The Story of a Long-Distance Marriage Read online

  The master’s itself was a let-down. Having had a job for two years, I sorely missed the clink of salary in my bank account every month. And I discovered my heart was no longer in academics, least of all in a class with a hundred others. But the worst of it was that Ira was so occupied with her submissions for her final semester that she could not make much time for me. The only thing that kept me going in those difficult first few months was the ever-friendly presence of Yusuf. He had been little more than a flatmate at the time but would drop by my room every night after returning from work just to ask how my day had been, and in that daily small act of kindness I found comfort.

  ‘I’ve decided to move back to Bombay,’ I went to him and announced dramatically one night after I was sure we had become friends, my eyes a fierce shade of red.

  Even though he was on a video call with Mira, he saw I was visibly upset and called me in. And I poured out all that had gone wrong in the last few months. ‘On the basis of all you’ve just told me,’ he said seriously with the air of a psychologist making his diagnosis, ‘I think you are very much in need of a dog. Have you ever had one or considered getting one?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You have just moved to a new city, you are returning to academics, your whole life has changed. Of course, you’ll need some time to get used to it. But that’s it. If you move back to Bombay, you’ll only end up feeling like a loser for having dropped out. Let Ira be. She needs to focus on her studies. Create a new life for yourself here. Give yourself some time to settle in. And do get a dog, really! If you’re lonely and going through a phase, having one around always helps. Like, always! In the meantime, I’m going to send you YouTube links to the tracks of an Icelandic band called Sigur Ros. Listen to them.’

  That night I went to bed listening to ‘Hoppipolla’ on loop, only the happiest piece of music I’ve heard to date. And over the next few weeks things started to look up. Our house was on the ground floor, and as if she had overheard Yusuf’s suggestion to me, one day a dog walked into our veranda with two newborn pups. I started looking after them in her absence, and caring for them was somehow therapeutic for me. I also decided to get a full-time job to keep me occupied while I did the master’s. When Yusuf moved to Bangalore to be with Mira, he recommended me for the position he was leaving at the Estate.

  Soon I was attending classes in the morning, going for work in the afternoon and returning home late at night. My days were just packed. It gave me this heady feeling I loved despite the exhaustion. By the time I completed the master’s, I felt I had done so much with life that the only thing left was marriage. I had known Ira for twelve years and the time felt right. One night on an impulse I showed up outside her hostel and went down on a knee. My desk job did not let me afford jewellery, so I slipped the ring of a keychain on her finger.

  ‘I haven’t got much by way of money or talent,’ I said. ‘But I promise you a life of unwavering commitment and freedom to pursue whatever you please. I will fill your life with happiness or die trying. You have given me such joy and stability that I cannot imagine being with anybody else. Ira Sebastian, will you marry me?’ She, of course, found the whole thing rather ridiculous and did not hesitate to say so. She hemmed and hawed, but in the end, she did not say no.

  *

  I nervously went to Bombay for a few days with the secret intention of announcing our decision to Amma and Appa. I wasn’t sure how they were going to react. But every time I’ve underestimated my parents, I’ve regretted it. And so it was this time too. We went out for lunch one day, and Amma must have read the anxiety on my face.

  ‘What have you decided to do after your master’s?’ she asked and gave me the opening I was looking for.

  ‘To get married,’ I said, and there was something in their expressions that told me they were prepared for this. Perhaps they knew about Ira too.

  Appa grabbed my hand and, laughing heartily, said, ‘Congratulations!’

  And that was it. No questions about whether we had thought this through. No objections, not even tentative ones. For our engagement, we called just those who would be earnestly happy for us. Other than family, we only really cared about having Yusuf there. We debated whether the ceremony three months later should be Hindu, Catholic or both but finally agreed on a court wedding. And so with signatures in a register in the middle of a humid working day in Bombay in June, and after exchanging garlands on a podium in a government office with our parents as witnesses and Yusuf as best man, we were married.

  When we returned to Delhi, we went straight to the Shahpur Jat house which Ira and I had selected just before leaving for Bombay for the wedding. Gaurav, a close friend of Ira’s from JNU, had moved our things while we were away. He had also ensured that we arrived to a bed covered with rose petals. Ira and I spent that month setting up our first home, growing closer as we picked curtains, bought a bed and merged our collections of books into one shelf. That month I woke up and went to bed day after day with the firm conviction that this joy would last forever. When I look back I feel it was the time of my life. And it was all in Delhi, my city of love.

  5

  Fight

  I am Facebook’s perfect husband because it’s not enough for me to miss my wife. I must also tell the world. I take down my profile photo in which I look like Rajesh Khanna in Aradhana. It was taken on a trek to Triund in the Himachal mountains five years ago and had been up since then because I am so fond of it. It is a huge step for me to replace it now with the one in which I look tired and sleep-deprived: the selfie Ira and I took at the airport. This photo gets me more than a hundred likes, a big number for a Facebook-unpopular person like me. And what helps me get them are the comments.

  A cousin identifies it as an airport farewell shot even though there isn’t much of the background visible. ‘Hope Ira has reached safely. So proud of you guys. Xoxo,’ she writes.

  To which a long-lost friend from school replies, ‘Hey, how you been? It’s been ages. Where’s your wife? And congratulations on the wedding, by the way!’

  ‘In NYC. Studying,’ I reply.

  That lets the word out to everyone well outside the family and my small circle of friends. Granduncles, ex-college professors and people I did not know I had on my friends’ list ask me what Ira has gone to study, how long she will be there and why I haven’t tagged along. It’s basically a replay of what happened on my first day in office after Ira left, just on a much wider and more public scale. And the attention doesn’t bother me any more. On the other hand, it encourages me to step things up.

  I start a series of daily posts on Facebook with the hashtag #Wordsthatmademethinkofyoutoday. The idea occurs to me one day when I’m driving to work and ‘Tire Swing’, the song from Juno, comes on the radio. The first two lines of the second stanza sound like they were written for Ira and me:

  ‘Cause I like to be gone most of the time

  And you like to be home most of the time.’

  I imagine Ira waking up to see herself tagged in the post with multiple likes. I imagine my public displays of affection making her feel happy and loved. I am about to go to sleep that night after returning from work when my phone buzzes and I see that she has liked the post. ‘I like to be home too,’ she replies, and my friends go wild liking her comment now.

  Next, from Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, one of my all-time favourite novels, I quote: ‘You are still young, free. Do yourself a favour. Before it’s too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.’

  I dig out her post on my wall from more than a year ago, which she had written to make me feel better after some trouble in office, and quote it back to her, with the same hashtag, of course: ‘I love how you curl up next to Momo and I love on most days how you look at me when I’m talking but you don’t hear a word. I love that you make your own breakfast and let me sleep. And I love the poems you write fo
r me. We are un-jinxable because we have each other.’

  I did not have a smartphone before Ira left for New York. But when she left she gave me hers, saying she would have to buy a new one there anyway. One day I go through the WhatsApp groups that she was part of and whose messages she has not deleted. There is a group of her friends from college in which she had written on the day she left, ‘I’m leaving Rohan in your care. Do make sure I don’t have to read headlines like, “Lonely man found under heaps of doggy poop.”’ The thought of her looking out for me in her absence is overwhelming. I take a screenshot of the message and save it on the phone but don’t post it. This one I keep for myself.

  *

  ‘Can’t sleep, I’m very awake.’

  I wake up to this WhatsApp message at 4.30 one morning, read it drowsily and then doze back off. It’s six-thirty when I wake up next and see that the message is from Yusuf. Since he alternately does morning, afternoon and night shifts at the Reuters newsroom in Bangalore, he sometimes has trouble falling asleep during the transitions, and I’m used to receiving texts from him at odd hours. The message is followed by YouTube links to three songs.

  ‘I’m up now,’ I reply, ‘though I don’t know if you are. Are you?’

  ‘I am! I am!’ he replies, almost instantly.

  ‘Oh boy, tonight must be difficult. So what are these songs?’

  ‘It’s three parts of a long symphony by this British rock band called Muse. The band’s lead vocalist, Matthew Bellamy, says it’s a story of humanity coming to an end and everyone resting their hopes on some astronauts who go out to space to spread humanity on another planet.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘It is! It made me think of you—of us. I wanted to tell you about this thought I had while listening to the tracks.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I think if we are ever in a war, like the First World War or the Second Peloponnesian War, you and I will be the last people of a platoon left. Because, let’s face it, we’re awesome. So, we are the last people left fighting and then you’ll tell me that I need to run and save myself and I’ll be like no. But you’ll be like go and have lots of sex and read a lot of graphic novels. You’ll tell me to name my kid after you. And I’ll ask, which one. You’ll say, every third one. And I’ll have to listen to you and leave you on the battlefield alone. The enemy will advance since you’re fighting alone and all but then you’ll see that I’ve come back. We shall fight together.’

  It makes me smile and I tell him it reminds me of The Lord of the Rings. ‘How Sam comes back to save Frodo. Frodo may be the star of the story, but I think of Sam as the greater hero for not letting the ring overpower him and because he is a true friend. So thanks for coming back for me.’

  ‘We live such exciting lives, Rohan,’ he says with a touch of irony. ‘There will be a movie made about us some day. Who would you want to play you onscreen?’

  ‘Who, me? Never thought about it. Maybe Rajesh Khanna the romantic from Aradhana.’

  *

  Soon it’s November, the month I like best in Delhi. The long transition through October from the muggy monsoon months is over. Last night, a dreamy mist stole up on me as I was walking through the park outside Hauz Khas metro station, which means winter has arrived. I think the furtive sun of November makes us a happy lot. Shopkeepers and auto drivers are more pleasant to customers. There are more people out on the India Gate lawns. And it’s not like they are ever out of season, but now is when you enjoy momos the most.

  Delhi rubs off on me too. The sadness of Ira leaving is behind me, and I’m feeling well settled in my new routine. Snug in some new woollens, I go on long walks with Momo, sometimes as far as Deer Park. He likes the weather too. He makes fewer attempts to break free and run off, instead walking in step with me. I’ve got us identical red coats, an ‘I’ for Ira knitted on the back of his and on the chest of mine. We look like buddies out for a good time around town. And a good time we have, admiring the pretty ones of our respective species.

  My productivity also shoots up. Just before Diwali, I spend a lot of time cleaning the house. And to mark the occasion, I repost on Facebook last year’s photo of Ira, her face aglow, lighting a diya in our dark balcony, with the caption, ‘This Diwali, we’ll get by on happy memories from last Diwali.’

  On days the car cleaner doesn’t turn up, I clean my Alto myself and do a thorough job of it, washing the floor mats and the wheel caps too. One day I overhear Anju telling Sunil in the balcony to learn from me and get some exercise, instead of adding an inch to his considerable waist every month.

  ‘Just see how well he can manage without his wife. And you,’ she admonishes, ‘you can’t even pick out your own underwear without yelling Anju, Anju. Nor do you have any appreciation for the wife who does that for you.’ He listens to the tirade peaceably and bravely but shoots me an angry look on my way up.

  And I socialize, something I haven’t done in years. The last time must have been when Ira was in JNU and I would invite her friends over for poker nights on weekends, hoping to fit better in her world. Since then I have forgotten what it is like to hang out with people other than Ira.

  One afternoon, Tanuj and I decide to go to Old Delhi before heading to work. Like me, he is also from Bombay and a single man living by himself in the city. We discover that we have more things in common than we knew. We both like exploring the city and looking for cheap places to eat good food, and realize that we can be tolerable travel companions with an equal appreciation of a well-prepared shahi tukda.

  On my day off the following week, I decide to catch up with Gaurav in JNU, where he is now reluctantly doing an MPhil to avoid getting a job.

  ‘Hey, roomie!’ he says brightly as he opens the door of his hostel room and hugs me. We were roommates once for a short while after Yusuf had moved out and I was yet to get married.

  ‘Were you smoking up?’ I say as I see his glassy eyes. He grunts and returns to the game he is playing on his laptop. I boss him around and give him life advice as though he were the younger brother I always wished I had, while he wishes me away like he would his father—an old equation neither of us has been able to outgrow.

  ‘Come, let’s go to 24x7. I’m in the mood for some butter chicken,’ I say.

  ‘Your treat? I’m broke.’

  ‘Yes, all right.’

  Over cups of lemon tea and plates of spicy chicken in the biting cold, he tells me about one girl he is sleeping with, a second he wants to get back with, and a third he wants to hook up with—all in one breath—as I silently tune in and out, feeling indulgent and jealous in turn. We then go back to his room and open a bottle of Old Monk, of which he is never in short supply no matter how broke, and I return home well after two.

  *

  One night the next week, I’m leaving from office when I see Alisha seeming a little lost and worried as she stands at the gate looking at the deserted road outside. This is unlike her usual self. Lean, tall and always in jeans and T-shirts, she otherwise comes across as a hardy woman of the world. From whatever I’ve heard from others in the team, she is from Jaipur but grew up in towns and cities around the world, travelling with her diplomat mother, and has lived all her adult life by herself, going on Himalayan treks alone every couple of weeks. I’ve never really spoken to her, even though she works on the state desk in my adjoining bay.

  ‘Hey,’ I say to her on my way to the parking lot across the road. Since the desk works well into the night, we get a cab drop home, though I prefer taking my Alto. ‘Everything all right? You seem hassled.’

  ‘Hey,’ she replies absent-mindedly, without looking at me, ‘missed my office drop. And there aren’t any Olas or Ubers at this hour.’

  ‘I can drop you if you like. Mayur Vihar is out of the way, but won’t take long without traffic.’

  ‘I don’t live in Mayur Vihar,’ she suddenly rounds on me and says.

  ‘Oh,’ I blush, ‘I just thought I had heard you mention at some p
oint—some time when they were announcing office cabs perhaps.’

  ‘Used to—when I stayed with my boyfriend. But then I broke up with him,’ she says with a disarming smile and I feel embarrassed. ‘It reminds me too much of my life with him. So I moved south some time back. Anyway, there are more things to do there and I find it safer.’

  ‘That’s true. Where in south?’

  ‘Green Park.’

  ‘Oh, that’s only a short detour on my way home then. I can drop you.’

  She looks a little hesitant. ‘That’ll be great,’ she says eventually and starts walking ahead of me towards the parking lot. ‘These guys take a long route, you know. Dropping off all the seniors first. Takes me twice the time it should.’

  ‘That’s horrible.’

  ‘How’s your wife? I hear she is studying in New York. Ira, right?’ she asks as she gets into the car, almost as if to make sure I’m committed to her despite the distance so she doesn’t need to feel threatened.

  ‘She’s good. Settling into a routine and getting really busy with her assignments.’

  ‘That’s nice. You should tell her to try out this chain of French restaurants in Manhattan, Maison Kayser. They’re really good. I used to eat there almost every day when I lived in New York as a teen. You guys Skype every day?’ Again I get the same impression.

  ‘Not really. She has unlimited international calling on her phone. I message her and she calls. But she’s mostly busy through the week. Then there’s the time difference.’

  ‘That must suck.’

  ‘Sort of. But we’re in a good place,’ I say, and I’m taken aback by my choice of words. I wonder if I really said it to reassure myself more than her.