Homecoming (VIII)

He wanted to get on with “tomorrow” as normally as he could. And almost succeeded.

The children had left before he woke up, and wife was getting ready for the rest of the day. She came down to wake him up, while he played possum. He never really had any breakfast, so that bit never crossed his mind. A quick summary of how a day at office is, and what he could expect out of it today, and he was already buttoned up. And there it was. Today. Was it supposed to be anything but normal? A careless face contorted into a carefully manipulated smile, and then into an anxiously embarrassed one. He stopped over at the kitchen.

“I am leaving. Will try to come back early.” He broke the routine with that.

“It is time you left. Half the lunch is ready”, she said, smiling, and distracted. At this hour of the day, kitchen was of greater importance to her than a husband

“I said I am leaving. Will try to come back early.” He was already growing impatient.

“Do you not leave every day, at around this time? I think you are late.” She carelessly mumbled, sifting through the basket for yet another thing worth more than a husband. “Are you already hungry? Regardless, the food is not yet prepared”, a tantalizing, extremely mild taunt was the retort.

He tried not to behave differently. While he inadvertently expressed his fidgety self when leaving the house, he made it a point not to mess up with his God-counting exercise, being particularly careful while monitoring its accuracy with reference to stations. On other days, the director’s office would not have held any greater significance to him than a toilet he had to clean, but today it was distracting him. Nobody asked him about what had transpired the other day, but all greeted him expectantly. He was not lost, though, and patiently saw off the silent questions, reciprocating with a smile that was laden with awareness of what he could afford to surmise. The day wore on without being eventful.

He came back early as he had promised. No one seemed to notice this aberration, though, suggesting to him that Saturday was long gone. For someone of their ilk, such days are meant to be celebrated and cherished, but not expected to turn real, he thought. For his family, it might have been just another, novel way of making up for that night on his part. From where he could see, life was falling to back to cleaning toilets, or at best, mopping the stage; where he wanted it to go was questionable. They had their dinner.

“I did not hear anything from the team today. I hovered around his office, nodded to him as an acknowledgement of his presence – and he nodded back as well. But no word.” One could have confused his muttering to a somniloquy, had it not been for the wife’s reply.

“Did you not like the food? The children really wanted some fish, so I got it from the market. Personally, I think rice and curd and potatoes and pulses and chapattis was getting really boring,” she said. “Besides, I will need some money to get the ration. There is no sugar for your morning tea. We are also running short of kerosene, in case the gas supply gets delayed. The children were asking for new lunch boxes as well. I have somehow dissuaded them on that, but it would be good if you could get some new utensils. I am tired of scraping those old grimy ones.”

These words were said in utmost disregard to the gravity of his statements. She was, on her part, being a dutiful housewife. He looked back at her in disbelief. What stoked his ire was not only the way she discounted his concern, but the reply in itself. But he was a patient man.

“Remember what I told you the other day. Ok, I did not exactly tell it, but the director spoke to me regarding an opportunity on stage – a big one. Saturday was about that. I was waiting for a call before I got home, which of course was the reason why I was late. I thought that when I spoke about the theater, everyone was as excited as I was. Turns out that you think of the ever thinning ration supply to be more important that your husband settling down, which, by the way, is absolutely fine with me. But can I not expect my wife to at least listen out what her exhausted husband has to talk about, at the end of the day? At least pay some regard to the struggles or the anxiety that he is going through? I do not expect a solution from you, no, but at least a nod in approval?” There was a definite element of tiredness in the way he spoke, and at some points, a resigned feeling to the larger scheme of things. Was he beginning to open up?

“I am sorry, I should have listened to you, but I am just not used to goodbye mornings and candid evenings. Having known you as little as I do, I thought you would not be flustered by once in a while events, those routine blips in an otherwise steady pulse that your life has become. I know that you are passionate about certain things, but in your own way.” She was gentle in her reply, apologetic to the extent of actually sympathizing with him.

“Perhaps you are right.”

She quickly fell asleep; he was a little restless.

It was that constant blip that had kept him going for so long. The mere existence of such anomaly was like a reassuring joy bursting out of an unadventurous life, something that lent credence to the experience that his life was. This was not the first time that he was feeling so – this was a cyclical thing for him, something that took him back to re-prioritizing the order of things in his life. Appearing like a mirage, a hallucination, that beckons hope in a dreary plight, they kept him wandering, searching for himself. And when he finally reached out to grasp them, they burst, without any warning. Picking up stardust was so much more difficult than concocting the galaxies.

He sat down with a piece of paper in a bid to justify himself.