Lonesome

Sabiha Huq

I
“Roselle jam Ma used to make. You never tried that. Did you?”
She was a little confused by his sudden question.
“Did I ever try that? Ummm, I guess I never found roselles in the market. By the way, why are you remembering this now?” She sounded a little pissed. Now-a-days she always sounds so.
He was not shocked, rather replied in his nonchalant voice, “Ambalmadhu Ma used to call it!”
Dis he sounded a little pensive?
“Right. Ambalmadhu. Little sour and sweet as it is. I remember now.” She tried to make up.
“Can’t you stay with me while I sleep? These nights I am having blocks in my nasal passage and I wake up with a start. Have you noticed?”
He sounded desperate, but she was not to be beguiled, since there would clients waiting for online meetings after nine, but she wanted to talk about last night.
“Last night I was going to the washroom and found you around the refrigerator. You were having chilled food before sleep and then you would complain about blocked nose. How silly!” She was fuming now.
“No no! I always warm my food. Last night I was just checking if missed my Gaviscon.
“Yes, you do warm tour food, darling! In your dreams you do.”
“Hey, trust me! I do! But now I want you to come to me. I wanna hold you while I sleep.”
“Sure, darling! I need to have a meeting with the Stevensons who are buying a huge flat at Beacon Hill. They want me to decorate it. After that I will write a few emails. Till then watch the new webisode, will you?
She kissed on his cheeks and left. He picked his specs and looked at the new coffee table book Rita has brought. It was full of weird paintings by Francis Bacon with a few poetic lines by Dom Moraes. What a duo! At the age of 82, Bacon still painted awkward human bodies. He told someone he would go on until he dropped. Moraes did the same. What a zealot! He still remembers the television live in which Moraes tore his Indian passport to protest oppression on the people of the country. He was in London then. Does living abroad give men that power? Could Moraes do so, had he not that footing on a foreign soil where he had all the security of living? Moraes’ lifelong interest in robust women are inspiring him these days. Aha! What a life the poet enjoyed! When he started living with Leela Naidu, so many men who publicly denounced him as immoral gossipmonger, were privately envious of him.
Baba was one of them. While putting a layer of thick roselle jam made by Ma on his morning bread, he said he would not read Moraes anymore. Ma was a bit surprised because Baba was a big fan of this new poetic voice in India, and read whatever he found by or about him in the newspapers and magazines. Those were days of the Readers’ Digest and Guardian coming to the diplomats once a month. Life has become so easy now, one can read anything online.
He surfed through the pages and read Moraes’ lines from ‘The Garden’ that accompanied La Danse by Bacon –
The innocent and the guilty, met
Here in the garden, feel no fear.
But I’m afraid of you, my dear.
There was a reason: I forget.
And I by shyness am undone
And can’t go out for fear I meet
My poems dancing down the street
Telling your name to everyone.

Why don’t they have the whole poem, these bullshit beautiful expensive books. His daughter Rita is keen on these things. She picks this and that for home. His wife Tiara stopped buying things for home décor long ago. She understands her business. He too is keen on business, but he has been a dreamer all his life. He always invested in the least profitable projects. Had she not been there to support him with property she inherited from her father’s side, he would have been in the gutters now. Gradually he had to leave her the authority of home and office. He only took the less challenging endeavours for himself. An advertisement company is his only space now. He loves to cook for the children, takes care of the beautification of the garden. He did not realise when he started living with these, and Tiara drifted far away from him.
Ah! ‘The Dove’ in the glaringly colourful page! In this poem Moraes referred to a conversation with a dove! Dove with her soft small round breasts! Exactly like a young healthy woman! Moraes must have thought of a beautiful maid while he wrote that poem! He smiled to himself and searched for the full poem on the Poemhunter repository on his phone. There it was! Ah! Right! Dove! He suddenly remembered the new girl at his company. How pretty and innocent she looked the other day while he dictated her the week’s task on Zoom. Her Facebook said she was almost forty, which she did not look. What was her name? It took about two minutes to remember her name. He then checked his WhatsApp messages. There she wrote a good night to him. Lovely! He will call her now and have some good time till Tiara returned. He knew she would never return till he was awake. These days she does not spend time with him much.
I asked him not to leave…
And sit by the heart swamped with dew,
This night, when moon is late
And, the queen of the night
Has spread her fragrance
On the terrace,
The darkness sighs
O the flower decked lover
Has forgotten the garden…
He remembered these lines he wrote long ago. He still writes lines that come to him. Earlier Tiara was his reader. Nowadays she does not show any interest in his poems. He does not bother too. He has his own circle of women. Even in his fifties he has that charm to attract young women. He is a happy soul and never bothers about anything serious. He just lets things happen. His smile broadened when he remembered the first time he courted Tiara. A real courtship it was! He literally kneeled before her with a red rosebud and recited “A Red, Red Rose” to impress her. That did it! She never looked at anyone else in life.
Women can be fixed to men forever, but men…No way! Men are like honeybees and must fly from flower to flower for newer taste. This was not his maxim. His great grandmother used to say this. That woman! She lived her whole life in the kitchen without a complaint. She was tall and very pretty, but the man whose eleven children she bore was short and stout. “That was a man in a million!” She would say about her husband. She almost worshipped him.
Among her eleven children his grandmother was the eldest. When this pretty wife had borne four daughters consecutively, her husband married again. She tried to make the co-wife comfortable and happy in the house. She even prayed so that she may bear her husband a male heir. It did not happen. Next year it was she who surprised everyone by giving birth to a baby boy. Her old status in the house returned. A few months later, her co-wife went to her father’s house and never returned. She would boast of this saying, “If women have patience and love, they can get back their husbands even after death. Niyaat, you see, niyaat is all.” He would laugh heartily then, but now he knows how easy it is to captivate women back at home, while women in the West do not even bother to make husbands comfortable while sleeping.
He scowled looking at the wall clock. Women…these days even movies are disgusting. Why are all women so intellectual type? Wives, girlfriends, subordinates – everyone is munching those feministic ideas! Isn’t there one single woman who would be pretty, smiling, caressing? His happy soul wanted to spend a day in the forest of love in innocence and fun. Will this dove respond to him? He felt he must talk to her now! He must invite sleep. Those two small glasses of red wine energized him and he could go on talking for hours now. It does not really matter if he remembers the conversation afterwards. He felt like dancing; holding her in him, snuggle her and smell her. She must have a jasmine fragrance all over her sweet demeanor. Annabel! Or Annabelle? He smiled at the pun. Whatever she was, it doesn’t really matter.

II
“‘Annabel Lee!’” She shouted over the phone.
“Why are you surprised?”
“It’s such a sad poem, but you are not a sad person, Sir!”
“Well, I am not a poetry person too. And please don’t call me Sir. I asked you to call me Bhai as everyone else in the office does.”
“Yes, but you are so senior.”
“Am I, really? Do you mean I am an old man?”
“No, Sir! Not at all!”
“Can’t you be my friend? I have no genuine friend, you see. I have my buddies, but every one of them is jealous of me.”
She was quiet and he understood she would not answer to it. She is intelligent. He changed subject.
“Don’t you love my recitation of ‘Annabel Lee’?”
“With your wonderful voice it is obvious that you must have the habit of recitation and singing.” She was trying to overcome her embarrassment.
“No no, not so, I used to recite once, but that was long ago.”
She wondered why he was trying to revive that lost art. To impress her? Holy shit! These men with their middle age complexities!
“I would like to recite this since you love poetry, a terrible recitation it would be though.”
He recited ‘Annabel Lee’ and his strong voice broke a little while uttering –
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
The voice told her how emotionally balanced he was. Only when the joys and sorrows of someone are solidified within, can someone have such a voice. His recitation of the poem was far better than the ones she heard on YouTube. The perfect amount of emotion and strength, the rise and fall of tone, and of course his smart pronunciation created magic.
She listened gleefully, sadly; felt the pain; and the final joy of listening to a beautiful voice calmed her soul. She was in tears. This voice reminded her of another; a voice she used to hear occasionally over long-distance calls; a voice left her without saying good-bye; and a voice she was consciously oblivious of all these years. A terrible recitation, indeed, but not terrible in the sense he meant it to be.
He was expecting some kind of a response, but she could not say anything. She curtly said she would respond soon. When the WhatsApp call ended in somber quiet, a message flickered on the screen,
“We did not exist in each other’s world just a few days back, and now my days begin and end with you.”
She was a little surprised, but suddenly, she could see the emptiness of her heart reflected in this new acquaintance who was gradually engulfing her mind. She was worried. This is not right; this man was not her type. He was a nobody in her world as she was complete misfit as his company. Many men came in her life; but never stayed. She never let them stay; she couldn’t. She knew such men. They would sniff around women and at the first opportunity, would pledge love. She had faced this several times, and now she knows how to handle these guys. But something in her told this man is not like the previous ones. Even then she felt the need to be cautious.
Her life was already complicated, and this new turn in their relationship might be scandalous. She was on her guard, but at the same time she understood the urgency of responding to his emotional call, because once a man opens himself to a woman in that way, it is injustice not to respond. Was it only his emotion? Was she not feeling an irresistible attraction too? She never thought of something like this she would have to face in life; a simultaneous desire and warning coming from within, and she felt pain inside.
She opened her bedroom door and came to the dining hall. She found a half empty water bottle in the refrigerator. She could see her husband happily watching a cricket match in the living room. He must be amazed if he heard of her admirers. Something like this she would have imparted to him right away had it been some years back, but she won’t do it now. She was not apprehensive of misunderstanding and chaos, because neither of them cared anymore. No, nobody cared. Everyone wanted peace. Family, honour, children – all set, and nobody cares what goes on inside you. Her heart was flowing; she didn’t know who to share with. Tameema? Rezan? No, all her friends from high school were going through complicated relationships, she would not burden them. Sometimes it is wise to let the melted chocolate take shape in the mould in its own flow; may be the shape will not be perfect but it will turn out to be natural. She decided to wait a few days before she could share this new experience with anyone. But she felt a restlessness that did not let her sleep.
She never peered into people’s private lives, unless someone shared it with her. She saw a smiling face of a wife, sweet happy faces of kids, broad smile of the man who held them in his arms like a scaffold. Nowadays she doesn’t gullibly ask questions about why someone would look for an extramarital affair when there is a beautiful and cozy home. She knows images are not facts, no matter how real they look. Those images give a sense of security, a social stability, and under their cover the mind traverses untrodden grounds looking for forbidden succour.
She found the man’s voice familiar, and that was her trouble. But all else were so different about him! The video conferences with his moving image gave an appalling unfamiliar feeling. He looked like somebody’s husband and father, never a man that she can covet as her boyfriend. She had another image etched in her mind. Nowadays she’s started hallucinating that image she avoided remembering for years.
She had joined the new advertisement company just when the pandemic broke out. She did not meet her employer in person since he was abroad when the she went to the office physically to submit her joining letter; and ever since she was working from home. He called him after his return. It was a courtesy call from the employer. His voice was the first thing she came across, his image came much later. She thought if physical meetings could be avoided forever! The idea was so incongruous. Avoiding meetings would be impossible even if she moves out of this office now; this is a small world and people here are connected in so many ways. It was no good thinking of quitting the job. She decided to maintain strict work relationship. She liked the way he treated everyone around. It was not the usual bossy thing that businessmen apply. She remembered how she used to be pissed with the former managing director of her old company where he would scold each staff even for the minimal lapses. In this man there was a personal touch that made her easy and feel independent, but the worry was he was trying to become personally acquainted that she did not appreciate.
The personal, if she ever had anything personal in her life, began with a voice long long ago. In those days, she used to wait for a weekly rendezvous with a man’s voice over overseas calls using those analogue phones. There was no medium that she could use to see her desired contacts. No internet, no smart phone, no Viber, Emo or WhatsApp. The elephantine land phone in her mom’s bedroom was the only possible way of communication. She eagerly waited for the Sunday afternoons when mom would go to her friend’s place to have her weekly adda. The phone would ring for the first time when Ma was out, and she would run to receive it.
“Ammu, this is Baba. Can you tell Ma that I would be late tonight?” She was disappointed because it was her father. Baba’s voice assured her, but then her heart would sink with every received call that came from either relatives or friends of parents. The desired call would come very late or would not come at all that week. The voice worked till late in the week days and could call only on Sundays. Those Sundays were so fulfilling! The short conversations would always end up with a recitation of a love poem. The eloquent echo of the voice would linger in her body sphere for a whole week till the next call came. Have you ever felt how a voice could touch you from afar and make you happy to eternity?
But like in all love stories of early childhood, the voice vanished one day. She searched for it everywhere; she was neither ashamed of her love nor was she afeared of a thousand slaying by the very conservative family she belonged to; caged bird though she was. That one time in her life she revolted; without thinking of the consequences, she told everyone she was in love. The man behind the voice never came to her aid with all its promises of being together in illness and health, in winter and spring. She was left with a few letters camouflaged by a female classmate’s name and fake address. She was at the university then. The face of the lately deceased Saleh Bhai, the librarian of the Department’s seminar library, came back at once with his everlasting smiles while holding the envelop to her. Ah! Memories! She is now left with only a series of conversations over Sundays, and an emptiness of a lifetime.
She walked miles after that. She had to. In the beginning it seemed like she would never be able to get up anymore. She stopped trusting voices. Words, phrases, sentences, all were chockablock in her sick ears. She started living with images. At least you can see them, touch them if you want, and images do move. So many images came and gone by, she lost count at some point. In that swayamvara of images she chose one. She married and tried to settle down. He husband remained an image to her forever; a man whose soul she could neither touch nor leave; because images beget images, beautiful kids who made her world. And in her world of images, she did not know what to do with this voice that has come back to her after so many years.
She hesitated but finally wrote on her Facebook wall –
Hi folks, here’s a new poem for you –
The Voice

The voice of my old soul
Came in the dark
Without flesh and corporeal body
Stirring thousand emotions
Told stories of the long-lost past
Or a past that never existed
Outside of the golden phantom vision

The voice stayed there
Passionately holding on
To the soul’s miserable truths
Hung on the celling amidst
All ancient souls with names emboldened
Like a baffled bat in daylight

The voice converses
Like a familiar cradlesong
That sings of hope and joy
Those promises of coloured days
Lulling sleep to the stubborn eyes.

Before closing the lid of her laptop, she thought once again. She knew it would be the first thing in the morning he would see what she wrote on her wall. That would tell him what was boiling in her mind last night. He would understand for sure. Won’t he? It was difficult even for her to know who she meant by this ‘he’. There were five thousand acquaintances on her Facebook. One must be ‘he’. A sudden panic, a cold wave went down her spine. There was no one else who could understand her like him. It was this foundation of trust and love that can restore her to life. Whatever may come, in sun and rain, in sickness and good health… but, if he does not feel well? If he feels insecure? If he thinks she was trying to leave him?
She faintly smiled. All her life she tried to make everyone happy, and forgot to look for her own happiness. Once, perhaps once, she should try to explore her possibilities in life. But it was not easy to listen to one’s soul once you are at a dead end. The wall is behind you and you can only look forward to to the only exit, no matter if a cauldron is there to engulf you. The fire may burn you, or you will come out clean as Sita did in the Ramayana.
At that moment she wanted to hold him tight in the faint light of the August night somewhere at the heart of the dirty and lousy city of suffering. Her eyes glowed to the illuminated but unknown face of a passionate lover in the dark. Time stopped.