On a Hot Summer Night by Uditendu Dutt-Mazumdar (free e novels txt) 📕

ON A SUMMER NIGHT
(inspired and edited by Mayukhi )

A loud drunken brawl on the street below jolted her out of an uneasy slumber. Cursing, she turned over, pulling a pillow over her ears. A useless gesture. The sounds of discord refused to be ignored.
She tried to focus her mind elsewhere, zeroing in on the clacketty clack of the ancient ceiling fan. The incessant rythmic protests of battered bearings and worn bushes filled her consciousness, dominating the night. Mistake ! The fight would eventually stop, but the fan wouldn`t.
Like everything else in her life this, too, was inescapable. The saving grace was that the fan gave a semblance of relief from the sweltering heat of the hideous summer night. Rivulets of sweat trickled from her limp body onto the bedclothes. Abruptly, she swung out of bed. A housewife cursed with ceaseless idleness and boredom craves excitement in any form - even a street brawl.
Grunting in his sleep her husband patted her hand in a restraining gesture. He was feeling disturbed. But the remnants of sleep had ebbed away like water from a sieve, and as she moved towards the window he mumbled drily, “Why don’t you join in ? Tell me all about it in the morning…”
Ignoring the jibe she lifted the shade. Shafts of light sliced through the darkness, partially illuminating the bed. She glanced back at her husband; spread-eagled grotesquely on the bed, snoring again - dead to the world - eyes half-open, mouth gaping wide. An involuntary shudder of disgust wracked her frame as she turned away. So much for marrying a man twenty five years her senior in the face of vehement parental opposition.
Swept off her feet by his flamboyance and erudition, she`d ignored the hints of the cantankerous, sardonic man concealed beneath. What a naïve blind fool she had been! Visualising herself as the idealistic heroine taking on the world for true love, she had ignored all appeals and reasonings of parents and friends. She was appalled, in retrospect, at the lengths she had gone, the depths to which she had stooped, to have her way. Going about the house with a tear-streaked face, pretending to faint at crucial moments, and even threatening self-destruction !
Her mother, perhaps instinctively knowing better, had remained unrelenting in her opposition, never once giving in to her tantrums, maintaining a stony silence, ignoring her histrionics.
She shut her eyes, trying to blank out the images, unable to take the weight of heart-wrenching repentance as she recalled how, in those months, she had ruined her mother’s health. Diabetic, hypertensive but delightfully rotund, she looked wasted and waxen by the time her daughter eventually left home. Gone were her ready pealing laugh, and the twinkle in her eyes, leaving them dull and lifeless. She had destroyed her mother’s will to live, sapping her enthusiasm and vitality - turning her into a zombie, glued to the rocking chair in the living room, staring unseeingly at the TV screen.
In a final gesture of arrogant rejection she had worn her crimson saree, flaunting her soon-to-be-married status, and flounced out with her suitcase.
The last glimpse of her past, as she involuntarily turned for a final look, had remained indelibly etched in her memory, the pain now palpable. A devastated couple, helpless, lonely, in the twilight of their lives. The mother in her rocking chair, dull eyes tired of weeping, anguish in every drooping line of her tired body. The father, uncomprehending, ashamed to weep but not strong enough to hold back the tears which flowed unbidden down his furrowed cheeks and glistened on his beard, hands resting on his wife`s shoulders in a gesture of solidarity. Giving and seeking support.
What was it she had seen in those eyes in that final moment of parting ? A kaliedoscope of emotions. Resignation, sorrow, incredulity, pity and, perhaps, a trace of contempt ? Contempt at a beloved daughter`s treachery ?
Suppressing the first twinges of guilt, uncertainty - but too far gone to retrace her steps - she had rushed down the stairs into the waiting taxi.
She had never ceased to ask herself why, if she was unable to face the look in her parents` eyes, did she not question herself one last time?
She often visualized her mother`s I-always-said-so look as she cringed inwardly at her suicidal folly. After the initial euphoria of a runaway marriage she began noticing the darker sides of her husband. Waves of shock and revulsion would sweep through her at his pernicious mood-swings, vile temper and calculated acts of petty cruelty. Could this be the same man who had set her heart aflutter as he delivered impressive lectures, poised stylishly on the dias, making witty observations from time to time, sending the class into peals of delighted laughter ? The intellectual beau !
How had he metamorphosed into the scowling potbellied man in short pyjamas, strutting about the house rubbing his bare hairy chest ? She loathed his habit of wearing a lungi to bed, or the sight of the damp malodorous towel on his shoulders as he went about his morning ablutions.
Nowadays he seldom spoke to her. During those days he`d contrived to be wherever she was. He couldn`t have enough of her company. Perhaps students deserve more respect and attention than wives !
She detested his jokes, invariably at her expense, whenever they had company. He revelled in making her feel and look small in front of others. Adding insult to injury, he had made it a habit to supervise her every move, every word which passed her lips, how she wore her saree, managed the servants. During the first few months she had been too awestruck with her professor-husband to contradict him in anyway. He was the great and glorious `Sir`, the most popular professor in the university, every girl’s heart-throb.
Her steps faltered whenever she came across him in the corridor. She`d never stopped to wonder how he came to be there so often ! Her hands trembled whenever he stood beside her desk during invigilation. His smile of acknowledgement lighted up her world.
Her heart grew wings and soared out of her mouth, the day he held her arms in an empty classroom and asked her to become his wife. What could she say? Could she even speak coherently? She was a confused mass of high strung emotions, overcome by fear, excitement, guilt, uncertainty and a sense of urgency. Naïve fool that she was, she had mistaken infatuation for love. The outcome of devouring innumerable Mills & Boone novels and soppy love poems. She had taken leave of her senses for a while, floating on cloud nine, gloating over her catch.
His expert whirlwind romancing didn`t allow time for thought. Caught in an avalanche of lust, which she mistook for love, she rushed headlong into the arms of a man old enough to be her father. She had just stepped into her eighteenth year.
But the man she`d loved didn`t last long after the first few months of marriage. She never knew when the clock struck midnight ………… and the coach turned back into a pumpkin ! Reality was the foul-mouthed middle-aged monster, snoring stertorously, mouth contorting horribly as he swallowed the coagulated spittle obstructing his breathing.
Barely suppressing a sigh of self-reproach and disgust she looked away, strangely agitated.
Unseeingly thumbing the pages of unread magazines, flicking through TV channels from dawn to dusk, the numbing ennui of a meaningless existence as a childless housewife had become increasingly unbearable. In the prime of life, trapped in a failed marriage, nowhere to go back to. She yearned for her parents and the solid security of their love, the simple beauty of the ideals they lived by - things she had always taken for granted. But she had burnt her bridges too well.
The pinched, unhappy look on her husband`s face as he dutifully handed over her monthly allowances never failed to mortify.
The lean taut-muscled look which had so enamoured her once upon a time had quickly gone to seed. She writhed with silent revulsion at this flabby, hairy creature`s laboured attempts at love-making, her stomach churning with the reek of sweat and nicotine. She barely managed not to throw up.
Tears of hopeless revulsion and grief mingled with the water as she locked herself in the bath after each loathsome encounter, trying to wash away the foulness of his sweat, and the degradation of having been lovelessly used.
The crowd below had begun to disperse, the protagonists separated and homeward bound. One of them, passing below her window, continued to spew venomous abuses sotto voce as he went his unsteady way. She continued to stare out of the window long after everyone had disappeared, weighed down by her brooding thoughts.
The neighborhood had relapsed into sepulchral silence, wearing the desolate look of a Nazi-ravaged Jewish settlement. The sudden realization jarred her senses that it was an accurate reflection of her own state of mind. She was living in a nightmare from which there was no awakening. She was trapped; there was no escape, no reprieve.
Her breathing had become fast and shallow. Her chest heaved as the labouring lungs ran short of oxygen. She felt she was slowly suffocating, but a small voice from somewhere inside her kept saying she actually wasn`t. It was all in the mind. Just like the deafening clatter of the fan which had drowned out everything else..
But the realisation didn`t help. She was finding it difficult to breathe …. something was blocking her windpipe. She`d choke unless it was let out! She looked around frantically for something that might help her to break out of the enveloping claustrophobia and let her breathe.
Clutching at her throat she lurched towards the bathroom, wheezing. There it was ….. reflecting the rays of the streetlight through the open window, radiant ….. . Time was running out. Almost doubled up, trying to suck air into starving lungs, she lunged at the gleaming stainless steel handle !
********
Her husband stumbled over her as he entered the bathroom in the morning. Head haloed in a pool of red, bloodied razor in an outstretched hand. But on her lips a smile of peace, contentment. She looked strangely younger than she had in years !
The End.

Publication Date: 07-04-2010

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