Vodka on the rocks

Part - 5

Rao Mansion, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad, 1:30 am

Pallavi slowly opened the door of that dreaded room and peaked in. The air hitting her was so palpably heavy that she almost felt like someone had dunked her head under water. She leant against the doorway, feeling lightheaded and stood there gazing at him. 

Raghav was just walking around the room, his long fingers touching every structure at his reach fleetingly but with a devotion which was almost painful to behold. He walked over to the dais in the centre and touched the strings of the Nadaswaram kept over it. His fingers followed the pattern of the heavy curtains of the southwest windows. He seemed to map the grooves of the ghungroos kept beside the instrument. Then he stared at what looked like a toy truck which has definitely seen better days. 

But strangely he didn't touch it. 

He had his back to her at this position and she could see the muscles stretch and relax under the fabric of that navy blue housecoat. 

There is this saying in Bengali, 

Alpo dukhkhe kator, beshi dukkhe pathor 

A little sadness will make you weak, a lot will turn you into a stone. And in those few minutes of silence Pallavi had a scary realization that maybe her husband has finally crossed the threshold of humanly bearable pain and reached a stage where he can no longer scream, or wail or even sob. 

The agony had frozen the hurricane inside him to ice. 

"Are you planning to stand at the door all night?"

Raghav's sudden words nearly made her jump out of her skin breaking her out of her reverie rudely. He sounded oddly composed and Pallavi didn't know which version of her husband she preferred - the mercurial or the silent one. 

"I was waiting for you to give me permission to enter."

"You are being such an obedient little wife today aren't you... should I be scared?"

She deigned to let the jab wrapped in a tease go and walked in to stand beside him wordlessly. They stood side by side for what seemed like an eon but might have been just a few minutes. She mustered up all the courage she had in her heart and held the hand hanging limp at his side gently. His fingers were ice cold and made a shiver run down her spine at the touch. 

He didn't react which she took as consent enough and she kept her hold intact. 

"There was once a little boy who lived with his parents and his younger sister and brother in a small little village at the outskirts of Hyderabad. He loved his little family and was happy and contended in his own little world. He wanted to grow up and become a Bharatnatyam dancer like his mother and earn enough money so that he could buy all the popsicles in the world. He loved making designs and his mother would make him draw all the rangolis for every home in the little village. He could make the best paper boats and his little brother pestered him to make a hundred of them each day. He wanted to learn how to play the instrument his father worshipped like a deity. He learnt how to braid hair so that his little sister can have a new hairstyle every day to school. He would skip and dance around all day, run through the sun washed roads of the little village, happy with today, dreaming of tomorrow. Not a care in the world."

Pallavi was so sure that the world itself had stopped moving, the breeze outside halting so that all could hear each unemotional monotonous word which came out of her husband's mouth. Her heart beats had also stopped and maybe she had forgotten that she was supposed to breathe to survive. 

A breath broke though him betraying a slight shiver. 

"I miss him."

And if it had already not broken till now, the last sentence made her feel like the walls of her heart explode into a million pieces like a shattered mirror.