The Homing Pigeons... (17 page)

Radhika

I saw the strip turning pink. Now, when I thought that the worst  was  behind  me,  it  couldn’t  be  true.  Now, when I thought that I might, somehow, get over Aditya, the nightmare reappeared. Now, this was the only other horror yet to unfold and it was happening now.

My menstrual cycle was usually more accurate than the Mayan calendar. When I missed the date, I figured that it could be a miscalculation. I re-counted the days; so much had happened in the past month that it wasn’t difficult to have been mistaken. But I wasn’t. Three days later, I was worried. Today, as I compared the pink strip of the home pregnancy test with the legend on the box, my worst fears were coming true. The fastest sperm had met my egg. It would’ve probably been a little better if I had just known who that sperm belonged to.

I sat on the commode and held my head in my hands, in resignation of my foolishness, of my imprudence and of my fate. It’s sometimes strange when you look at the mirror and see the reflection of a stranger – a person whose actions and decisions are so extremely contrary to yours. Yet, I was that stranger who could explain but not convince you why she made the decisions that she had.

I sobbed uncontrollably which involuntarily turned into a howl. In all the things that were out of sync, the only thing that worked in my favour was the absence of Abhinav. He was at work and it would’ve been difficult to explain why I was crying when I had discovered that I was pregnant. Motherhood was meant to be a pleasant experience; it was meant to make a woman complete but now, when I had discovered that I was pregnant, there was only misery.

The two men in my life were as different as chalk and cheese. One, a little over six feet, fair and handsome; the other, dark, five feet seven and a veritable mouse in comparison. It wouldn’t require a DNA expert to figure out my infidelity. This was a possibility that I hadn’t even explored while making the decision to marry Abhinav. I must have been a sinner in my past life, a wretch, who was being made to pay for the sins in this birth.

It had to be Karma; why else was I enduring this? I knew that I would have to get an abortion because there, simply, was no other way. It was better to do it now than to have Abhinav stare at someone else’s child after nine months. If the child was born, it would only complicate matters a little more than what they already were.

Involuntary  tears  would  well  up  in  my  eyes  and  roll down my cheeks. Even long after my affair with the commode ended, the tears didn’t stop and neither did the agony. I spent the day in anguish, waiting for Abhinav to come home.

The  truth  was  that  I  didn’t  even  know  him. 
I didn’t even know how he would react if he found out what I was suspecting. Would I still be married or would I have lost two men in the space of two weeks? I was livid with myself, for my foolishness, for not having used contraceptives and for not having taken this eventuality into perspective when I had made my decision to marry Abhinav.

A large part of me wanted to come clean, to have the courage to walk up to Abhinav and say that I wasn’t sure if he was my unborn child’s father. I longed for the strength and the courage to be able to tell him the truth. Even in the short time that Abhinav and I had been together, I had been able to gauge that he was extremely egoistical. He would never be able to understand that his wife had an affair previously, forgive her and move on. I shuddered at the sheer thought of being truthful. It was just not an option. Where would it lead but to a divorce?

It would give me nine months of a breather, until the truth came out in the open. Wouldn’t everything work out perfectly if the foetus that had once been my egg was fertilized with Abhinav’s sperm? What if the child turned out like Aditya?

These random thoughts tore me until the best option was to not have the child. I would have to handle this with tact. I could not sound unexcited or unenthusiastic lest Abhinav suspect me. I hated myself and detested the situation that had turned me into a manipulative vamp. A woman, that was plotting the murder of an unborn child, based on a suspicion that it had been fathered illegitimately.

Abhinav came home that evening, carrying with him a box of authentic Chinese food. It was completely different than what I had ever had in Delhi, Chandigarh or Solan. It was as if the Chinese had forgotten to grow chillies. The food was bland and distasteful to my spice hungry palate. I waited until the dishes were done and just when he was about to switch on the TV, I finally blurted out, “Abhinav, I’m pregnant.”

It didn’t sound like anything that I had rehearsed over the course of the day.

“What?” he said.

I didn’t understand if the ‘what’ expressed surprise, shock, excitement or indifference.

“I’m expecting,” I said, hoping that he wouldn’t catch the quiver in my voice.

“That’s great news,” he said beaming. My task of being able to sell him an abortion would be a little more difficult. He was only twenty-seven, and who wants fatherhood at that age? I certainly wasn’t ready for motherhood at twenty-two.

“I am not sure if I want to have the child,” I said.

I saw his expression change. It was as if I had dropped a bombshell on him or had committed a cardinal sin.

“I want this child,” he said and walked away.

It was a demand. It was an order. It was a diktat that couldn’t be challenged. He didn’t even want to understand my reasons for not wanting the child. For the first time in the two weeks of marriage, I felt that I had misjudged Abhinav. I wasn’t sure if he was a gentleman that I thought he was.

I tried to raise the subject a couple of times later, with the usual rejection.  He would simply walk away, leaving me fuming at not being heard. Slowly, I was beginning to reconcile that this child would be a reality. It would come into this world.

I thought about calling Abhinav in office to tell him that I had slipped in the bathroom. I would tell him that I had had a miscarriage but instead go to the obstetrician and get an abortion. If I had been a little more courageous, I might have tried it. I wasn’t. I must have been at the back of the line when God gave the virtue of courage to all his children.

Three months later, I knew that the child was now a certainty; especially when I had crossed the important threshold of the first trimester. Neither had I been able to convince Abhinav, nor had I been able to gather the courage to get an abortion done on my own. I had resigned to the fact that if doom was inevitable, it would have to be endured.

Through those three months, Abhinav had had enough of me; I could make out from the long sighs and the expressions of exasperation that he gave me. He was probably ruing his fool hardiness of rushing into a marriage with a stranger. When he sighed and let out deep breaths, he would remain polite. I wondered if I hadn’t been pregnant, how it would’ve been. Would he have vented his anger on me? Would he tell me that I had ruined his life and mine?

After all, from his perspective, he could have done without me. Physically, I had graduated from being a log in bed to being a corpse. Mentally, he was years ahead of me. When we spoke, it was as if we were on two diametrically opposite tangents. Emotionally, there was no gratification for him. I still lay strangled in the cobwebs of my heart.

Several times I had imagined Abhinav to be Aditya when he would want to have sex with me. I would switch off the lights, so that he wouldn’t see my face as I shut my eyes and let myself be sucked into an illusion. When he touched me there, I would try and imagine that it was Aditya’s hands; when he kissed me, I would try and imagine that they were Adi’s lips. Yet, when I wrapped my arms around his frail body, the illusion would snap. Why hadn’t I rejected him on grounds of his looks?

The hormones weren’t helping, sending me into bouts of extreme happiness and extreme melancholy a few moments apart. There were days when I would shout at him, not knowing why, then suddenly be over polite in a matter of minutes. I didn’t know if I could just blame the hormones when it could have been the stress of not knowing whose baby I was mothering. Maybe, the stress had brought me to this point of insanity and irrationality.

My  pregnancy  was  turning  out  to  be  very  far  from
pleasant. Each passing day brought me a little closer to the day when I would be found out. I didn’t have a way to know whose child I was mothering but a woman’s instinct told me that it was Aditya’s. In my mind, I would imagine how the child would look like when it was born. I wanted him to be a clone of Aditya but I knew that it would only serve to alienate me from Abhinav.

Abhinav backed out the Audi from the basement parking spot and turned on the heat. It was November, the pleasant but short summer had ended and the evenings and mornings were chilly. There was some talk of a blizzard next week and that had started a mad rush to buy overcoats. The malls were flooded, in anticipation of the winter and the holiday season that it would bring with it. We crossed the malls as we drove to the New York Downtown Hospital which was a fair distance away. It was the day of the monthly meeting with the obstetrician. It wasn’t that there were no better obstetricians or hospitals near our apartment but I realized that Americans are a slave to their insurance companies. His insurance only allowed him to visit this particular hospital.

I  wasn’t  complaining  about  the  distance  because  Dr Jill Fonda was my obstetrician – a matronly, middle-aged, Caucasian lady in her mid-forties – whose face would cheer me up. She checked the blood pressure reading on the digital monitor and looked directly into my eyes. I wondered if the blood pressure machine knew what I was going through. She asked Abhinav to wait outside and even before he was out of the room, asked me, “Is there something that’s bothering you?”

I wondered if I should tell her, like a good patient should, but I didn’t. Instead, I shook my head like Indians do, which can so easily be mistaken for a nod.

She again took a reading of the blood pressure and then said, “Your blood pressure is a border line high. Reduce your salt intake and calm yourself. At any moment that you have any discomfort, call me SOS.”

She called Abhinav and explained my situation. I didn’t know if that disclosure elongated Abhinav’s sighs a little more. His dreams of a healthy child were being jeopardized by me and worse still, he had no option but to remain calm, patient and docile.

As fall turned to winter, the hormones were beginning to be innocuous; the mood swings were slightly better and I could hear his sighs abating. The only problem was that as each day passed, I was getting a little more anxious about what would happen. The stress was unavoidable and involuntary. I wished I had a friend who I could talk to. Anyone, who would just hear me, even if they didn’t have a solution to offer. Just someone who could help me get this cancerous secret out of my system.

Aditya

I wake up to the sounds of the rooster. The old watch that sits on the crooked coffee table next to the couch is letting out a shrill sound, faintly resembling a rooster. It is four in the afternoon; I rub my eyes and make my way to the bathroom past the feeble form of Birendra Singh Bhatoliya.

Bhatoliya is bucking in his dreams, making love to
the woman in the red skirt, the one who had ripped off his shirt. I push him, careful to avoid the flagpole that stands conspicuously through his boxer shorts. He wakes up beaming, a smile that reeks of sexual fulfilment.

“Wow” (pause), “
wow” (pause), “wow”.

A man with a limited vocabulary explains what he is feeling.

I remember the morning after I had made love to Radhika and smile. I dress and am about to go into the kitchen when I think I will complete a chore that I do twice a week. It is more out of compulsion than any other emotion. My wife is still my wife, even though there is hardly any contact between us, except these intentional phone calls. I often wonder if she feels the same way. My emotions are dead and buried.

“Hello,” I say into the cheap Motorola handset. “Hi! How are you?” she asks. I am thankful that cell phones
display names; it saves us both the trouble of delving into our memory to recognize the voice.

“Fine and you?”
I ask.

Our conversation is the conversation between strangers;
formal and measured.

“I am fine. Any plans to come and visit me?” she asks.

“I won’t get leave, but will try to come the soonest I can. Why don’t you come?” I ask her.

I hear the sigh of relief despite the crackling phone line.

“I will try; work’s pretty busy. Traffic cops. Bye,” she says and hangs up.

Either she is driving a lot or lying a lot. The first thing the CIA teaches a new recruit is to never believe in coincidence. It can’t be a coincidence that every time I call, she is driving.

Bhatoliya is still languishing with his memories of the night before. I am doing it for money, but he has found passion. “How much did that woman charge?” he asks referring to Divya.

“Twenty five per
cent,” I reply.

“That’s cheating. How come we do all the hard work and she just skims off the top?” he asks.

“You wouldn’t even have known that there was a party on if she hadn’t called me,” I reply.

“Even then, it’s an obnoxious commission,” he says. I agree but between the two of us, we earned fifty thousand
last night, net of the commission - A huge amount for a single night’s work.  People who don’t have any other source of income can’t complain.

“I agree. Get dressed, I am hungry,” I say, choosing to change the topic.

It is almost half past five in the evening that we leave the house. I can’t help thinking that it is a remarkably awkward time to find breakfast. We take a rickshaw to the Jwalaheri market, and have chicken Momo’s and Indian style Chow- Mein from the Chinese van that doesn’t move. The Chicken Chow Mein is smothered in soya and chilli sauce. I tell the cook to start using
sambhar
masala in the Chow Mein; he can easily pass it off as South Indian Vermicelli.

It is dark by the time we return to the cigarette shop at the corner of the street that leads up to our apartment. It is almost the end of January and there is still a nip in the evening air. Bhatoliya lights up a cigarette and looks at me. He says, “Aditya, What’s the plan now?” I can’t really say why he lays special impetus on the ‘now’.

“I guess, go back home and sleep or read, in the absence of a TV,” I say nonchalantly.

“Ever wondered why I never bought a TV?” he asks.

“Several times. Why?” I ask.

“I have a dream…” he starts. He has a faraway look in his eyes and sounds like Gandhi when he first envisioned India’s Independence, “…that someday I can have my own business; a day when I don’t need to sell toothpaste to make a living; a day when I don’t have to suck up to a bastard to get a promotion.”

“What business?” I cut short the elucidation of his dream.

“Anything that doesn’t involve me selling toothpaste,” he proudly proclaims, as if he has narrowed down his options
considerably.

“So, what’s that got to do with the TV?” I ask.

“I’ve chosen to give up some material things like a TV to achieve that dream,” he says. This guy is on the verge of insanity and needs help.

“And what have you achieved in doing so?” I ask, reasoning with him to check if he actually is mentally imbalanced.

“I have the capital for starting a business,” he says.

“What business?” I ask, repeating my question to hopefully
get a more favourable answer than his last response.

“A Massage parlour,” he says. His eyes are gleaming with excitement. In that moment, he is a four-year-old child who gets a shiny red bicycle on his birthday.