Sail Through Styx - A SwaSan SS

Prologue

The lonely light

The heavens were on dispute that night. With earth shuddering roars of thunder, Zeus the god of lightning waved his bolt across the purple cosmos. And its flashing edge split open the murky gray clouds, making them pour endlessly on the metropolis below.  In his humble manor house at the southern part of the Nedlands, Durga Prasad Maheshwari was alone as usual.  

It had been so, for almost a decade now. Once the housekeeper ends her day at six o'clock every day after serving his dinner, the watchman a distant figure at his gate; the old man nearing his sixties with passing years would be found in the heated up study on the first floor, a glass of mild amber liquid held loosely in his fingers and a wistful longing in his eyes he would sit on his favorite plush chair and watch the large portrait of his wife hanging over the old fashioned fire place across the room.

He was a man who had the reflection of the years he spent on his eyes. They were mild, once a vibrant coffee brown now dimmed to a warm gray. He had an impressive face, a medium built and thinning hair that only add to the outline of his seasoned wisdom. But His wife Annapurna Maheshwari in the portrait was as young as he remembered her. Her smile was radiant in the picture, and her eyes shone with a joy that seemed to light her from within. Watching her in that timeless form he wondered how she might respond to the loneliness he had succumbed in to. Annapurna had not lived long enough to move from Kolkata to Perth. All the while he mourned not being able to share those final moments of her life, Durga Prasad could not fathom the pain it would have caused him; has he been unfortunate enough to witness her death; the moment when the light behind those vibrant eyes extinguished leaving them haunting and empty. The dull ache of her dismiss still throbbed deep within his heart, so he was certain he would not survive such a wound. And perhaps,  he wondered rather fearfully sometimes, he would not have been able to love the bundle of life she had left behind, so unconditionally either.

With that said, his stream of thoughts was directed elsewhere and his eyes followed the course. On the wall to his left, where neat wooden panels gleamed in the lamp light was a collection of frames. Photographs new and of yore peeped from the dustless glass. There was no need of them to remind him, for each moment captured behind the frames were more vivid in his memory.  

He was supposed to leave for foreign training two months before. But Annapurna then in her last trimester of pregnancy had thwarted it. For one she could not accompany him, and the other as she pointed out rather firmly was that he was supposed to be there when their son was born. But in the end he was not there when she was giving birth to their child. Instead he was in a different theater, in the middle of a different surgery, saving a different life.

He had not even received her call, Durga Prasad thought with a shudder. And by the time his twelve hour surgery was wrapped up and he finally heard the news of his wife going into labour, he had rushed to her side.

She had already left him. He remembered the twisting agony that coiled itself like a python around his throat,  crushing his windpipe until he had to gasp for air when he heard of her dismiss. His wife the one anchor of consistency in his life, she had been there hours previously, they had talked, laughed over some old job he could no longer remember, she had walked with him to the car before he left.

And now suddenly, the world was a place without her.

He could not imagine a place existing without her presence. The tinkle of her anklets, her melodious voice singing arati at dawns, the faint smell of jasmine that adorned her hair, the memories were suddenly crushing him with their weight. He could not stand straight any longer and collapsed on the nearest bench, face buried in his hands. He was too empty that even tears did not exist at that moment.  He felt weary as if if he had aged a century in a minute, there was no life left in his bones and his heart thudded dully counting beats until it reached a stop.