“Goodbye to all that”

Of things we keep, of those we let go.

Goodbye to all That

Women are better at moving ahead than men, Mridula assures herself as she holds herself in an embrace. Men have moved inside her like she has shifted rentals. She lives in one. But a rental is not a home. It’s a temporary arrangement. And she knows that life itself is temporary. Here at one moment, gone in the next. She doesn’t seek permanence and has seen life run endlessly in loops and so she has never set down an anchor. She somewhat did that once. Quietly marrying a boy with just four friends to witness the event at a time when the two of them didn’t have an inkling about what it entailed.

Mridula chose Parth without much deliberation. It was an instinctual thing. He looked good, packed a suitcase well, he was quiet and not self-obsessed. At that point she wanted nothing else. Besides, she knew that Parth’s fair, luminescent skin and peaceful demeanor would grate on her mother’s nerves. Her mother’s world didn’t have many choices. Her dark husband, closeted poet, an average-looking man with a bank job and a ready smile didn’t suit her well. She acquiesced to him as she had done with many things in her life. Her daughter, however, was hers to do with as she pleased, her own product, her own creation. Mridula has lived silently against this disproportionate hold on her and among the many things that her own life has given her, an openness of choice was the best. It would never last, her mother had said, and Mridula thought she would stick to it just to prove her mother wrong.

Marriage didn’t shatter Mridula and Parth like the people around her. It settled on their skin like fine dust, silently, without much fuss. They were young, knew each other better than most and weren’t wary of each other like her parents were for instance, there was no strategy, no game plan, just life lapping on their shore peacefully. When content becomes a habit, we tend to mutiny. Both did that in their own ways. She suddenly retreated into writing one day when the world stopped madly flying around and lulled into curious slowness. She found it interesting when she discovered that the boy who laughed at sitcoms alongside her and clicked her when she slept or looked particularly funny, was also chatting with another girl who reminded him of the way Mridula used to be. It unsettled her a little, but she kept the door open for him to leave, reminding herself of the impermanence she knew of life. He stayed nonetheless for the sense of permanence she provided. She felt curiously free that day. Freed of him, free in herself.

Five years later, when life looked like a still pond at sunset, Mridula took a stick and unsettled its waters again. She watched the small eddies and whirlpools swirl, dead leaves, mud, small insects dance in its inertia. She cast a bit of her caution off, she was older, timidity had forsaken her somewhat, she had settled in that marriage again. We create our own chaos to live well, live rich, live meaningfully and she was not afraid of it. Sirish stormed inside her life when she was peculiarly lonely one evening without knowing it and drugged her with a madness that can only be birthed in love. He felt oddly familiar, tall, had a way with words, brown skin a shade darker than hers, she found his words delicious. Although she wasn’t sure of what she had with him—love or passion. One day, the two coalesced at one point.

I want warm white walls with green highlights, a sage green, Mridula chirped as she lay beside Sirish one morning inside an Air BNB they rented for the weekend. She turned to him with a curious tenderness thinking of how he had habitually lowered his neck to get inside the flat. She had opened all windows, went outside to the roomy balcony, letting her desire simmer on a low flame, while he walked in her vicinity, his hungry eyes unmistakable, the house help smiling and apologetic. No place on earth is kind to love after marriage but they didn’t want their sedimented need to fall through the cracks of their well-veneered life. So, they arranged for momentary suspensions of time.

Why sage green? he asked, smiling. Because it’s soothing, see how the light creates pretty patterns close to the window. I want this, she looked at him and smiled. He looked at her jubilant, partaking the dream hungrily. Yes, give me a home. I have lived in a rental far too long. We will take our time, and we will build it slowly. She felt suddenly untangled inside that light-filled rental. She wanted to set down anchor as she nudged close to his able arm, smiles draping her being.

Sirish mailed her a week later, on an unusually hot March Sunday. His partner had unearthed his depth of feelings for her and was surprised by its intensity. His phone was a casualty in a war of words. He sought balance in a place it couldn’t be had. He didn’t know that yet. He wanted time. Would she stick with him? Mridula was chopping, and she tried to wash the sticky sap of the jackfruit from her hands before it stained her dress. She rubbed her hand and the luminous silver ring that shone on her ring finger. Her marriage never had a ring. Why did she exchange a ring with Sirish? Too soon, she thought holding the sink, too soon. She wished she had just a few more days of that vivid spring. Looking at the ring and the sparkling stone, she let out a cleansing laughter. 

Mridula thought of the boy she willfully made a stranger at home, Parth who stayed back, who watched her want a life with someone else and lived on rented time. Did he feel so wracked in pain and guilt when he chose me, she wondered. Her withered heart was deeply affectionate for him, but it just could not summon love anymore. She took a deep breath and calmed herself. Everything will be fine, don’t worry, she crooned to Sirish on the other side of the phone, who needed her to be strong, who wanted a patient ear, who could use a friend just about now, and she knew exactly what to say in a dead voice, this will bring the two of you closer, these things always do. He agreed blankly and it made her clench. He needed to keep his home safe, while she opened her rental to the elements.

Sirish’s simple desire was oddly familiar. Mridul blinked rapidly and swallowed. The day would wane soon. She walked to her terrace and sat on the hot floor and found the heat unusually comforting. She sent him a mail thinking she would do better without his voice for some time. An unfamiliar tyranny raged inside her. Toying with the ring on her fingers, she looked at the pink skies and stretched her legs on the hot floor. She got up and filled buckets of water and began splashing them all around indiscriminately. She was satisfied after some time. Every corner was drenched. Heat wafted with a semblance of petrichor, and it reminded her of Sirish’s skin, a mixture of various barks and she closed her eyes.

A week of emails went by. Each day settled into ordinariness. Mridula didn’t imagine Sirish’s coming any time soon. She picked up her phone but was filled with a curious lassitude. She opened the link that led her to that rental alongside him just a while back. She scrolled through the images of the now familiar rooms and booked a stay for the weekend. She quietly packed a small bag and left Parth, who was now so used to her silence that he didn’t say much. Will you come back? he asked. She nodded an agreement and sat inside the uber. She rested in movement.

Once inside the flat, she set her security password. No cleaners this time. She was on time, not early. She looked around and touched the furniture. It didn’t have dust yet. She opened the window, and hot air came in. She stepped outside onto the balcony and that pipe hose, by which they had kissed in abandon the last time, was in tangles. She took it, sat on the floor and untangled it, folded it in concentric circles and hung it back on the tap. Once inside, she walked to the open kitchen, her hand moving along the black granite counter and smiled when she saw the dish washing liquid bottle. They had got that bottle a month and a half back.

Hoisting herself on the kitchen shelf, she stared at the green living room wall that they thought would look good with artwork. She then dragged the four-seater dining table next to the television and the plug point, plugged in her laptop and left it open. The bed sheet in the bedroom was the same pink and green geometry. She had seen three of them inside the closet the last time. The curtains were drawn, she switched on the air conditioning unit and hugged a pillow to sleep. Later at night, she brewed two cups of tea and ordered croissants and brownies and warmed them in the microwave. The television was on. A Malayalam movie was playing, and the language felt warm in her ears. She went to bed with the television garbling softly and switched on the torch in her mobile phone and pointed it at the roof. She stared at that patch of light till her eyes itched, and she dozed off.

After her return, Mridula opens the door to her house like an imposter. She makes Parth some tea and he smiles at her in silent relief. She presses his shoulder firmly and sends Sirish an email informing him of her return. Men in love like their women close, wherever that is. Mridula walks to a drawer and takes out two tiled blue and white coasters in the pattern of the sun and the macrame hanger she bought recently in shades of white, yellow and green. She touches them with loving fingers. They are happy memories. She puts them inside a packet, flattens them with her hand and locks the drawer. Mridula squares her shoulders. She will never see them again. Neither will those sage green walls come alive with books, Cohen and Joel posters, their awards and certificates, white curtains will not billow in the morning breeze, plants will not ruffle in balconies and ginger teas will remain unbrewed.

Inshirah: The Mind Unveiled, vol 1. Issue 1, pp 78-83, April 2025