Pia Padukone - Where Earth Meets Water

“I don’t know, Kamini. They don’t have the same fire, that grit that was so beautifully manifested in your first two. Your connection to these children seems superficial. Perhaps you can look at it from another angle. You need to keep working at it. Get some rest, and start fresh in the morning.”

Despondent, she takes the notes from him and climbs back into another taxi. How will she change things? She has access to only her family’s children, and if they proved uninspiring, well, then she will have to truly dig into the alcoves of her mind to find a nugget of a story. What is the matter with her? The other two books flowed like rivers, gushing out of her fingertips as her pen scratched across pages and pages. It was only after the collections had been written that she had revisited the words with Savita to make edits.

She steps back into her flat, releases the packet of notes next to her laptop and presses the power button, springing the machine to life. She puts a kettle of tea on and settles down to check her email. One from Gita, more details about her pending visit with Karom, some useless sirdar jokes from her nephew and one from an unknown email address. Her hand hovers over the mouse. Raj has also warned her about opening “spam” messages that can send a disease into her computer and erase everything on it, infecting all her hard work. But this email address has her own last name, Pai, so she inhales shortly and clicks on it.

Dear Kamini,

I heard that you learned how to use a computer, that you have one at home. That is a great feat, especially at your age. Myself, I am dictating this letter to a young boy at the internet café for the cost of a beer. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to you. My first notion was that any letter to you should be filled with apologies. A complete page of apologies. But pages don’t quite exist in email, so I am trying another route.

Forty-six years ago, I walked out our door. I don’t know whether you keep track of this, but I do with each passing day. I am not proud of having left you, but it’s also something I had to do at the time. I can get into why I did it but I want some sign from you that this is okay: Is it all right to contact you now or would you rather I stayed away? I know that you have done well for yourself; I find out bits and pieces from the guards at the gate. As you know, they work through Securicom, just as I did. We don’t email, however. I call them every few months. But you are legendary with your computer skills. Your email address was easy to obtain; everyone has been talking about you. I’m very impressed with you, Kamini. I’ve always been impressed with you. It’s partly why I left. But I refuse to depose the blame onto you, nor do I want to venture into those arenas just yet. It’s been forty-six years and I am an old man, as I can imagine you are an old woman, as well.

I have trouble picturing you as an old woman. It’s not easy for me to fast-forward the image of you I have in my mind and lighten your raven hair or sag your skin with wrinkles. I am sure you have all your teeth, as you were fastidious about brushing each and every morning and night. I imagine you have a silver sheath of hair that you continue to braid and pin atop your head after your bath. I feel these are things that I know inherently, but the things that I don’t know have been aching me. One thing I want you to know from the start: I am not dying. I haven’t written this to you in an attempt to guilt you into responding to me. I am as healthy as I will ever be without disease in my body. So you can decide to respond to me of your own accord. But the curiosity is killing me.

I wonder if we have grandchildren, and where our daughter is. I wonder if you have traveled outside the perimeter of our country. Have you ever been on a plane? I wonder if you have entertained the thought of remarriage, though the guards tell me that you still live alone. And at the same time, I realize that I don’t have the rights to wonder these things, because I chose to abandon them so long ago. I don’t wish to reenter your life again, because I am positive that you have made a new start, and a great one, at that. I am sure that you have provided for Savita and made a home for yourself. This doesn’t pardon what I did, and please try to believe me, I have spent many years trying to correct it in my head. But I can’t correct it in life, nor can I erase it from memory. It happened and I have spent a great many years hoping that I can one day make it up to you. The fact remains that we don’t have many days left. I’m not writing to be morbid or, again, to guilt you into responding to me. God knows that you are your own person, a strong-willed person who has made her own life. No one is going to tell you what to do now, and certainly not me, your heel of a husband who comes slinking back with his tail between his legs decades later, wanting to know what became of the life he left behind.

Here are some things about me since I left.

1 I went to college, so we are intellectual equals now. Unless, of course, you have taken another degree.

2 I live in Bangalore, where you would think I would have learned computers ages ago, but as you know, I was always a bit of a dullard.

3 I live alone and have never remarried and had no other children.

4 I’ve given up drinking. I’ve been sober for thirty-seven years.

5 I’ve given up women. I am not an ascetic and don’t isolate myself from society, but I don’t see women anymore. I don’t run about with different girls and make a spectacle of myself.

6 The impetus behind numbers four and five was your story “The Invisible Husband.”

I know that you are Shanta Nayak. I knew it the moment I read the first few chapters and stories in True Stories of Make Believe. I kept seeing people engrossed in the book on the bus and clutching it as they walked down the street. The cover looked like a children’s book, but adults were devouring it. So I went to a bookshop, sank down in a corner and read it from cover to cover. I knew it was you. The characters and style were unmistakable. It was me, and you, and Savita and my family and your family. The stories were so honest. The book was a mirror with my face reflecting back. The shopkeepers had long before given up on shooing me out, but the moment I finished the book, I went back to the small room I was renting at the time and looked at myself in the glass. I was despicable. I couldn’t stand myself. And it only took some serious anger issues, an alcohol problem, womanizing, an abandoned marriage leaving behind a wife and a daughter, and a book of fairytales that illustrated our lives to show me that. But I made a change.

I want you to know that I am not telling you this because I want a piece of your success. You have worked for it and earned it. I want no part in it.

You know, for some time, I holidayed each summer, alternating between Goa and Kovalam with the same pack of useless friends who I’d see once a year when they would leave their wives for some fun. I didn’t enjoy their company as much after I read your books. I didn’t even enjoy my own company, for that matter.

But, for what it’s worth at this point in our lives, I do want to say this: I am sorry. I feel those are futile words, but I need to say them. I am sorry. And if you’ll let me hear all that I have missed over the years, I will say them again and again, each time we correspond. I will wait as long as I have to, or as long as I physically can, for your response and your blessing to learn all that has passed me by over the years.

If you have reached this stage of the letter, thank you. Thank you for listening to me. You don’t owe me anything. But thank you for hearing me out and considering my plea.

Yours,

Dev