"Yer blues" - 1

I am Sampat.
I live the simple life, here in Pune.
I work at a boiler factory down in the industrial area. My bus picks me up from Kaltaakh Junction, 10 minutes from my place. I reside with my family, a wife and a 9 year old son, Prakash. He studies at the local government school right next door, while my wife works in the public library near the Municipality office.


I have a bike, which I bought last June. I like to take my family on rides on Sundays, sometimes to the district park, and at times even to the new restaurant that has opened downtown. While Prakash loves the park, he also likes doing his bit with the books, always in the top 3 of his class.
It is he who wakes me up every morning, as I drop him to school. That is not to say that he can't go on his own, but its more of an old tradition neither of us feels like parting with just yet.


My wife is the daughter of my father’s cousin. Apparently we were betrothed even when I was as old as my son is today. I first saw her a week before the wedding, during the last minute shopping trips that were thrust on me. She was in the next shop, along with her coterie, selecting bangles for the ‘sangeet’. While I was going through the motions of selecting a Sherwani, as my uncles and aunts ooh-ed and aah-ed, I couldn’t help but notice her voice commenting on every set that passed her discerning eyes. She disapproved, enamoured, and scolded, all with equal measure. I found her intense involvement in what seemed little more than a forced formality, to be rather unsettling.

Anyhow, I didn’t let that affect me, or I couldn’t, as soon my folks noticed my wandering attentions, and started the tirade of mind numbing, tease rhetoric. While some part of me wished for them all to just shut up and leave, part of the whole experience was rather enjoyable as well.

For instance, the budding romance between Kanika mausi and the mehndiwala was scandalous and fascinating at the same time. Though I only got my updates from in-the-air hearsay, I couldn’t help but play different simulation scenarios in my head, of what were to happen in case things went either of many ways between them.
Also, my fondness for my younger cousins had never faded, in part thanks to their regular visits to the home place. This meant that my last vacations as a bachelor went on nicely, as childhood memories kept flying back, as also did a slight chill, whenever the notion of approaching grown-up-ness repeated its dreary dance in front of my eyes.

Anyhow, the 23 year old Sampat was too caught up in fantasizing about realizing fantasies brewing over a decade. And with that hunger and thirst, I entered what has without doubt been the darkest phase of my life.

--

The weight of the 7 rounds around the sacred fire, along with a blinding faith in love, and the ideals of family living, kept the growing discontent under wraps for a good year and half.

Then, when the first signs of serious tension arose, we didn’t talk for a week. She had just completed her graduation via correspondence, and had asked not to be treated like an ‘invalid’ any further. I obviously took offence, not realizing the intricate complexities that come with an invisible power struggle, fuelled by what is no less than an eternity of social oppression.

That week ended with a rather frightful confrontation, wherein half the neighbourhood got to know our names better, along with the many colourful others we used to refer to each other, and our families. However, by the time we were done shouting, the heat of the moment caught us both unawares, and before we even realized anything, Prakash had been conceived, even as the dinner burnt on the stove.

Soon enough, we realized what had happened.

And we decided to come together in the love that our little light would bring to our lives. Both of us learnt to de-escalate situations before they reached precarious levels, and soon enough we reached a situation where we would alternate between moments of true joy, and phases of stoic silence.

During the days that led to the birth of our child, I knew I hadn’t felt this in love with my wife ever. And as luck would have it, I never did again.

Then, it happened. In our home there entered another soul, another star, another life, buoyant and bubbling with a radiance that neither of us had experienced before. It was simple awesome, the way we felt blessed, and united in his love. It was a wonderful time, when one couldn’t help but forget the trivial hassles of daily life, in a never ending veneration of life, in its purest form.

And sure enough, Prakash remains the source of light today as well. Be it his innocent questions on life and the world around him, or the simplicity resplendent in his nascent strains of logic; everything about him is a breath of fresh air, in a world fast getting darker and hazier by the day.
But things are still in unrest.
There is only so much that Prakash’s unknowing, unassuming shoulders can hold. For often enough there come times when all seems ill and bleak. My relations with my wife have never been this passive. For communication, all that we share is daily small talk, with little or no substance. In fact, over these last few weeks, even Prakash feels irked by the observed contrast in our conduct towards each other. Poor kid, how is one to explain to him the maze that we have all lost ourselves in.
To make matters even more entangled, his coming has all but rendered our existences devoid of any personal character. While that helps in some of the darker moments of self torment, through its potent potion of faith, love and giving, at others, that very fact leaves one gasping for breath.

Today, as I walk back home, I stare into my emptiness, and look for the many wonders that had graced my path all those years back. Where did I lose them?
Poor little Prakash has only added some much needed grace into an existence doomed to oblivion. But even that seems unable to inspire any form of hope, beyond what appears to be a path seemingly stitched to my existence, inescapably and inevitably so. It is now that I realize, more than the fights, the tensions, and the blues of it all, it is the helplessness that cuts deepest.

Even though those fleeting moments of light, pristine joy do come visiting every now and then, for instance when my son awakens me with his sweet, longing voice every morning; and when I listen to an artiste rendering a piece that touches the very fabric of my existence, I sense this growing sense of futility all around me.
Bhairavi, Yaman, Jaijaiwanti, why have you deserted me?
My playmates at my uncle, the renowned Dr. Satya Narayan Gokhale’s place, these, and other muses had courted me often in my early childhood. While I would always enjoy their company, the great post-independence-middle-class leanings and my own callousness meant my uncle saw me fade away in his mind map of a potential successor.

I had then flirted with painting as well, as a convenient means of arousing the interest of the opposite sex. Even in the midst of the in-my-face ulterior nature of my pursuit of the art, I would get these moments of surprisingly meaningful joy.

All of that, I had relinquished, out of my own free will no doubt, one fine afternoon, a week after I had heard the voice of my son’s mother for the first time. Why? I don’t quite have an answer to that. The rush of daily life, the highs of the flesh, the newness of working, and earning, growing money; money, to splurge, on the little pleasantries of life. How was I to notice the slowly tiring muses, persistent unrelentingly till then, fade away one by one? Why didn’t I ever slow down, and take a look at my slowly decaying self; lavishing in a life of mediocrity, making love to an acceptance of destiny, conceited reconciliation, and downright inertia.

I love my son, beyond what words can describe.
I have grown to accept my wife, for the sake of our son, if nothing else. The fact that we were never really meant to be one, seems to have been mutually accepted, in a screaming, maddening silence. Things have in fact improved marginally since this realization dawned. We now share a stunted form of love, more a mutual sense of pathos, at how we have come together in a cosmic tragedy, and how our sense of happiness has perhaps been impaired for life. For now at least, peace exists.
I have never forgiven myself for wasting away all the gifts I had got. Perhaps things would have been different had they stayed on; had I been more active in shaping our mutual existence, rather than waiting for milestones to come and go; had I hung on to the light that I had come with.

I can only hope for a better life for Prakash.

But for now, as I reach to ring the bell, and start another cycle of domestic life, this is all that comes to mind.

Prakash, I love you, and I always will.