a short story by Ravi Kumar Pillai
It is just a short walk from her hostel room to the Post-Graduate Block, hardly five hundred meters. Strolling down the trail, amidst fallen leaves from the trees, has been her routine for years.
When a sudden burst of breeze blows the dried and bruised leaves onto the path's edges, they seem to her the fragments of memory intruding into her mind, uninvited. She has got used to pushing aside intrusions from the past. Living in the present, here and now, is what life is meant to be!
Parvati had first stepped into the idyllic campus by the foothills of the Alps more than a decade back, buoyed by the elation of winning a prestigious fellowship. She was naïve and very young, as raw as a flower petal waiting to embrace the dew drops settling softly onto it.
She was passionate about securing admission to a prestigious global university. Her obsession with higher studies ruptured her budding romance and the fantasies of togetherness which she had woven with her beau. She was pragmatic and realistic in letting go of her relationship and embracing her more intense love of scholastic pursuit. A closed chapter is a closed chapter, period.
Her parents brushed aside her protestations and pressed her to marry a handsome, young civil servant they had chosen for her. Her zeal for academics did not appeal to her parents as reason enough to shun a ‘God-sent’ alliance! “Moneybags, contractors, politicians and liquor traders are in the queue to net the sparkling silvery fish, when the annual Civil Services selections are out! Here we are getting a prized catch rather cheap”, went the line of logic between the parents for sealing the alliance.
The obedient daughter that she always was, she had no choice but to acquiesce. In her heart of hearts, she felt a rebellious urge to scream at the unfairness of being treated like merchandise on the block. She went through the wedding rituals with stoic despondency. She hoped that someday she would resume her passion of life. Even so, she was mindful of the many before her who sacrificed their dreams to follow what their parents and traditions dictated.
She was pleasantly surprised by the business-like compromise and realignment of plans and priorities her husband and she could work out in the first few days of their life together. It was agreed to defer her plan for study by a couple of years. She wrote to the Fellowship Foundation and the university for the rescheduling of course commencement.
When the gynaecologist whispered with a mischievous smile that the baby was on the way, Paro went through an apprehension-tinged ecstasy. Over the next months, she transformed into the expectant mother whose sole world had suddenly shrunk into the baby, her turns and pushes from within and the intimate kisses and caressing by the father-in-waiting. Parental coyness made her feel real, grounded and serious.
As her daughter approached her second birthday, Paro brushed up on her plans for studies and sought permission to start the program in the coming Fall session. She was thrilled to get the acceptance letter and had less than a month to prepare for the journey.
Leaving her child, not yet two, to the care of her husband and the mother-in-law was hard for her as a mother. But the urge for academic pursuit was so intense that she went through the preparations with a canny coolness.
At the end of the twists and turns, she left on her study-abroad trip, a full month into the course calendar. Ram was there at the airport with the baby in the pram as she walked past the check-in desk and into the security hold.
It was indeed tough for her to focus on the reading, seminars and lectures in the first weeks away from home and her baby. The tight schedule of academic work and the need to cover the backlog of missed sessions made her feel to the brim.
It was a weekend, a month into her study; she was tidying up the desk and arranging books and notes back on the shelf, getting ready to leave. There was a tap on the door and Prof. Mathews, her guide and mentor, walked in.
“Hi, how is everything going? Hope you have settled in by now. We have a custom here. In the first few days of a fresh scholar coming in, we have a welcome dinner to signal her full immersion into our fold. I will be glad to arrange the dinner for the day after, Sunday evening, at my place. I shall send out the invite this evening.”
She was still in the mode of a coy fresher. “Yes sir, for sure,” She blurted.
She can never forget that fateful dinner night. Those few hours changed the course of her life. The party dragged on well past midnight. Everyone was high on drinks, most girls were into wine- red, white and rose. The faculty had all left and the few students still there also got on their feet to leave. Prof. Mathews said, “Paro, I shall walk you down to the hostel. Let the crowd disperse”.
Suddenly, she was the only one left there with Mathews. “My wife is on a sabbatical at Harvard. And our kids are both in the Boarding School”, Mathews said as if he was under compulsion to rationalize the absence of anyone at home at that hour.
“Let us have one last drink before we set off on the short walk across to your place”, he said.
As they sipped the fresh serving of wine, they both looked into each other’s eyes. She found the sparkle and an inviting seductiveness in those brown eyes. For once she imagined them to be Ram’s eyes that prowled on her on their honeymoon night. ‘Was she with Ram again on the first night?’, she was incoherent in her thoughts.
Reality and fantasy blurred into an embrace of intimacy. When she got up it was past daybreak and the Sunday morning rays were seeping in slowly through the laced curtains. She was on Mathew’s bed, he was still asleep, his hand resting carelessly on her bare breast. It took minutes for her to take in the situation and the fragmented recollection of the closeness and ecstasy of the previous night dawned on her. She did not feel perturbed, nor did she feel guilty. A wry smile, subtle and submerged, was her spontaneous response to the situation.
Soon Mathews got up. He wished her good morning with a cool casualness. She felt a blankness within her and there was an overhang of tiredness on her eyelids. She dressed up, washed her face, quietly closed the main door, and walked out onto the sidewalk leading to her hostel.
In the next few days, she did not feel like calling home. She kept her mind focused on the project assignments. Slowly the aloofness, detachment, and indifference in her mind, crystallized into a buffer zone that separated her present from the past. She felt even the immediate past was too remote to trouble her present.
In the weekend that followed, she took a stroll along the pathway past dinner time and, as if by a psychic pull, knocked at the door of Mathews. He came out, smiled, hugged her in the foyer, and took her inside.
The next morning, back in her room, she sipped her black coffee and sat down at her computer to write a mail to Ram. She was forthright and brutally frank about what had happened. There was no expression of guilt, no beseeching forgiveness. Ram did not respond, nor did she pursue the trail.
Life’s journey has many comas and a few semi-colons on the way. ‘Pause and reset’ are built-in safety valves.
Parvati put aside all that happened as a dream that had to be woken up from. She patted herself on her capacity to move on from the past, without remorse. She prepared her mind to stay on course and focus on her academic work. She and Mathews never avoided each other and never overstepped the formal interactions. They behaved, or shall we say ‘pretended’, as natural and spontaneous as they could.
With the academic program completed, she took up a teaching assignment in the department. Never once did she reopen the past. Mathews moved on and took up an assignment away in the US, “to join his wife”, as he said. In a few years, as the Senior Faculty, Parvati moved to the same room that Mathews occupied.
As she strolled on in the nightly glow, the drizzle intensified. She hurried and entered the faculty block. She unlocked her chamber, switched on the light and opened the laptop. She had to plan her paper presentation next week at the European Conference.
The notification flashed indicating the arrival of fresh e-mails, and she opened the inbox. There was a brief mail from Ram, after all these years. She told herself, “Many things in life just happen, there is no logic or reasoning for them.” It had an attachment, a photo of their daughter, now a twelve-year-old, receiving her prize at the school’s annual day.
She looked at the photo, paused and took a deep breath in. Then she deleted the mail and closed the laptop. What has passed has passed. We can't put the clock back. And there is no need to.
The rain had subsided, and the drizzle was thinning out. She closed the door and walked back to her apartment, the post-rain breeze providing a feeling of refreshing lightness.
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