Shashi Tharoor - Riot

— What proof? In our lovemaking? I’ve been made love to just as passionately by men who did not love me.

— You don’t have to remind me of that.

— Lucky, you can never prove your love enough. Until you really give up your comfortable other life for me. Until you say to me, “Be mine forever. In the eyes of the world.”

— You’re mine forever. In my eyes. In my heart. You know that.

— I don’t know that I do. Sometimes I think I’m just some romantic fantasy for you. You say I’m in your heart. But you have really no idea where that is. Your heart is just a compartment of your mind. I occupy a space in it, walled off from your work, your writing, your family. When you’re with me, you live in that space. I have no reality outside it.

— That’s simply not fair. I think of you, love you, breathe you, wherever I am. You accompany me in my heart to meetings, to official dinners, to encounters with ministers. You join arguments you haven’t even heard. I imagine you sitting next to me at places you’ve never been to. You’re not just in some compartment of my mind. You permeate my life.

— As I told you. I’m a fantasy.

— I promise you you’re not.

— You’ve promised me nothing, Lucky. You expect my love, unconditionally, but you give me nothing in exchange.

— Nothing?

— I didn’t mean that. You give me your affection, you give me your poems, you give me little gifts, you give me dinners, you help me here in all sorts of ways. But you haven’t given me the assurance of a future. Sometimes you talk about us being together in America, in India, and it is fantasy, that’s all it is, except that I’ve been slow in catching on.

— That’s not fair. I’ve meant it every time we’ve talked about the future. I’ve contemplated turning my life upside down. I’ve agonized over the pain and disruption this would cause, to my family, my daughter, my work, my place in the world. But I’ve also told myself that all this would be worthwhile because you love me and I love you and I would have a new chance of “being beloved in the world” — something I had felt I would never experience in my life. And then, I think of my daughter, the most vulnerable and innocent victim of my future happiness, and I can’t go on.

— You can’t go on. And you keep saying you love me.

— Of course I love you. I’ll love you as long as I live.

— But you won’t give me any assurances we’ll be together.

— I don’t want to lie to you. I want only to give you a certainty I myself feel. I feel certain of my love. I don’t feel certain that I can risk destroying my daughter to fulfil my love. Don’t you see?

— Aren’t you afraid you could lose me?

— More afraid of it than of anything else, except losing my daughter.

— But you don’t have to lose either of us. Your daughter’ll always be your daughter, Lucky. And you don’t have to lose me. You could have me so easily. Just by committing yourself, clearly, now.

— I can’t. Not now.

— I understand you’re scared. About your daughter.

— I am scared. But not only about my daughter. About you too.

— About me? Why?

— Look, this is difficult to say without hurting you, and I don’t intend to hurt you.

— Go on.

— It’s not easy. You’re from a different world, Priscilla. There are a lot of adjustments I’d have to make to be part of that world as your — husband.

— It’s not that difficult, Lucky. You’re more Western than you think you are. You’ll adjust pretty easily.

— It’s not that kind of adjustment I’m talking about. I mean adjusting within myself. Look, let me explain. It’s something that troubled me from the start, but I kept pushing it aside, telling myself it didn’t matter. In my culture, no man with any self-respect gives his mangalsutra, his ring, his name, to a woman who’s been with other men before. I never thought that in my life I would ever be in a position where another man could even think, “I have slept with his wife. I have seen his wife naked. His wife has pleasured me.”

— You’re sick.

— I’m Indian. As far as I know, that’s the way the vast majority of the world thinks: The woman you marry is the repository of your honor.

— I don’t believe I’m hearing this, from an educated man in 1989.

— That’s the point. I learned. I became an educated man of 1989. I trained myself not to let it matter. I learned to love you without letting the shadows of the others fall between my love and your body. Oh, I suppose that, without thinking about it, I had sort of shared the general belief here that there are the women you sleep with, and the women you marry. I’ve grown out of that belief, quite consciously. I had started off sleeping with you, not even thinking of anything permanent, let alone marrying you. Then I fell in love. Now I found myself wanting to marry the woman I was sleeping with.

— How convenient.

— Spare me the irony, Priscilla. My knowledge of your past has tormented me far more than I let on. But I told myself I had to understand the culture you came from. That by the standards of your peers you’re practically virginal. And above all, that what mattered was that you loved me.

— Yes.

— I told myself, how does it matter who she’s been with before? What matters is that she’s with me now. I have her. These other men don’t.

— Exactly.

— I want so much for it not to matter, don’t you see? But can you blame me for being scared? How can I know that a woman who has slept with six men will never contemplate sleeping with a seventh? Can I afford to sink myself emotionally into a love that might be withdrawn from me as it has been from others? Or should I tell myself, love her while she loves you, love her while you can, let the future take care of itself?

— What does that mean? The future never takes care of itself. You have to take care of your own future if you want one.

— I’m just trying to explain my torment to you. I have a career where I try to make a difference to my own people. I have a daughter whom I want to see make her way in the world. And I have you. Or at least I think I do, but I’m scared.

— You can only have me if you want me, Lucky. If you truly love me.

— I love you, Priscilla. But …

— But?

— But there’s too much involved. I’m wondering whether I can find the strength to accept that I have to love you enough to let you go.

— How can you say that? That’s nonsense. How can you love me and let me go?

— I don’t know. I only know it would be as painful as amputating a limb. It would mean going round for years afterwards haunted by the ghost of what might have been. And yet, old Oscar put it best: “In love, one always begins by deceiving oneself, and one always ends by deceiving others.” I guess I’ve deceived myself; I had no intention ever of deceiving you. But the more I think of it, the more it seems to me it would be the right thing to do.

— Right by whom? Not by me.

— Right by my family, by Rekha, and by you. You have a wonderful future awaiting you in America. I shouldn’t presume to deprive you of it. If I were to say, darling Priscilla, I do not know about our future, I am full of doubt and uncertainty, I love you but I am in torment, I do not want to inflict this on you, take your freedom if you want it — what would you do? What is best for you? Think about it. But please don’t doubt my love. Everything I’ve said comes out of my love for you. Even my willingness to let you go.

— I can hardly believe all that I’ve heard. Are you saying you want me to be involved with you but you can’t leave your wife and daughter? Are you saying you might leave them for me if I hadn’t been with other men before? Are you saying you love me but not enough to disrupt your life to be with me? You sound terribly confused.