Pranjali was sitting at the table next to a large window in the restaurant. She was staring at the tip of the burning candle standing in the middle of the table as its flame flickered again with the opening of the door. More guests stepped in, waiting at the counter to be seated, as the restaurant was packed and the waiting queue grew longer. The host told the newly arrived couple about the waiting time, which made the boy look at the girl’s face inquisitively. She gave the slightest nod, and both exited the restaurant after giving a quick formal smile to the host. The host glanced at one of the waitresses and signalled her to do something about the table that had been held for the longest time now without ordering anything. The waitress shrugged dismissively.
Pranjali glared at her phone, scrolling through it in frustration before locking it again. Her eyes again took a short stop at the tip of the flame before pinning to the empty chair. The thought of Ritansh walking in carelessly, taking that chair, and trying to fix all the embarrassment she had faced that evening with his charm and smile was further making her mad. If for once in his life this guy could reach a place on time. Looking at that empty chair was making her rage go wild. To keep her sanity, she retreated her eyes and looked at the table next to her, where the waiter was serving food to the guests. At another table, a couple was discussing the menu to order. The romantic setup of soft instrumental music playing in the background and those dim incandescent lights glowing along with candles lit at every table were now annoying Pranjali, even more so, the people enjoying that evening around her. She looked at the door again, imagining Ritansh entering with a bouquet of flowers while wearing his usual ear-to-ear smile. But more guests entered, swarming the front of the restaurant. When the host, handling the increasing number of waiting guests who were growing more impatient with every moment, stared at that waitress again, this time she caved in.
‘Hi ma’am,’ the waitress gave Pranjali a cursory smile.
‘Hi…’ Pranjali was taken aback by the sudden intrusion.
‘Still waiting?’ the waitress asked politely.
Pranjali nodded without looking at her.
‘Ma’am, would it be possible for you to wait at the bar? I promise I will keep you at the top of the waiting list.’
‘Nope. My husband should be here any moment now,’ Pranjali replied with a hint of restlessness.
The waitress sighed.
‘Ma’am, it’s a bit too much rush today.’
‘I won’t leave this table,’ Pranjali said determinedly. The waitress paused for a moment.
‘Can you order something while you wait?’
‘No, I will order when my husband is here,’ Pranjali said stubbornly.
‘Okay ma’am. Sorry to bother you.’ The waitress gave her a smile before leaving her alone.
Pranjali was breathing fire from her flared nostrils as she glared at the back of the waitress leaving. She picked up her phone and called Ritansh’s number. The phone kept ringing, but the call went unanswered.
What a careless man. He knows how embarrassed I feel in these situations, and yet… Pranjali was seething in anger now.
Before another minute had passed, the host was standing at Pranjali’s table.
‘Ma’am, do you see the people waiting over there?’ the host said scornfully, trying little to hide his frustration.
‘I am not moving.’ Pranjali gave him a cold stare.
‘You must, or I will have to ask you to leave.’
‘You can ask me, but I am not leaving. You are free to throw me out.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me,’ Pranjali dared him.
The host looked away at the waitress in disbelief. She shrugged her shoulders in an I told you so way. The last thing he wanted in that crowded restaurant was to have a dramatic scene drawing the attention of the guests.
‘How long….’
‘Until my husband shows up,’ Pranjali cut him off irritably.
The host stood there for a few seconds, shaken by his take down on his own turf. He returned to the mocking eyes of other waiters and waitresses.
‘What is her problem?’ he seethed in rage. Around him, the other waiters and waitresses struggled to masquerade their joy at watching their manager lose to a girl.
The crowd swelled with the aging evening and then gradually started thinning as the night grew. At the end of the night, two couples were left in the restaurant finishing their dinner, and then there was Pranjali. At her table, the cutlery was still wrapped in the napkin and there was just one empty glass, which the waiters had stopped filling hours ago. The tears in her eyes shimmered in the dying candlelight, but people were too far to notice them. The humiliation she felt sitting shamelessly among all those staring eyes was only trumped by the waves of pain washing over her.
‘What a loser. No surprise her husband didn’t show up,’ the host mumbled.
‘I feel sorry for her,’ the waitress said sympathetically.
‘Feel sorry for us. We could have served at least five guests at that table this evening.’
‘But why the hell is she not leaving?’ another waiter standing close by said. After a long evening, finally the waiters had some easy moments to themselves.
‘She didn’t even eat,’ another waiter who had joined the group said.
‘Shall we give her a complimentary meal for takeaway?’ the waitress asked. The host stared at her so hard that the waitress swallowed her next words and looked down.
When the last couple in the restaurant was paying their bill, Pranjali quietly stood up and left the restaurant. She could feel the weight of every eye in the restaurant on her. But the pain and anger had made her numb to everyone else.
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Pranjali’s phone rang. It was Ritansh.
‘Hey babe!’
‘Don’t. Just don’t talk to me.’ Pranjali was breathing fire.
‘I got really stuck. I am sorry,’ Ritansh pleaded, knowing it wasn’t going to be an easy conversation.
‘No, you’re not. You have grown this toxic habit of humiliating me. You know how embarrassing it is for me to sit alone in a restaurant with waiters checking on me every other second. I think you do it on purpose.’ She was yelling.
‘How can you say that? Why would I do it on purpose? I really got stuck.’
‘It’s our fucking anniversary. I took leave at work, got ready at a parlor, made reservations in this stupid restaurant, even bought some stupid package of theirs where two violinists would have stood over our heads to play some dumb romantic music while watching us eat. All you had to do was just show up. But even this seems to be too much for you.’
‘I know I can say sorry a thousand times, but nothing can make up for it.’
‘God this was so fucking humiliating. Waiters gave me stares, asking me to wait at the bar. Morons. And all because of you.’
‘Did you eat anything?’
‘What do you think?’
There was a silence over the phone, only broken by the loud breaths of Pranjali.
‘And you have left the restaurant?’
Pranjali kept quiet, as somehow her temper was only growing listening to the calm voice of Ritansh. She knew that she could lose her little self-control left at any moment now.
‘You get home. It will take me a while to reach there. I will get some take away on my way back.’
Pranjali felt like exploding, but without uttering another word she just disconnected the call.
On her way back home, it was a tempest of emotions swaying her thoughts in every direction. They had been in a relationship for seven years now, married for the last two, and yet somehow, she was the only one who seemed committed to this relationship. She went against her parents’ wishes to marry Ritansh, gave up some great opportunities to work at exotic locations around the world because Ritansh never wanted to leave India. She was the sole breadwinner, bearing all the pressure of the unrealistic expectations at her workplace that came with her incredibly high salary, for the only reason that Ritansh could do what he loved. And what was she getting in return? Not even one evening to celebrate their marriage anniversary. After months, they had planned to dine out and had promised each other that they would keep the day just for themselves. He couldn’t even manage that. But the sadder part was that somehow, she wasn’t surprised tonight.
She turned again in her bed, starving to sleep. Her restless mind kept reminding her of all the wrongs she had been enduring in her relationship. Every thought fueled her anger further, engulfing her sanity entirely.
It was around midnight when she heard the door open. From the sounds in the living room, she could tell what Ritansh was doing. She had her back to the door, all set to ignore him.
‘I’ve got cake and food,’ Ritansh spoke softly, standing next to the bed. It was dark in the room as he didn’t switch on the lights. Pranjali pretended to be asleep.
‘I know you’re up. It’s a few minutes until midnight, so we can still celebrate.’
No answer.
‘I know it must have been terrible tonight. I am sorry. But these waiters in all these fancy restaurants are so rude. I told you that we should go to one of our known dhaba.’
Are you serious? Pranjali clutched the sheet to stop herself from shouting. She knew it was a bait to make her react.
‘Of course, I wouldn’t have shown up even then but at least nobody would have behaved rudely to you.’
When Ritansh didn’t see the slightest movement in Pranjali, he let out a heavy sigh.
‘I know you are up, and I will tell you the reason I couldn’t show up tonight. I know very well that you think my NGO is like a job and I should take breaks like everyone else because there won’t be a day when people won’t need me.’ Ritansh was speaking gently.
‘I got a call that somebody had abandoned a newly born girl and left her to die in a dumpster. It was half an hour ago before I was all set to leave the NGO to join you. This dumpster was next to a medical clinic. We talked to them, they said they didn’t know anything about it. We called the police, they checked the video footage, and it turned out this clinic had done the operation of some woman who didn’t want this child, and then they had dumped that child. It was a big scene, and at the end of it, this baby was there. I didn’t know where to leave her, she was just born. I had to make a lot of calls, went to a few hospitals but without any documents nobody was ready. Police weren’t too keen on helping. I couldn’t trust anyone with this baby because I could see she was too weak without the initial care. You know Hema tai, she had left for home, and I called her as a last resort, but that poor lady immediately agreed to take care of that girl until we could make some arrangements.’ Ritansh paused for a few moments.
‘I am not saying that others in my NGO couldn’t have done what I did, but I couldn’t trust anyone with that baby’s life. I know I ruined our day today, and the last thing I want is to load you with guilt because you are not one bit wrong and I am just taking everything for granted, but I couldn’t do this without you.’
The anger was melting inside Pranjali but not as fast as she might have expected because she had heard stories like these earlier too. She knew Ritansh had a big heart and that was the reason she had fallen for him, but for a long time she hadn’t felt any space for herself in that heart.
She continued lying still.
‘I guess I will be sleeping on the couch, again. I deserve it.’
Pranjali heard footsteps going away. She wanted to turn and stop him, but her anger, which was subsiding slowly didn’t let her. Maybe let him be like that for a few more minutes. Maybe she needed a few more moments before letting go.
Pranjali woke up to her vibrating mobile phone. She squinted at the screen, her mind trying hard to grasp the reality. It was three in the morning.
God, I slept.
It was an unknown number.
‘Hello!’ she croaked in her sleepy voice.
‘Pranjali beta!’ a woman was wailing at the other end.
‘What? Who?’ Listening to the wailing, Pranjali’s mind was suddenly alert.
‘Ritansh…..’ the woman could hardly speak between her sobs.
‘Ritansh… what about Ritansh?’ Pranjali had already got up from her bed to wake up Ritansh, whom she knew was sleeping outside on the couch.
‘He… He…. He is no more.’
Pranjali was about to open the door to find Ritansh, but she stopped in her tracks.
‘Who are you?’ Pranjali took a moment to keep her voice composed as she didn’t believe a word that she had just heard.
‘Me, Hema tai.’ The woman was crying inconsolably now.
Pranjali removed the phone from her ear, still clutching it hard in her hand. She opened the door slowly and moved towards the couch. A disheveled blanket lay on the couch.
‘Ritansh!’ she called with a cracking voice, panic stricken checking the other room, then the washroom. Tears rolled out of her eyes while she hurtled across the house opening and closing doors in desperation, searching for Ritansh everywhere.
He was just here, talking to her. He must be here somewhere. Or it must be a nightmare she would soon wake up from.
After a minute, when she couldn’t find Ritansh anywhere, her silent tears turned into sobs.
‘How can it be? Where is he?’ She spoke using all her willpower.
‘The baby he gave to me got sick,’ Hema was speaking between her sobs. ‘I called him for help, and he came to my place. We took the baby to the hospital. The doctor had asked to get some medicines from outside. On his way back to the hospital he was hit by a car. He didn’t make it.’
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Pranjali had slipped into her pajamas and was lying in her bed.
‘How could he abandon me today?’
She was hurting but her anger wouldn’t let her dwell over her pain. The tears hadn’t stopped since she had stepped out of the restaurant. Now, in that dark room where loneliness encouraged her to express her emotions freely, the tears grew bigger and flowed even faster.
‘I won’t forgive him today.’
She felt that she heard the door creek open. She turned around slowly, to look at the door – it was just a silhouette of that half open door standing still.
It was almost midnight, but her tearful eyes had abandoned sleep. She was hoping against hope, using every bit of her faith to believe the unbelievable – Ritansh would come. The dead never come back. It was the same day last year when Ritansh had left her forever. She was there when Ritansh was cremated. She had seen his body burned to ashes. Nobody could make her move from that crematorium until the last piece of wood on that pyre had turned into coal. She was devastated by the shock, unable to believe that Ritansh was gone and would never return. Days passed, then months; time was helpless to heal her wound. The pain inside her had become unbearable as tears dried, sleep dodged her blank eyes every night, and the simplest acts of eating seemed to hurt her, as it felt like betraying Ritansh by trying to stay alive. She was a walking zombie waiting for the mercy of death.
No amount of intervention helped. Neither from family nor from shrinks. Nobody could understand her pain because such pain was impossible to understand.
One day, she was curled up on her couch, staring into the blank when something caught her attention. She frowned, staring at the top corner of the kitchen cabinet. A white box was peeking from behind the jar of pickle. Suddenly, she stood up and walked straight to the cabinet. She grabbed that white box from behind the jar.
‘Cigarette?’ She whispered. ‘How dare can you smoke?’
For the first time in months, Pranjali’s mind felt an emotion other than grief. For a moment – just for a moment – she felt that Ritansh was alive. Just for a moment.
The truth stormed back like a mad savage, determined to kill her happiness in its infancy before it could breathe for even another moment. But the hope Pranjali felt in that moment gave her more life than the air in her lungs. She pounced on the truth like a ferocious warrior who had everything at stake to stop it from killing that hope. She didn’t let that moment go.
‘He had pain in his chest. Is it for me that I had asked him to quit? He promised me he wouldn’t smoke anymore.’ Pranjali continued with her rant. Angrily she was about to throw that pack of cigarettes in the trashcan but then she didn’t. She put it behind the jar of pickles where she had found it.
‘You touch it and then I will show you. Liar.’ She muttered. That night she kept mumbling about how disappointed she was with Ritansh until she fell asleep. Next morning, after a long time, she felt motivated to get out of bed and make breakfast. The rant continued not just about the cigarettes but how Ritansh took her for granted. Pranjali had accidentally found a way to go on.
Soon she began stepping out of the house, talking to people, going to her job, and started living again. Her willpower was feeding from her hope, which was based on a lie, something she had chosen to ignore completely. It was as if she had made herself believe that that dark, gloomy night was a bright, sunny day—only if she could keep her eyes closed. She couldn’t be crazy because she realized well that she had her eyes closed. It was just a matter of choice that she wouldn’t open them.
When alone at home, she would wait for Ritansh, pretending that he would come late like always. She would get upset about it and complain to herself. She would cook for two people, putting Ritansh’s food in the refrigerator, muttering something about how she knew that he wouldn’t remember to even heat up that food. While going to bed, she would be upset about him being late and that he had married the NGO and not her.
She always tried to avoid saying anything about Ritansh in front of other people, but every now and then something would slip by, drawing expressions of surprise or pity—something which she couldn’t stand. She was getting better at it, though. All her family and friends were happy to find her move on finally; nobody had any idea how she did it. She was in pain, but in a long time, the pain had become bearable.
It was the day of their anniversary when pretending became truly difficult. It was the day Ritansh had left her forever. Every now and then, her eyes would fill up and some emotions, which she had forcefully locked inside her, would try to break free. The memories from last year, when she had called him so many times to give him an ultimatum about being at the restaurant on time for their dinner, would pop up every now and then. The time moving closer to the moment when she had last met him was pounding hard on the gates of the fort of her act that she had played so well till then. She was scared like a kid who didn’t want to believe that Santa Claus wasn’t real even when she knew the truth. She could live without the truth, but she wasn’t sure if she would survive without hope. But the truth was staring into her eyes so hard today that her hope had started to crack. She knew to fool herself she would need to raise her act. It was then that she decided to book a table in the same restaurant from last year. She made herself sit through the entire night waiting for Ritansh. At some point, when the door opened, she was almost looking for Ritansh, expecting him to be there. It happened again and then again. For that hope, she wouldn’t let herself leave that restaurant, even if that meant subjecting herself to the ridicule of that host and the waitresses.
The trick had worked so far. But now, when she was lying in bed alone cursing Ritansh for being late, an extreme pain was surging inside her. Her heart was pounding looking at the clock. The final memory of him from the last year, which gave her the deepest scar, was turning into an unstoppable monster.
He had entered the room. He was talking to her, apologizing for being late. But she didn’t even turn that night. She had let him leave that night, and then he never came back.
It was impossible to pretend now. The truth was too big for her act to go on. Ritansh was never coming back. With hope slipping by like sand through the fingers, she slowly turned one last time to look at that half-open door expecting, against all odds, for it to open. She knew it was never going to happen, yet her heart wasn’t ready to give up. She was staring at the door, almost ready to finally surrender to her destiny and let her heart get broken into millions of pieces. But then the impossible happened.
The door opened.
She held her breath, gawking at the door in utter disbelief.
‘I am sorry.’ Ritansh said, gently walking to her.
‘You…’ Pranjali sprang in her bed to sit straight.
‘I am sorry for the evening.’ He apologized again, sitting next to Pranjali, who had her eyes wide open staring at his face.
‘You…’ Pranjali wanted to yell, complain, scream in the next moment but words wouldn’t come out, only tears did. She jumped on him, throwing her arms around him to embrace him tightly and began crying like a child.
‘Don’t cry. I know you love me.’ Ritansh was patting the back of her head gently.
‘I love… you. I love you… a lot.’ Pranjali spoke in a voice breaking from overwhelming emotions.
‘Stop being angry then.’ Ritansh spoke in his gentle voice.
‘That’s the only way I could live.’ Pranjali was clinging to Ritansh like a needy kid hugging her mom.
‘Why are you angry?’
‘You wouldn’t have gone out that night if I wouldn’t have been a complete ass. You would have slept here with me, and you wouldn’t have left.’ Pranjali was tugging his shirt desperately while speaking with her face buried in his chest.
‘You think so? I would have gone out that night anyway. It’s who I am. I will do it again if I have to. You know it, you just need to accept it.’
‘I am not letting you go anywhere now.’ Her embrace got even tighter.
‘Don’t be angry anymore. Just remember that I love you too. I want you to smile again.’
Suddenly Pranjali’s eyes opened. Ritansh was gone. She looked around desperately; it was still dark, and the door was half-opened, the way she remembered. It was just a dream; she sighed when the reality finally sank in. But it felt real. It felt more real than her act. She lied back into the bed looking at the ceiling, thinking about the dream. Her eyes welled up. She had a choice again. Finally, she wiped the tears from her eyes, turned towards the door hugging her pillow, and with the slightest smile went back to sleep.