“Yes. And that was followed by a maddening hallucination. I felt like you heard me.  It was your voice that I heard. You asked someone – ‘Did you hear that? My name?’ And then you also howled back  – ‘I am coming.’ And then everything fell silent. I screamed your name again, but I did not hear anything back.”

I stopped breathing for a while and remembered to do so only when he broke the silence. “You think me mad, Sarah. But the experience was real. And yet, I know you weren’t here. You would understand now why it was so difficult for me believe last night that you had really come.”

“Yes,” I said at last, “I believe you and I understand you.”

—

We got married, of course. We pulled Ananya out of the hostel and shifted to Bangalore. I never asked him to get his eyes checked up again, because I didn’t want him to feel that he was inadequate in any way. But after a while, he himself expressed his wish to do so. “I do want to see the world again, Sarah,” he said when he asked to be taken him to a doctor. “If possible, that is,” he added hastily, not wanting to hope too much, not wanting to jinx the possibility by hoping. He did get partial eyesight back in one of his eyes with treatment. After a while, we managed to get an eye donation and his second eye recovered completely with transplant. About a year later, he was fit enough to restart his old job at Bangalore University. With more time in my hand, I also took up a job as a school-teacher and happily settled into a stable, loving married life. Naman visited us often and at my insistence, Protim made his peace with him. I think he even began to like him a little. “Not a bad sort of fellow, this brother of yours,” he would say.

Anaya was difficult for some time though. The experience of last few months had shaken the child. Hostel life hadn’t done her any good either. She was withdrawn from us. Thankfully patience was not something I lacked. Over time I won her heart again, but it was her father that she found difficult to forgive. For sending her away. One day – she must have been about seven and half years then – she said something particularly insulting about her father and for the first time I lost patience with her.

“You think your father doesn’t love you,” I seethed at her, “You think your father doesn’t care for you because he sent you to a hostel for your own safety. What do you know of the fathers who don’t care? What would you have done if you were left on the church steps, or worse – in a municipality dumpster – as a one-day old? Or if he had abandoned you as a child when he realized you were not…”

“Sarah!” It must have been the first time in my married life that my husband had shouted at me, and a good thing it was that he stopped me at the right time, before I had revealed something too damaging, “You are scaring her. What has come upon you?”

I came to myself and noticed that he was right. She had gone pale and was shaking with fear. But something good came out of it. Protim went to her and picked her up; and she let him, sobbing her heart out on his shoulders.

“That’s enough, that’s enough Annie. It’s all right. Sarah Auntie was not saying anything bad. She was saying the right thing. I do love you.”

I apologized to Ananya later and she was sweet about it. But I was dreading his reaction. I managed to avoid meeting him alone for the rest of the day, but when the night came there was no option. Steeling myself for his vexed outburst, I tiptoed into our room. He was sitting sprawled on the bed and reading a book.

—

Protim

If it weren’t so obviously unhealthy, I would have both of us resign from our jobs and keep her by my side every moment of the day. Sometimes I felt tempted to fire entire household staff so that I could get her alone more often. But practical concerns came in the way again.

Today, however, it had been deliberate on her part. She had avoided me the entire day. I was annoyed to the core and was determined to teach her a lesson. If she was angry that I shouted at her, couldn’t she just talk it out with me? Must she play those games? I didn’t look up from my book, even though I knew she had come in. She still had the ability to noiselessly tip-toe around the house. But she couldn’t surprise me with that any longer. Now I could catch the faintest scent of her, even from far away. Probably an ability I developed during my days of sightlessness.

She sat uncomfortably on the edge of her side of the bed.

“Protim!”

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You are?” I finally looked up and arched my eyebrows, deliberately. The fact was that my anger was melting away with her mere presence and all I wanted to do was pull her in the bed with me and make love to her senselessly. But I couldn’t let her go just like that.

“I don’t know what had come upon me…”

“Anger, probably? Pointless, childish anger?”

“Anger, yes. I just lost it because…”

“Because? Yes? Give me one good reason!”

She bit her lips. I felt like helping her with that, but…

“It won’t happen again, I promise.”

“Why did it happen in the first place? What was going on in your mind?”

She lost patience and cried out, “I went mad, okay? It was about you – I have been putting up with it for almost two years now. I know it’s your daughter and you love her to death. I do too, but I am a human too? My patience is also finite.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What do you mean what am I talking about?”

“What does Ananya have to do with you sulking the entire day? You were quite pally with her this evening, playing your little games.”

“Me? Sulking? What are you talking about?” she was puzzled and annoyed.

“Why the hell were you avoiding me the entire day?”

“Because I was scared.”

“Scared? Of what? Me?”

“Of course you.”

I burst out laughing. “My little ghost was scared of me?”

“You think it’s funny,” she made to get up, but I grabbed her and pulled her back. Before long she was pinned beneath me.

“Stay still and talk to me,” I hissed in the way I knew would make her acquiesce, “Why have you been avoiding me?”

“I shouldn’t have scolded Ananya like that. I was embarrassed and scared of your reaction.”

“Stupid, stupid girl,” I rolled off and settled beside her. Then I had her turn on her side, so that we could look at each other. “Don’t you realize what you have done? You have opened up a path to our reconciliation. It was the first time since I have brought her back that she has spoken to me properly.”

She stayed silent and bit her lips again.

“Stop biting those lips, else I won’t be able to finish this conversation.”

She let go immediately and I marveled again at her capacity to blush so furiously even after a year and a half of our wedding.

“I’m sorry I shouted at you,” I said so softly, I surprised myself. She looked startled as well.

“I was about to blunder and I was indeed scaring her.”

“I could have stopped you without shouting.”

“You are not angry at me, then?”

“I am,” I grinned, “I am angry. Don’t provoke me by staying away again. Is that understood?”

She nodded.

“Once you had left without talking to me. I cannot forget the misery that followed, ever,” my tone grew somber.

“Please don’t…”

“And now the time for punishment,” I grinned again.

I had always felt such all-consuming need for her that wasn’t equalled by anything I had felt for any woman earlier in my life. The result was that I could be quite aggressive in bed. But she took it well. That night I was going to literally chew up those teasing lips of hers. The next day was a Sunday. She could afford to wake up with swollen lips and probably then I would have mercy and leave her alone for a day.

– The End –