A Breath of Fresh Air by Amulya Malladi

Author:Amulya Malladi
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2003-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

ANJALI

"I am sorry that Sarita brought ... Prakash up,” I apologized to Sandeep as we lay in bed. “I told her, and I—”

“That’s okay,” he said in his calm voice. He was lying on his back, reading a book. I was lying on my side, running a finger over his arm.

“You are angry about something.” I could tell he was holding something back.

“Why should I be angry about anything?” He sounded amused, but I wasn’t buying it.

“You’ve been angry ever since . . . we saw his wife.” Sandeep put his book aside and turned to face me. “I am not angry.”

“Something is wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong.”

“I know you, something is wrong.”

He sighed and lay on his back again. “You can really nag sometimes, you know?”

“I am learning from Komal.”

Sandeep grinned. “She is pretty good at it.”

“So, what’s wrong?”

Sandeep closed his eyes and didn’t answer. I poked him in the stomach with a finger. “Tell me.”

He took my hand in his and brought it close to his lips. “I am happy. I am content. I am not angry.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

I turned off the lights and snuggled close to him. His body was tense and I lifted my head. “Something is wrong.”

He laughed, this time uncontrollably, and I joined him. He never did answer my question.

Sandeep was not the most open person I knew. His feelings were locked within him, nothing gave him away, and I never knew how he was feeling unless he told me. He didn’t express his emotions as freely as I did and it sometimes bothered me. It was a compromise—I got a close-mouthed clam, who was loving, affectionate, and understanding.

A few days before the Dussehra holidays I received a letter from my parents. I was shocked—the letter said they would come to Ooty for a week. It had been just a couple of weeks since I had written to them inviting them to our home. I had written several letters like this in the past. They had always politely declined my invitation with a reasonable if hastily contrived excuse. This time, however, I had written to them on Sandeep’s insistence about Amar’s failing condition, and the results were quite different.

Sandeep went to pick them up at the railway station and I crossed my fingers, praying that my parents’ visit would go smoothly, without any unnecessary emotional upheavals.

I gave Amar a bath and dressed him up in a nice silk kurta pajama, which my parents had sent for him on his last birthday. Amar liked my parents and they adored him. Whenever we took Amar to Hyderabad, they treated him well, despite his illness. They took him on outings to the zoo, the planetarium, and the Birla temple that sat high up on a hilltop. Amar was inundated with gifts and trips to the ice cream parlors. I was thankful for their attitude toward Amar. He gave us a thread, a connection that was almost severed after my divorce.

I hadn’t seen my parents for almost two years. The last time we were in Hyderabad we’d had a fight.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.