The Woman My Grandmother Loved.

Chapter Nineteen

India, 1973

July, 1973: Chimanbhai Patel was elected as the chief minister of Gujurat, replacing Ghanashyam Oza. This move was greatly condemned because of the corruption allegations that Chimanbhai Patel was already facing. This would be a hotly debated issue when the student led agitation would begin in Gujurat towards the end of the same year.

12th August, 1973 Dayanand Balkrishna Bandodkar, the first Chief Minister of Goa, Daman and Diu passed away.

21st November, 1973: Seth Govindas, The MP of Jabalpur completed 50 years in the parliament which was a record and he was thus honoured for having achieved this feat.

20th December, 1973: The Navnirman Andolan was started by the students and middle class population of Gujarat. It can be defined as a socio political movement against the economic crisis and corruption which was resulting in painful consequences for the middle class to shoulder. The students of LD College of Engineering went on strike to protest against the 20% hike in hostel food fees.

Dear Anita,

How have you been? Your letter last year made me cry; in a good way and I did put the wine bottle away for good. I'm back in Britain for the time being and I visited the school yesterday. It looked different and smaller than what I felt like it was before. You would say that it reflects the growth that I have had and you would be right, you always are.

I'm working as a painter in one of the galleries in London and my portraits have been taken and displayed beyond London as well. They're mostly of Greece and the sunny skies and the blue waters; the beaches serve as a nice relief from the dampening rain that falls so moodily here. Jeremy says it gives a window to people to feel different from what their reality is. Absurd, isn't it how people would splurge so much money simply to feel differently from their reality? But I suppose he is right. He is, after all my husband.

I've gone ahead and done it. That is the reason why I am back home. It has been three days of being Jeremy's wife as I write this and two years of being his date. He refers to me as his lover but I cannot bring myself to say those words especially when it is so untrue. I have never loved Jeremy but I do love myself better in the realm of security he brings. With Jeremy by my side, the niggling voice asking me if I'm ever going to settle down is silent. It might be illusory, the peace which covers me but man cannot always thrive in chaos. It is unbearably selfish of me and I do admit that, but he will never know of this aspect of me. What he doesn't know shall not hurt him and he shall thrive happily in his illusions while I do so in mine.

I do understand that day we fought better today. I wish I could take back those words that I said about not wanting to be the skeleton in your high profile chiselled oak closet, I regret it. I'm sorry for all of that, Anita. I'm sorry that we didn't meet under different circumstances. But I am not sorry that we met. If one's life is judged by the experiences we have had, then I will always want to be judged for the year I had with you. I was at my bravest, strongest and most honest when I was with you. I hope you do not take my marriage as a betrayal of any kind.

This is going to be a short letter; it is always better to say difficult things in a short manner. Explanations and elaborations only increase the pain.

I hope you forgive me.

Across the seas,

Becky.

Dear Becky-across-the-seas,

I hope you don't take my delay in answering for anger. I was simply trying to find the best what to tell you what I feel. I want there to be no mistake and no misunderstanding. I want you to know with absolute clarity what I feel and I am going, to be honest.

There isn't anything for me to forgive.

My love isn't weak and when I loved you, I knew the inevitable heartbreak that would entail. But I loved you still and regardless of it all.

I knew that falling in love with you would be destructive because you and I together threaten the ways of the world. We are a reminder to the world about the parts of it which it wishes to ignore. The world is in totality like a big large human trying to understand what is right or wrong. But there lies the greatest paradox of life; there is no right and wrong.

I just want you to be happy Becky and I like to think that you would want the same for me. I hope that Jeremy does make you happy; it is not my place to claim the higher moral ground and pass any judgement of any kind. It is surprising that you would seek my approval and forgiveness. For to do all of that, I need to have had judged you. And Beck, did you forget? All I ever did was love you. All of you.

But I'm certain that you wouldn't want to hear any of these things; they would threaten the sanctity of your marriage. Whether you preserve that or not is your decision and I wouldn't wish to know about it. It wouldn't change anything that I have ever felt or what I think of you. I hope that you don't judge yourself either or ever consider yourself less valid. In 1972, the first documented case of same-sex relationships in animals did manage to find itself in the news. Two female seagulls. It did make me wonder if the other birds thought of them as unnatural or absurd. It does make me shake my head when I think of how humans are the only ones who claim to have ascended and have found a greater purpose to life than simply eating and reproduction. Yet, we use reproduction as the argument against same-sex relationships. How does it matter when we have transcended it all?

But it doesn't matter because we have greater duties to tend to. These duties appear greater to me right now but it does make me wonder when I'm old if I will sit down and regret all the things I didn't do simply because I had these duties to tend to. Will these duties of being a daughter, of upholding family values and principles seem lesser to me after that? I have no idea other than wait for time to explain. I just hope that when I do find it, I am not too old or too far beyond to do anything.

Approval will never be found in people and the longer I keep hunting it within them and seeking it from, the more I elude myself. I just hope that you, my darling Becky-across-the-seas, know that too. I hope you do believe me when I say that there is no simple black and white in life. We are always submerged in a sea of grey and the only tragedy is that we realise it only after we drown. We keep hunting for the mythical island of black and white thinking that it is with the certainty of the contrasting colours that we will grow to love our lives. But it is not so. You must love yourself as the tides of grey keep washing against you and the storms threaten to cloud your judgements. Peace will never be found outside as a separate and whole entity untouched by the impurity of the world. No, my love, you will find it only in the chaos.

And as the waves rise and fall with the cycle of the moon, I hope you know that I have loved you. In the sea of moral greys and the endless stream of voyagers looking for a black and white, you are my red. My love, I don't have to forgive you. I love you.

Yours,

Anita.