Kalki
By Anshuman Tomar
When love turns sour, what keeps it going between Kalki and Vishwesh is often that addictive aftertaste of bitterness. Anshuman explores the idea of weakness masquerading as love
Vishwesh is sitting on the green chair. His curly hair is oblivious to the mess he is making while eating the mangoes, this human act messier than the act of nature sitting on his head.
Kalki is by the wash basin, fidgeting with her spectacles while filling a glass of water. She takes a long swig as if it’s beer which needs to be finished, keeps it on the kitchen table and looks in his direction.
‘When was the last time you went out with a girl?’
‘Uhh, the last time you thought you were infallible?’
With a look born out of scorn and contempt, she says, ‘I may be old but my skin wears the golden hue of my soul…what would an imbecile like you ever understand, you stinking waste of a man? Who should be eating a pomegranate instead of these damn mangoes! It is healthier, has more anti-oxidants for you, will help your liver. which is the seat of courage, and your seat has long weakened.’
He takes rambunctious bites to annoy her even more.
Ominous dark clouds are approaching. A storm can be seen moving in through the kitchen windows.
‘These same ominous clouds have entered our lives, Vishwesh.’
‘Your penchant for drama can never go away.’
He picks up his pack of cigarettes along with his can of milk and a packet of chips. He has never used a trolley to get his things; he knows what he wants as always.
‘You shouldn’t smoke so much.’
Kalki waylays him at the checkout counter of the grocery store holding her basket neatly stacked with coffee powder, vessel cleaner and her 50 percent dark chocolate.
‘How does that affect your life? Stay the hell away from what I do.’
‘I wonder, I really do. Where has this acerbic tongue come from? You were not like this.’
‘Neither were you…!’
Their argument is drowned by an announcement. ‘Will the owner of a white Dzire please move your car immediately? You have double parked in a disabled-only zone.’
Kalki smirks as Vishwesh walks out of the store, lights a cigarette, turns briefly to blow out smoke with deliberation, and walks to the parking lot.
She moves very slowly, her feet are bare. The skin on her wrinkled feet reflect the glow of the warm sun pouring in from the window. Her feet are as pale as her forehead. Each step of her movement is as long as the breath she is taking. Sometimes her legs brush against each other. Her arms are swinging as if a musical note has gone awry. Her glasses are fixed firmly on her bushy eyebrows, her eyes are blinking at a metre of a haiku. The shoulders are taut, her back straight with only her head bending. She stops. Her feet come close to each other. Her head looks straight through the window. Her arms are by her side and her knees are hurting. She places her palms on her knees, bends forward and sinks into the sofa.
Her back is absorbed by the couch, her arms resting peacefully on its arms. Her legs stretch out with the left ankle crossed over the right. Her head is straight, with her glasses kept on the table next to the sofa. Her face is placid. Her shoulders relaxed.
‘I met him at the library. That day, so far back in time, is still so vivid. He was sitting next to the “Philosophy and Neurology” section. I was hit by the image of this remarkable, young, good-looking man. There was a gap between his front two teeth. Cute. (But now I notice how little bits of food get lodged there, the dot of cavity growing large). He was sitting there looking into the pages of a fat book, the “Great Gatsby.”’
Kalki loves spending time in the playground. Something about the silliness of children playing resonated with her. Her body is leaning against the trunk of the tree. She was in a state of observational meditation.
‘Is that your boy on the swing?’
‘Yes he is, aunty.’
‘You’ve not taught him any manners, it seems.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You heard me. No manners.’ And Kalki flicks her finger, in the general direction of the boy.
‘That’s rude.’
Kalki ignores the remark with an air of insouciance, pulls out her 50 percent dark, pops it into her mouth and smiles.
‘I have always been aware of how I mentally laugh at people. A laugh of unbridled vanity, of a self-made pride. Listen to this: we were at a dinner the other day. By we, I mean, a few friends and Vishwesh. One of them looks towards me and quips, “Kalki you were brilliant in observing the flaw in the teacher and pointing it out to her with a touch of subtlety”. At that remark, I had simply nodded with a humility so contrived that in my head irony was being mocked at. Ha…ha…ha… you are such an accomplished deceiver, woman. Ah well.’
While she was enjoying her solitary delight, Vishwesh is disturbed from his reverie by a squirrel running over his stomach. The squirrel stands still each time his breath enlarges his tummy and when he exhales, the squirrel patters its feet against his belly.
He gets up and leans against the tree. Kalki offers him the chocolate, ‘You can’t turn this down.’
He raises his eyebrows, and snatches the whole bar from her. A distant sound of the siren fills up their space. And Kalki’s voice marches all over it.
‘Look, they are coming to take you away for good; humanity needs a favour. And that, my rascal darling, is the sound of it.’
Kalki is peering through the door with her spectacles pulled down to her nose. Their backyard is lit by the evening light.
Vishwesh is smoking a cigarette by the trees. ‘I suppose she told you the story that happened at dinner. I bet she didn’t tell you how rude she was with her display of prudish behaviour at the school meeting. She just needed a reason to flaunt her “acquired knowledge”. An auto-didact she may be but that doesn’t earn her the privilege to snub people because it gives her pleasure…that friend of hers was feeding her, her own vanity and she doesn’t even know it. How bloody tragic!’
He finishes his cigarette, turns around, dusts himself off the smell.
‘You still fill up the air with your stench.’
Vishwesh ignores her, picks up a bottle of Limoncello and drinks it in one go, allowing a large part of it to dribble down his chin, throat, shirt. Looking at him in this state, she finds herself caught in a vortex of disbelief, disappointment and irreconcilable rage.
‘Why would I want you, or you choose me? Why God, take him away! A woman like me never deserved the worst of humankind.’
With his fingers entwined at the back of his head, the elbows made a pair of blinkers. He looks outside the window at the leaves on the branch of a deodar tree. His belly is touching the glass of the window, shoulders arching back, neck and chin straining upwards and his eyes fixated on the leaves. The distance between his feet is wide enough for a podgy cat to slip by. Reams of fat on his folded arms can be seen glistening in the street light streaming in. After a brief meditative stare, he turns around, with his arms coming down by his side, his body turning away from the window. He slouches into the couch; his whole body coalescing into a blob as he does. He stares vacantly into the room ahead, his attention away from the leaves.
‘It is one of those days in January. Floating, day-dreaming. If I were to describe her, well, I could see an argument between dusk and snow. There is light and darkness. I see her speaking to one of the professors. I see how beautiful she is — was — that January day. She is wearing her favorite sari. Blue becomes her when she adorns it. The jingle-jangle of her payal is moving to a different beat than her soul.’
Kalki walks into their room. She notices he is reading ‘The Idiot’. ‘Ha, the idiot reading the idiot,’ she smirks. She also notices the cigarette butts lying around his bedside table, half of them outside the ashtray. The lamp is not working. She sees a strange looking dress under the bed and wonders if he is seeing someone else and then laughs at the thought. The cobwebs on the table fan need to be wiped away. He still has the Buddha’s artefact that they bought together the first time they went away for a whole weekend. The bedside table looks worn out.
Kalki goes to her dressing table — immaculately clean — and applies her night cream, carefully, on every part of her wrinkled face. She uses a cotton swab to wipe off any grime, a part of her believing she could take away her wrinkles with every swipe. She keeps her vanity box aside, picks up her book and settles into her side of the bed to read. Shuts it off after exactly twenty minutes.
Meditates.
‘I will do better tomorrow. I am pure. I am complete. I am whole. Just the way I was born.’
Anshuman Tomar is an erstwhile broadcast journalist and now works as a freelance media professional. He is on a journey to seek the meaning of life through fatherhood, anthroposophy and ruminations. Read Anshuman’s other story from the ‘Rain in my Sky’ workshop here: https://medium.com/wordy-tales/a-walk-to-somewhere-a9dfb4203c0a
