A Walking Grave

Winner – 9th Position

(Judges’ Choice)

All India Literature Competition 2019-20

by The Creative Post

— by Alankrita Malviya

–Reading Time – 14 min Approx

 

He and I were neighbors for the last 21 years, but unlike the clichéd plots, we never played together or pushed swings of each other in the playground. Every Sunday, at around 8 PM, my father in annoyance would shut the windows and seal each nook and corner from where the smell of even a morsel of ‘mutton’ could wave in. Yes! He was a Muslim and I, a Brahmin Hindu. Is it a scientific phenomenon that we get attracted to what we cannot get?

I belonged to a staunch Brahmin household where onions and garlic were not only out of our kitchen but our taste too. Embellished and draped in morals and values, I was raised and designed in a disciplined and strict environment and was educated in a syllabus which composed of guidelines given by Pitaji, “Stay away from boys, don’t you dare to have the audacity to indulge in love-affairs and nonsense. Complete your studies and we’ll marry you off”. But I, on the contrary chose to find all my senses in love. My marriage was their slogan and sole reason of their lives. More than me, they had right over my choices. Apparently my life seemed sophisticated but I was suffocated. Air had to pass through my parents’ sieve to enter into my nostrils. Their letting me not to choose anything for me was not letting me liberate and live the way I wanted.

I had become a tragedy. In misery, I felt home. God had written a bad script for my life but in one line he (god) mentioned ‘him’ i.e my swain. He was bright as a chandelier in the dim light of my lonely nights. Some things in life are important, but he was fundamental to me, he was my basic necessity. In the drought of emotions back at home, he was an ocean of care, affection and solace outside the boundaries of my house. I want to say, I write but then I erase as these praises have become otiose.

He is no more. Life has never been fair to me, but I think I have become used to of it. I labored for love at my home, did not get it there, I searched it outside, I got but it was barely momentary. Actually not momentary, I had so much of him in my heart, all my life. He was the only constant that led me not to become a variable. There are certain relationships which are deeper than the body, his and mine was one, a profound one. I was alive and fit to live only on a commitment that he would marry me. He went out for his further education to Aligarh and then admitted himself in the Indian Army. Here back at home, in Lucknow, my parents started searching with a flambeau in their hands, a well-suited educated groom for their only daughter. Rules of army being very strict, we could seldom talk to each other. I could not see him for a stretch of 6-8 months and the time in between was nothing but a pathway to pain. It was a long time and longer than it seemed. Whenever I asked him (on call or text), “don’t you wish to get married to a person you loved for so many years”, he replied each time, “I am in no hurry, I have nowhere else to go, you are my all and everywhere”.

In this world where liquid love exist i.e love without a stable bond of intimacy, having a man of worthy words and conviction is a power. It was satisfying, but what was not, was my urge to love him and get loved by him. He was way too decent to ever have asked me or tried to touch or unlace my physical embroidery. But I knew that his strong silent extended exterior wanted to undo a lot what was donned.

My Parents have found me a groom by now and wanted me to just nod on their decision. Although my yes and no wouldn’t have made any difference but I still was a rebellious child. I obviously did not approve of their choice and finally unapologetically made them aware of my love affair. “Love, I told you to not indulge in all of this. Graceless! What do you want to gift us, death? And moreover he is a Muslim. What has happened to you?” expected remarks of my father. They had fixed my life with a man I did not want to live with and with a great bargaining of a little less dowry, of course! As I was white, beautiful, educated and virgin too. I had nothing in hand but to call him and introduce him to this urgent situation. My love did not think twice to come to me and situate himself in a religion based chaos at my home, in Lucknow. The whole Hindu-Muslim drama, accusations and allegations were made, from character assassination to allegation of black magic, nothing silly and uncivil was left to be done. Nobody addressed that we two were educated major who wanted to spend their lives together. I think it’s high time that Religion should become reasonable and rational. By the grace of God and circumstances, I was not shot dead and we both were alive to get married. We married in a Temple with Hindu rites and rituals, but without my and his family. Abandoned and emotionally orphaned two adults were starting their lives without the blessings of their parents, were conditioned to crave for their people.

But the good thing was that we were married, and there was the night we both wanted to cherish. Less with language and more with feelings, we were succumbed and brushed the artificial line of distance which existed. He was darker than the colour of night, I was white as the half moon shine, he added in me and completed me, repaired me and healed me. I, who was a walking carcass for the last twenty one years, had now begun to exist each inch on every distinct motion. He was acoustic when the whole world was electric, peaceful and satisfying, so original, so natural yet his being was so unnatural to the banality of life. A fresh splash of water on my face each time, and, I sunk each time with each droplet a little more in him, so deep therefore reached that now I was lost. He marked his territory all over my body, some locations I knew, some he discovered in me. My all pieces were at peace.

It was 7 O’clock in the morning, I remember correctly, the vermillion on my head was a little on his chest, saree was half undone and my wild lion was sleeping after the long parade. A phone call I received on the landline and this is why I would always say ‘storms and tornados do not ask for permission’. An urgent call from the army and it was the time to contribute at the Borderline. Pakistani Fauj was attacking India touching the Kashmir border. He wrapped his necessities and with a tensed look at his face, kissed my forehead. I did not know that it was for the last time I could see him alive. Before I could realize the seriousness of the matter he had already dispersed. I had faith and belief that he would come back. But he ( god ) failed me. My warlike ranger fought strong at the border. The body which was draped in love, compassion and loyalty, a night before was wrapped in tricolor the next day. A day before he had served his wife and a day later he served his motherland. We both had crossed borders for each other, from borders of religion to border of duty.

My exterior might not be crying but my heart was crying rivers inside. Ten years later when I am writing this, I have a son who is flesh and blood of me and ‘him’. Half of me is ‘I’ and half of me is ‘you’, the latter half is living but the former was dead quite ago. In my young days when I was living with my parents, I had the satisfaction of ‘us’ being under the same sky. Time has changed, now I am living with my son and satisfied that atleast his father and I share the same soil, difference is that, he is buried in the grave, beneath the soil; I am above the soil, a walking grave. I am done and dusted.

— by Alankrita Malviya