Nowhere and Somewhere

 

Chapter 1

Chapter 2 - Nowhere and Somewhere

Arindam and Sharbari lived in a beautiful house. It was a quaint two-storey one. Her social media feed was filled with photographs of perfect table settings and garden seating. Whoever saw these, would always admire the picket fence, the lawn and the perfectly kept house. It was not easy, Ira would think, taking the compliments with a smile. Every morning when the husband would leave and she would have the rooms to herself she would proceed from one room to the other with the precision of a diligent maid. She would arm herself with her small box of supplies, brushes, brooms, gloves, soaps and sprays of every kind. She would be at it till every shiny surface would be spotless and every fabric would neat. She was never known to care much for house work, but she would absorb herself into this world to fill her empty hours.

No one who followed her flawless Instagram page could tell that though. Over there she was the cynosure of her generation, she had made it. She was young, beautiful, settled in a first world country, wife to successful man, what else could a woman want? Happiness was at her beck and call. She wore diamonds and gold. Her wardrobe was full of brands whose names half od her friends never knew or could pronounce. At her school reunion, they would talk about her in hushed tones.

“Remember Sharbari?”

“She is doing really well I ‘ve heard”

“Did you see her latest photos from Thanksgiving, she looks so happy”

If only they knew the difference of looking and being.

While she did preoccupy herself with photographing every shoe she bought or every coffee she drank, soon her interest waned and she wanted to occupy herself with something else, something more. So she would take up new projects.

At first she worked on a herb garden. There on her kitchen window she had carefully grown oregano and cilantro, right beside curry leaves. Now when she would make pasta, the basil would be within her reach. The herb garden bloomed, but her smile did not. She grew a vegetable patch. There were homegrown cabbages and tomatoes. There were an equal measure of photographs. Friends she had never spoken to would say “beautiful” and “wow” on each of her updates. Her family was happy that she was in such a good place.

Next fixated on decorating the walls of the house. She procured stencils and paint. She prepared pages and pages of design ideas. The walls on the kitchen would have cool greens and teal, with some affirmative messages written with her perfect calligraphy. But even as the project progressed, she did not feel very settled. So she moved to other parts of the house. There was a cozy nook in the study which had a reading chair. She intended to make a Warli design on that wall in yellow and maroon. For the small room beside the bedroom which had her small temple, she wanted to make a Tanjore painting for the empty wall. Arindam was happy that she was occupied with something. “Happy wife makes a happy life”, he would chuckle once at dinner to his friends as Ira went to the kitchen to fetch the dessert. In a bid to be at home, she was suddenly left nowhere.

As she slowly wore her mittens and opened the oven, a lesson from childhood came to her mind. She was sitting in the humid classroom and the fan was making an enormous creak every time it made a languid rotation. The geography teacher was talking about earthquakes. The tectonic plates are always moving. Ira was always fascinated by this concept that this land that we are walking on, which seems so solid and steady is in fact always in some sort of motion. So while these tectonic plates were moving, they sometimes just get stuck at the edges. Sometimes, they just don’t fit in like a piece from a jigsaw. But in fact, they rub against each other and cause friction. Over time this friction builds into something greater, and when this stress overcomes the friction there is an earthquake. So fascinating that sometimes, even one event is enough to set off a series of small apparently indistinguishable but significant events in motion to unsettle everything. Something akin to this was happening in her own life right now. The veil of love, or whatever cheap imitation of it covered her eyes, was long gone. Now every little thing irritated her. Every idiosyncrasy she earlier found cute, boiled her blood.

That was not the most unbearable part though. The moments when he would hold her close or when he would dismiss her in front of his friends as not understanding sports were the times she wanted to heave a sigh and with that blow away everything, including this life she had chosen for herself. So that day after his friends had gone and she was cleaning up everything, she decided that she needed to speak with Arindam. She called out from the kitchen while cleaning the oven, but did not hear a reply. After completing her chores, when she went up, he was blissfully snoring.

She went out to the backyard and sat down. Is this how you feel right before an earthquake hits you, she wondered? Everything seemed surprisingly calm. She looked at the millions of tiny stars which had illuminated the sky that night, it was beautiful. But it was also time for her to leave and see the sky from somewhere outside this prison.