Reflexively she reached towards her phone and dialled for Visal. Voicemail.
She panicked seeing the face above. A reflection on her ceiling fan.
With a jolt she realised, the reflection belonged to her.
Exhaustion and insomnia had begun to take a toll on her since months ago. She didn’t bother going to the parlour, keeping herself fit and doing the usual things that a woman do to make a man look at her.
Because she didn’t have one. Not anymore.
Her reflex betrayed her every morning. It was more ritualistic now. Dialing Visal’s number. Panicking. The slight wait until her brain registers reality. Curling up into a ball and whimpering to herself. Praying mostly.
She knew her heart would give up one day.
She prayed it be sooner.
Her days were normal and ritualistic too. It was easy to fool an outsider. Sometimes it was too easy to fool her family and friends too. Because they didn’t know who Visal was. No one did.
Only Visal knew Thushara. Only Thushara knew Visal.
They were best friends. In love.
Neither one revealed it to the other though.
At times she wish she did.
At times she wished it wasn’t a secret.
The thing about secretive relationships is, neither one would know when the other drops dead.
She didn’t either. She knew about his demise three whole months after it happened.
He promised he would call her after his examinations were done. And she did too.
A month passed. She called. Voicemail.
A month and day passed. Voicemail.
A month and a week.
Two months.
Voicemail. Voicemail. Voicemail.
If distance wasn’t an issue, she would have run to his house. But they were in different countries. Pursuing their individual dreams.
It was when she reactivated her Facebook she knew about his death.
Social media kept its promise to remind her of the important days in life.
She used to love her vacations. Visal took her to places in his bike. Random places. At the beach, they both would be happy just seeing the sun and waves and eating corn. Counting the number of fishes the men managed to catch. Playing with the waves. At the theatre, they would howl like mad men when their favourite stars came on screen. He taught her to drive. To swim. To cook. She told him her dreams, expecting him to forget. What surprised her was that he remembered every detail. She didn’t.
Not until he left a void in her universe.
And then she remembered details. The way his eyes lit up when he spoke about bikes. His masterpiece smug expressions. His never ending collection of sarcastic jokes that would make her stomach roll in laughter. The crease that forms on his left cheek when he smiles.
Time wasn’t a healer. Time made details look like HD movies.
She never cried for him. Because she believed depression would prevent her from carrying out her duties.
As a daughter. As a sister. As a Doctor.
Two years later, when her school mates called up a reunion, and they were all sitting around and joking about something they did years back, laughing and holding their stomachs, she stopped in mid-laugh and stared at the people around.
As if her laughter was sucked out of her and absorbed into a void left in her universe.
It was then she knew that she was depressed.
The realisation tore her apart.
Later it took a bottle of Smirnoff to drown her depression, before it drowned her.
.
A long tiring day later, just before she left the hospital to go back home, an emergency case came in and she was asked to operate on the patient.
A Biker. Who referred to himself as Duke. Someone who drove at 210 kmph every day since he got his licence, yet landed in the hospital because he drove at 30 kmph for the first time in his life and a tree fell on him.
Mother Nature and her Sarcasm.
He talked and flirted his way out of trouble. Told her more and more about bikes, about the different places he visited, the canals he dived into, the trees he climbed for honey, all with a familiar glitter in his eyes. He challenged her to find his real name without checking the medical records.
She realised she was falling for him.
And he did too. He made no show of making it a private affair though.
“I wish my mother was here to meet her” He told one day to the nurse next to him.
“Your mother will beg you to marry her then.” The nurse said, chuckling.
“That’s the whole point.” He said, laughing, flaunting his perfect white teeth.
Thushara blushed. A first one in a series of a long range of blushes yet to come.
.
“That’s a nice ring.” The nurse said.
“I know.” She said smiling.
“So, has ‘Duke’ told you his real name?”
She paused.
“Vishal.” She looked above and smiled at Someone. “Vishal Vishwanath.”
.
-The Violet Woman
Lilliput #6
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Picture Source: Google
Written By TVW
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