattered now.

Shoma walked out the front door, locked it behind her and dropped the key in the flowerpot kept right under the nameplate. A nameplate that proclaimed that the house belonged to Mr. Aveek Rai. It was right, it wasn’t her house and she won’t live here any longer. She turned her back on the house and its inhabitants. She didn’t know what the future held, but she had opted out of her devalued present and that was enough for now.