Absence

Absence


The void that was created out of her absence defined her presence. She was virtually everywhere. He could sense the marks of her lips on the cup of that coffee he was drinking. He could sense her warmth in each of the breaths that kept him thrifting. She was the empress ruling his body, thoughts, soul, everything.

They fell in love three years ago. What started three years ago ended six months back. Or was it the other way, what ended then began, once again, six months ago. And what about today, he wonders. Did it start or end today? Three years ago, everything had seemed so perfect. How that high pitched violinic note love played had made him feel he was on top of a mountain with his arms extended and cool breeze blowing on his face. So perfect. So real, yet an illusion. They got married one year later. What ended (or begun) six months ago had perhaps started to end (or begin) from his marriage itself. Like the bug in the wood. Slowly dissolving, weakening from inside and suddenly one day it’s split open. Yeah, one day. One day she decided that everything was more than enough. So, she left him and filed for a divorce. That one day came six months back.

Theirs was a love marriage. The only thing that lacked in it was love. Fun, they had plenty. There were parties, candle-lit dinners, movies. But there were no private talks, no sharing, no discovering of each other. Each an alien to the other. There were arguments which were less frequent at first but became more and more common. They had fights about everything, things they were not even concerned of and when they had nothing to argue about, they argued about not arguing. Until one day. When the argument reached too far to the point of physical violence.

When she left him, he felt his world crumble down. He cried, begged, did everything he could to have her back. But she wouldn’t budge. And then he accepted his fate. A silent resignation to the simple need of moving on with life. It gave him something that their marriage had never allowed for: coyness, slowness, discovering each other from a distance. He came to realize the deepest intimacy, that love attainable only with distance.

But today she called him and said that she wanted to come back home. How he had hated her absence in the beginning more than he could ever have loved her presence. But slowly, softly her absence had mellowed itself into his life. It had gathered around him for so many months, donated a necessary order to the hours, to the routine, to the watching of the photographs. It had provided his life a rhythm, he so badly needed: a useful sadness and a subtleness of thoughts. Her thoughts, her memory was his companion- he would be surprised, even lonely, if it were to leave him.

What do we do when our yearning, our desire, our love for love exceeds that love itself. What if our love for somebody is greater than that somebody itself. What if we love somebody’s memories -longing for his/her presence yet not really wanting him/her- more than we love the person.

So he finally picks up the phone and calls her.
‘Ya, it’s me. I think you were right about everything’
‘No, no, not about today’s stuff.’
‘That we are different people and we can hardly mingle together. So I think maybe we should go our own ways.’
‘I will talk to my lawyer and let you know about the divorce papers………..’