A Nameless Kinship

Shernaz Wadia (India, 26/10/07)

As he zoomed away in his Lancer, the crisp autumn air made him contemplative. It blew the lid off a caskful of memories brewing inside him. Impetuously, Zaheer stretched his hand to feel the warmth of hers and his eyes brimmed over as it touched the empty seat beside him. Suddenly he missed her, as he had not done in the last many years after she had gone. His addiction to work had helped fog out her memory. He had not allowed himself the excruciating luxury of recalling unforgettable times spent with her. Today, on an impulse, he drove away to be by himself - something else he had dreaded ever since she passed away.

Now he let those entombed memories flood out all else in their wake. Their special songs, the hilarious sitcoms they loved to watch over and over again, even their own silly banter and private jokes flashed by. Long, delightful drives, with her beside him, were poems etched in the language of irrepressible fun and excitement; some ended up being less pleasurable because she would sulk and quarrel half the way; a few had the spark of adventure or ended in misadventure, as she would abruptly say, “Let’s take this right turn and see where we reach.” He smiled as he remembered quite a few such memorable drives. Her spontaneity helped him leave his safe cocoon to experiment and experience different degrees of living and thinking. He was given to existing in a box, which he didn’t leave unless he had every step meticulously planned.

He pulled up at a lake. Development over the years had marred the landscape, with little of its old charm left. He chafed at an ugly construction coming up some distance away. The once lush hill, at whose feet the ‘jal’ played its ‘tarang’, looked like a bald, aging man, with hideous blotches on his face. It was good she was not around to see this one more atrocity of man on nature. It pained her immensely to see the green cover of her city and surroundings, being destroyed by unscrupulous builders. In his own small way he had tried to compensate and give her joy by greening the land around his properties.

His mind dipped further into his childhood. He had been a loner, always withdrawn with no friends. He was very intelligent and clever. It wasn’t even that he was unsociable, but he found his peers very immature and even stupid at times. He just couldn’t be like them. They teased and taunted and bullied him. He didn’t lash out in retaliation, because young as he was, he knew the ferocity of his anger. Unbridled, it was bestial. He vented it out on the playground, as he dribbled and kicked the ball vehemently, imagining the faces of his bullies in it.

With age, his frustration had grown. He immersed himself in books. He was at loggerheads with his father, as neither understood the other. His father was astute and ambitious. Where his brains didn’t get him desired results, he used money and muscle-power. Perhaps to get inside his father’s cranium for a clearer view of the machinations of his complex mind, he studied similar characters from history and fiction. Into his early teens, he tried various ways to please him; even followed in his pampered sister’s footsteps and used emotional blackmail. Anything. Anything for that one word of praise, that small nod of approval, that appreciative smile which would convey, “Son, I love you too”. Nothing succeeded. He often cried into his pillow.

Whom could a perplexed young boy turn to when his own family didn’t understand and called him a wimp? He remembered how he had even meditated and planned suicide to the minutest detail. That’s exactly when a chance encounter brought her into his life. At first he couldn’t quite get a grip on her. Sometimes she shocked him, sometimes he thought her plain crazy and yet she seemed to make sense. Most importantly she believed in him and he learned to believe in himself. He never forgot how he had tested her constantly, for almost a year before he was convinced of her sincerity and sound common sense. After that it was plainly a matter of nurturing.

Their ineffable relationship blossomed to last beyond her lifetime. How often had they tried to analyze it, to define it, to give it its own name and identity? It was more than friendship, but it wasn’t love with its hackneyed connotations. They were soul mates, but on a platonic level. Were they like mother and son, father and daughter, brother and sister, teacher and student, guru and shishya? What were they to each other? It didn’t matter. They were happy together. They made each other laugh and cry; they could reason level-headedly and disagree passionately; they enjoyed different genres of music but both danced with two left feet. They created new mental vistas for each other, added new dimensions to their personalities by opening up to diverse perspectives. They delighted in each other’s successes, but did not let vanity cloud the inner loveliness each had seen and enhanced in the other. Yes, it was a wonderful, nameless kinship.

With a tinge of remorse he recalled, that as the years rolled by and he had settled down with a family of his own, he had distanced himself from her. He had a petrifying fear of life after her demise and was sort of readying for it. She must have known, but she let him battle this demon on his own. It made them sad but that is how it was. In retrospect he wondered: Was I not foolish relinquishing precious moments to my morbidity? Could she have felt neglected, betrayed, hurt, lonely? Often, hadn’t she been unavailable to talk when I had the time? Or was she simply playing along with me? No. Relationships were her life. She didn’t play with emotions. Not her own, not anyone else’s.

“Snap out of it, you fool. Isn’t it a little too late for self-recriminations? I presume you genuinely did all you could for us. Hopefully, you did try?”

The voice in his head startled him so, he almost fell into the lake. Did he discern a hint of sarcasm there? Then he began to laugh. He heard her join him as he kidded, ‘Just see. Poor me. Even now I can’t hope for a little sympathy from you. You are such a bully.’

“Didn’t I promise I would haunt you? You can’t rid yourself of me now, do you think you honestly let go of me when I was alive?”

It hit him now. That voice in his head had become an unobtrusive, integral part of himself. Even while he believed he had successfully interred her memories with her, he had turned regularly to it. Just as they turned to each other when she was alive. Comfort, advice, encouragement, understanding, empathy, sympathy, love, joy, friendship, courage, frustration, doubts, agony and ecstasy, compromises and sacrifices, brutal honesty – it was all there, the stuff that makes any relationship exceptional and prodigiously worthwhile.

Mellowed by the fading light of dusk, the lake and its environs appeared ethereal. The burden of unventilated grief and unnecessary guilt had streaked away with cathartic tears. He felt healed and walked back to his car with a bounce in his aging heart. He knew she was forever with him, as she had promised.

Almost inaudibly he hummed “You’ll always be beautiful in my eyes...”

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