SITA: The Peace Within

The Wait Was Never Over

Urmila slept like a log. She felt her body, heaving down on the bed- feeling absolutely difficult to turn or toss like a normal being. It felt like she was feverish all the time, eyes wet with the wait of a certain loved one all the freaking time. She had seen all the physical and psycological manifestations of a longing absence. It started with a demeanour- an act of absolute power, where all you do is pretend to get up and work. The wound is fresh but the memories are so close that you could still smell them on your skin and taste their presence fresh againt your chest- like all they ever did was to scent your being with their exsistence.

And then, just a few days into it- there would come periods of an unbearable mania, an absolute madness on the mere thought of never seeing them in the near future. The paranoia chilled the very matter of your bone, where a singular thought of forgetting their silver lining looked like a nightmare. You could no longer smell them on your pillow cover, their scent vanishing into vaccum and the odour of cloth burning your nostrils with pain when you crushed it harder in your embrace.

And then  was the phase Urmilla experienced right there, the phase of immobility. All she wanted to do was sit stil, trying her best to not feel herself breath and indebt her body of all the agony of being alive and not dead the next second. She could feel her throat thrusting her gut with an inhuman weight, that she would start shivering on her bed- and all she could manage was to glass her corneas with salty tears in return of some relief.

Tears were such a relief, and bloody hell- it was so difficult to cry, when all the time you only felt the same stabbing in your heart, with an increasing amplitude- that all you could do is to close your eyes and exhale like beggars - begging for one good long scream and cry- a handful of burning tears, which could finally relieve your soul of some stress.

She could not cry.

All she could do was think and think and think.

About Sita, about Laxman.

It was so easy two decades ago. To tell her sister that she was hurting. To tell her husband that she loved him. To tell anyone, anything she pleased. She never realised but she had buried that girl a long ago. That girl was so vivacious and bubbly and un-meloncholy, too expressive and feeling and most of all- extremely and powerfully affectionate and happy.

She still remembered how bashful and cheery she felt in Laxman's presence in those initial days of bliss. Her feet were giddy and jittery , walking in a bounce, trying to touch the freaking sky through the clouds. So much of happiness that she sometimes worried that it would burst her heart.

But it never did.
Little did she know that it would never be enough.

Happiness is a filthy betrayer. It exagerates your soul to no end, scares you with its enormity and then suddenly leaves you alone in the middle of nowhere, going away in a swoosh with absolutely feeble impressions, as if it never came and with no garuntee to knock your door in the future.

The wait is a clouding enemy, so much impressionable on the feeble mind, that even in togetherness it gives you periodic jump scares.

He came back in his glory, after 14 years.

And she again felt her heart swell, but it was so in control. She wanted to let go, the reigns of life free and flying in that moment- but it never happened. He held her hand, strong and firm- in his chiseled ones, scarred and uncharacteristically rough but still so warm with love that she wanted to melt in them.

And the second time he touched her was to braid her hair, under the evening sky- fruited with orange and yellow and a passionate hue of red. He was swift and tactful- as if he wasn't skilled in weapons and bow-fights but in holding tendrils of hair with utmost vigil and care.
'Urmii!' he called her in a throaty tone, as if calling her out right from the pit of his stomach and expanding her being in the gorges of his lungs.

And all she could do was nod in gulliable and contended whisphers meant only for his ears.

One day- after all these happy pills, her sister went away.

And that evening she prepared tea. For someone she had no clue about. Her sister's chamber was empty. Bawling with heavy betrayal. Sita was pregnant.
Who would massage her swollen feet?
Who would bring tea for her every evening with the pistachios she savoured with every munch?

Urmila wanted to fight Ram, she wanted to run and find her sister and stay with her. She wanted to rear her nephews, even if she was carrying her own blood in her being, she- for the first time wanted to fight.

That night, when Laxman retired to his bed chamber- all he could so was mumble inaudible apologies. At that moment Urmlia decided to swoosh off every lamp in the room, almost robotically and lie down in the bed closer to her husband and hush him till the morning dawned upon with the wrenching arrival of another soul crushing 'wait'.