The Story of a Long-Distance Marriage Read online

  For

  Blessy

  Contents

  Ira

  1. Departure

  2. Routine

  3. Change

  4. Delhi

  5. Fight

  Distance

  6. Rift

  7. Influence

  8. Travellers

  9. Divorce

  10. Yusuf

  Love

  11. Arrival

  12. Wedding

  13. Holiday

  14. Togetherness

  15. Anniversary

  Acknowledgements

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Love is an institution of revolution; in it you create new worlds.

  Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt

  Ira

  Travel is flight and pursuit in equal parts.

  Paul Theroux

  1

  Departure

  Ira is leaving.

  The realization hits me straight in the guts, as if out of nowhere, even though I have known for two months that this was coming. The smile I had kept on my face all day fades now at midnight and I sit. She is too busy to notice. She checks if her ticket is in her handbag along with the passport. She is a blur as she rushes from one room to another, ticking off items on her list. In the bedroom, she zips the last of her suitcases shut and then wheels it to the drawing room, leaving it standing near the door with a sense of finality.

  From the balcony of our barsati, she gets her floral-patterned bathrobe that has been left to dry on the clothesline. Finally, she goes into the bathroom and closes the door. There is silence for a few seconds, during which she undresses, and then I hear the sound of water erupting from the showerhead, slowing her instantly, and I am left staring at the door. I look at her clothes laid out on the bed: a full-sleeve red-and-blue check shirt, beige corduroys and her JNU sweater—too warm for the August heat in Delhi but just right for where she is about to go. Their limp, empty limbs make me feel like she is leaving my life forever. Like I will wake up tomorrow and realize I have no memory of her.

  I think of the body that will fill those clothes as soon as she is out of the bathroom. I think of her standing under the shower, tying her hair on top of her head in a bun, closing her eyes and looking calm and perfectly in control. I think of the water sliding down her body. I have been in denial for weeks, but now it takes me no time to admit to myself that this is it. This is finally happening. Ira is leaving.

  *

  It all began in May, when she heard back from the dean of the Department of Art History at a prestigious institute in New York. He had loved and accepted her application for their master’s programme. We went to Bombay for our first wedding anniversary, in June. That day she had to appear for an interview for a scholarship. The amount would have covered her tuition fees and living expenses for two years. But she did not make the cut. She spent our first anniversary heartbroken.

  She wrote to the dean, saying she wouldn’t be able to accept the offer after all. At twenty-seven, both of us were just a couple of years into our low-paying jobs. There was no way we could afford to pay the fees on our own, or even take a loan while I continued to pay rent in Delhi. She was upset that entire month. Studying in New York had been her dream.

  And then some time towards the end of July I was at work when she called me. The dean had written to her again, offering a full fee waiver, leaving us to take just a small loan for her living expenses. There was no way she was going to say no to an offer as good as that. The loan, the visa, the goodbye—everything rolled quickly after that.

  And today, within a month of that second email, Ira is all set to fly.

  *

  I step out on the balcony. Three floors below, the road circling the DDA flats of Shahpur Jat is almost empty. There is only the packed row of parked cars and a vegetable vendor having dinner with his wife under a gasoline lamp on his cart. Towering over them are the dark tops of wide-canopied trees in the Asian Games Village across the road—a view we had fallen in love with when we had first come to see the house. I don’t know whether it is the idea of Ira under the shower, the sight of her clothes on the bed, the couple sharing a meal, or the memory of us standing in the balcony and watching the sun set at the end of a long and tiring day of house hunting—but I cave and start crying like a child.

  The landlord, who lives on the first floor, must surely have heard me over the laughter of Comedy Nights and wondered if Ira and I are fighting. Sunil is a middle-aged, middle-class guy from UP, with a Honda CRV, a teenage son and daughter, and a beautiful, much younger-looking wife. She will also surely come upstairs to offer prasad from the temple in the back lane and whisper a word of advice about keeping marital discord within the four solid walls of the house they have built instead of taking it out on to the balcony where the neighbours can hear. But I still stay there for a long time.

  ‘Rohan,’ I hear Ira call out from inside the house, ‘are you crying? Come back in.’

  I don’t want to oblige but I turn around and see her in her bathrobe. She hugs me as soon as I step in. There is the whiff of almond oil in her hair and a little sweat on the back of her neck—things that take me back to every time my face has rested against her bare shoulders.

  ‘Why are you crying?’ she asks.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘We talked about this, didn’t we?’ She almost sounds maternal, which she rarely does.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ I say. ‘That’s what I’ve been telling myself the whole day. You’re only going away for a year; we can Skype every day; it’s an opportunity of a lifetime; you always wanted to study in New York. But I can’t do it, okay? I’m going to miss you. There. I said it. What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘But I’m going to miss you too,’ she says simply. ‘Of course, I’m going to miss you. But that’s not what our marriage should be about, right? I want to live my life and my hopes and my dreams even if it means living away from you for a year or two. And I want you to do the same too, if that’s what you want. We’ll always have each other to come back to.’

  I wish she had written the words down on a greeting card and given it to me so I can go back to it every time I miss her. Instead, she slips her hand under my shirt and draws her index finger down my midriff while looking into my eyes and smiling innocently. I smile too and try to catch her right earlobe between my teeth, but she pushes me back.

  ‘No,’ she says and drops her bathrobe to get dressed.

  And so it is that half an hour later Ira switches off all the lights in the house one last time, pats Momo as he looks back at her with his baleful mongrel eyes, and steps out on to the landing. As I lock the door, I notice that her gaze lingers on the nameplate we had got made soon after our marriage. We had voted against ‘Rohan and Ira’ because she had felt that without surnames we sounded like we were of the same breed as Momo. We had voted against ‘Shastri and Sebastian’ too, because I felt it sounded like I was married to her father. And so it had finally said ‘Rohan Shastri and Ira Sebastian’, a quirky Kannadiga Hindu and Goan Catholic couple from Bombay in a Jat locality in south Delhi, both secure in their independent identities and the knowledge that they would always have each other to come back to.

  *

  I get into our second-hand white Alto and immediately turn on the AC. It is past midnight but still quite hot, and lugging Ira’s three suitcases that are just under the permissible weight limit has made me sweat. I had insisted on her packing everything from snow boots right down to three packets of Tata Salt so she doesn’t have to spend in dollars for a while. I regret all that now as I look a
t her in the rear-view mirror, waiting for me to reverse the car, and imagine her trying to manage the suitcases by herself all the way from JFK to New Jersey, where she is going to stay with a friend from college for a few weeks before she can find a place of her own, preferably in Manhattan.

  Work for the magenta line is going on at Hauz Khas metro station even at this hour. There is some traffic due to the diversions but it’s not too bad. The ground rumbles as gigantic machines drill the land. I keep darting glances at Ira as I look at the left side-view mirror. It is difficult to say whether she is nervous, excited or sad, since she’s so quiet as she looks out of the window. I place my hand on hers and wait for her to react, but she doesn’t.

  ‘You’ll manage, right?’ I ask, just to break the silence.

  ‘Manage what?’

  ‘Everything. The transfer at London—there isn’t much time between the flights. House hunting by yourself in New York. Keeping up with the rest of your class once lectures start. Are you nervous?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘I worry about you, you know.’ I do, but I also know that there is no real reason for me to. She is perfectly capable of finding a nice place to rent, managing her classes and making flight transfers. She likes being independent and by herself.

  ‘I know,’ she says and gently squeezes my hand without looking at me.

  The traffic clears after the IIT flyover. Trucks, allowed within the city at night, drive in the left lane. The road is a little potholed and bumpy, but it’s easy to navigate my way around them and hit at least sixty. On any other day I would have loved the drive. But tonight I almost wish there were more traffic so I could stay with Ira a little longer. I let her switch from the old Hindi songs playing on the radio to Frank Sinatra on the pen drive. ‘New York, New York,’ he sings, and though the beats are elevating, I feel melancholic.

  The road widens after Vasant Vihar and there are only cars headed for the airport. Huge green signboards with white lettering guiding us to T3, the international terminal, loom in the distance. Audis and BMWs whizz past. There is no slowing down now. Soon we take the exit off the Ring Road and enter the airport premises. We pass a line of business hotels, the Delhi Aerocity metro station and bus stops with backlit advertisements. The grounds are so huge that it takes us ten minutes to reach the airport building. The parking charge is Rs 110 for the first half hour and double that for up to two hours. But there is no way I am going to drop Ira off and leave. I go to the basement parking, from where we walk to the departure gate.

  We are now surrounded by people saying goodbyes, cheap labour going to the Gulf, families going on foreign holidays. There are the CISF guys manning the gates, looking up from people’s IDs and matching their photos with their faces. And there is the brightly lit departure terminal just on the other side of the tall glass walls.

  ‘I’ll miss Momo,’ Ira says suddenly, and I realize that both of us had been quiet for a long time. It sounds almost like she wants to say she will miss him more than she will miss me. But that can’t be what she means and I only smile. ‘His shots will be due next month. And don’t forget to take him for a walk every morning.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I say. Any other day I would have told her that I will obviously do these things without being told. But I know this is her way of saying goodbye. Caught up in my own thoughts and trying to see some sign of sadness on her face, I haven’t realized that this is harder for her than it is for me.

  ‘Clean the house regularly,’ she continues. ‘Don’t just arrange things in right angles. Clean the exhaust fan in the kitchen before your parents visit. Select a day of the month to pay all the bills so you don’t forget. Note down all the expenses in a diary so you know where the money is going.’ I don’t know what it’s like to live in a different country by myself, so I refrain from giving her advice. I know she’ll be fine. ‘And now get me a trolley.’

  I go to the corner where the trolleys are lined up while she waits with her luggage. I turn around and look at her from a distance. This is the last time I will see her for a year. I don’t know if by the time she comes back she will have the same wavy, long hair or if she’d have cut and straightened it. If she will lose or gain weight. If she will have an accent. I take in her five-foot-three frame, her narrow waist and firm breasts. She is putting on her sweater in anticipation of the cold inside. She is already preparing for life without me.

  I return with the trolley and place her suitcases and handbag on it. We take a selfie in which both of us look more tired and sleep-deprived than sad. My eyes well up again as we hug tight.

  ‘Don’t become smug because you are living in New York,’ I say without letting go. ‘And don’t become too comfortable there because you have to come back.’

  We kiss, unmindful of the people around.

  ‘I love you,’ I say.

  I watch her enter through the gate and follow her till I can see her no more. And as I start walking back to the basement parking lot, I am bothered by this feeling that she has left something unsaid.

  2

  Routine

  I wake up the next morning to Momo slobbering all over my face. I push his head away with my hands and try to shove him off the bed with my feet but he does not relent. The room is full of early-morning light. I turn to my left to tell Ira it’s Momo’s feeding time and realize that her side of the bed is empty. That’s when I also realize that I slept through her take-off at four o’clock. I had meant to stay up and wish her a safe journey just before she switched off her phone. I won’t say I am paranoid about air travel but it makes me queasy that she will be completely cut off from me for the entire duration of the twenty-hour flight, except for the stopover in London.

  I check my phone to see if she has messaged me. She has not. Ira has never set much store by ritualistic things like texting me before take-off. But that’s just who she is. I touch her name on the screen in the dialled list and put the phone on speaker. The lady at the other end informs me that the number I am dialling is switched off. I don’t know what I had expected.

  Perhaps I had just wanted to see her photo appear on the screen. It’s a photo I had taken while she was looking away from the camera as we had waited for the food to arrive at this terrace restaurant in Hauz Khas Village called Diagon Alley many months ago. She had just taken a bath before we stepped out and the sun had been mild even though it was afternoon. It had been early winter. She had worn a green kurta and looked fresh—and strikingly pretty—against the trees and the pond that the terrace overlooked.

  I miss her already.

  Momo is now tugging at my boxers, so I grudgingly climb out of bed. He leads me to his food bowl in the drawing room and nuzzles my hand. I open the cupboard behind me, take out the packet of Pedigree, scoop out some food and deposit it angrily in his bowl. As he starts wolfing down his breakfast, I sit on the floor next to him and stroke his back. I can’t be mad at him for long.

  I briefly consider going to the balcony in the state I am in. I only need to pick up the newspaper. But Ira has a rule about being decent while opening the door, appearing on the balcony or entertaining guests, no matter how well we know them. So out of deference to her, I put on a T-shirt despite the harsh sun that the balcony faces, and step out. Ira may not be around for a year, but this is our home and her rules still apply.

  I settle in the cane lounger and unroll the newspaper. I first look at the headlines, then the strap lines, the graphics, the bullet points and finally the main text of the stories on the front page. There is a misplaced comma here and there but no glaring typos. There will be no fireworks at the evening editorial meeting.

  The doorbell rings. That’s going to be Shobha, our extremely stern but workaholic Bengali maid who perennially has a wad of paan between her teeth. I open the door, Momo barks, Shobha tells him to shut up without looking at him, and stomps straight off to the kitchen. I open the fridge and look inside for a minute as though I am spoilt for choice and ask her to make bhindi an
d rotis for lunch and dinner, and butter toast with coffee for breakfast. As I’m about to go to the toilet, ‘Where is didi?’ Shobha demands.

  If it were any other maid, I would have found the question intrusive and told her off. But I am used to Shobha’s ways by now and don’t mind them because she is a good cook, punctual, rarely goes on leave and positively asks to be given clothes to wash. Also, she is the only one with the temperament to go about the house cooking and cleaning without being unnerved by Momo, who likes to stalk and stare.

  ‘She’s gone,’ I say simply. ‘She told you yesterday. She has gone to America to study.’

  Shobha looks at me very judgementally without saying anything. Ira had in fact informed her, but perhaps Shobha finds it impossible to believe that a woman would leave her husband behind unchecked and go to another country. In any case, without elaborating on the status of our marriage, I go to the toilet and sit on the pot to prepare myself for the day.

  *

  I am flooded with calls and messages the entire morning. Amma calls me to ask if Ira has landed in London. But I know that she knows that the flight does not land for another hour. She has actually called to check if I sound sad. Mummy calls too, asks me baldly if I am missing Ira and laughs. Daddy calls and hangs up in eleven seconds. He usually speaks to his daughter for sixteen, so I am not offended. Appa calls an hour later to inform me that the flight has landed. I know that he knows that I am tracking the flight online. But I appreciate that he wants me to know that he is too.

  It’s noon. It has been forty-five minutes since Google showed me that Ira’s flight landed in London, and I am waiting for her call. I try calling her several times but can’t get through. There’s no message from her either. WhatsApp says that her Last Seen was at 3.56 a.m. I am going to start panicking soon and switch on a news channel. Then I think of checking my email and see that there is indeed one from Ira.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ it reads. ‘Can’t get network on the phone. Writing from a kiosk at the airport. Landed half an hour back. Flight was comfortable, slept throughout. First world is nice.’ That is it. I smile at the ‘Don’t panic’, then feel miffed by the telegrammatic tone of the email. But mostly I am glad that the plane hasn’t crashed.