A Heart of Stone with a Coat of Gold

A little more

His gaze wandered across the unkempt yard – the weeds sprouting and claiming the untrodden earth for their own. Beside the walkway, the shrubs and extensive growth of thistles burgeoned on the path to the front fence-gate in abandon. The garden displayed clear signs of a dire need for love and care: it needed a gardener.

Being Sunday morning, Neel had woken up early and decided to finish some quick work before the day started. Alas, he had spent the next half-hour or so looking for a page he had to proofread amidst a litany of articles in the drawing-room: clutters of books that were scattered on the dining table, his own clothes out for laundry strewn in the sofa, and pencils, pens, laptop, files – to name a few. Finally, in a fit of distress, he had rushed out the drawing-room, his slippers creating large woody imprints etched on the dusty floorboards.

What had he expected outside he himself wasn't sure, but what he witnessed was what he would rather not.

The rundown garden made his mouth set in a very very hard line.

Soon the kids would wake up and then the clockwork would begin. Feeding, bathing, lulling the little one. Directing, ordering, berating the other one.

Like the garden, he suddenly felt tired. Coupling with it was an emptiness, a thumping feeling that something was missing.

Yes, his wife was missing.

Hard to acknowledge but true; he had become used to her, like caffeine. His yarns of life had been spun around spools of patterns around which they ravelled. And now she was a pattern in it. A beautiful mesmerizing pattern that challenged yet enthralled him. She was a pattern that had weaved furthermore patterns – complex wreathings – into his fabric of life. Each pattern made less sense as he thought about it more, but still made him intrigued, still captivated him. The half-tired smile she sometimes gave him when she didn't agree with him was one. The red in her eyes when she was angry. The light kiss with her soft lips as they had crushed against his skin...

No that was not a pattern. That was the first time.

He shook his head absentmindedly. These were the musings of an idle mind.

The matter of the fact was this was the first time he had found himself without a woman in this large house. After Aryan's birth, it hadn't been so hard. The apartment had been small – two rooms and a small balcony – enough for one the one and a half person living in it. It had been simple to tend to. His son too had been so tiny – so manageable.

But now, the gargantuan bungalow with the expansive garden; it loomed over him like his life that was swelling beyond the river banks he had dominion over. All his being had always been about control – that which had been snatched away from him in his childhood. But he had built it back up – slowly and patiently – grain by grain, over the last twenty-five years.

Now that his life was expanding with Anu, he felt somehow losing the reins of it; and the bruises and cuts burned as the ropes slipped through it. He needed help.

He needed his wife. But he was too proud to ask for it.

Reema was here too. His immediate problem at the moment. He was at his wit's end how to handle her. Since their altercation yesterday she had gone on with her sullen mood – she ate her meals sparingly and when he spoke to her, she pretended to not even hear him.

So he strolled in the overgrown garden, mulling over it in his mind, and trying to come with some solutions, ultimately to no avail.

Reema thinks she has it bad. He fumed. But she has no idea how bad I had while growing up.