The Alternate Love Story Of An Old Man. (Part I)

The biggest and only regret in Hariprasad's life was that he did not marry when he was a portly fellow laboriously climbing the ladder of the thirties. But, in his late seventies now, he took care of it.

Cobwebs clung like shriveled skin to the sides of the wall . Like the sudden twiggy cracks that appear on an ice cube when dowsed with water, the walls were an expanse of spidery strands that yawned here and there.The ceiling was slapped with a hurried paste of congealed blue to cover up the soft bruises of dampness.  The walls were haggard and wrinkled ,painted with the crude washy blue of oil pastels. The wall was corrugated, so it seemed that the harassed pastel was crushed with an ugly fat palm, all over the place, leaving clumps, creases and the putty colored bricks jutting here and there. Feather weight, uncolored dust pirouetted in the apartment to settle down to greasy thick clods on the corners, sticking to chair legs and cloaking that one,solitary, forgotten showpiece on the desk. Weeds of soot dangled and fluttered from the ancient fan, as it creaked  and groaned and squealed, trying to blow a tiny tempest of air to the man on the chair beneath it. Hariprasad Sharma.

The chair overlooked the window. A threadbare holey shawl was slung over it, in the faintest and failing mimicry of decoration. There was nothing spectacular about the view.Clusters of tired buildings, hunched and huddled with age. The rain had washed over the original paint, the sun hammered an unrelenting soprano on them, leaving them looking bedraggled and pale. You could see staircases with rusty banisters and stairs speckled with red spit and desolate toffee wrappers.Clothes hung on wash lines, multicolored pegs keeping them in place, as the wind ran long, seductive fingers through the damp,limp fabrics. Delicate's peeked over the grills. Tiny alleys and roads, where rickshaws wheeled by carrying the tittering teenagers and the sedate mothers. Coils of rubber wires lay on the roofs, dish tv setups looked like alien wings fanning from the terraces. Plant pots stood bored on the porches- terracotta tubs filled to the brim with the sluggish brown rain water and  singular stalks of neem growing from the bog. Thin, yellow children in thin cotton clothes, pudgy harried mothers in worn-out saris, men with bristly mustaches and cellphones in pouches stuck to their belts, Maruti 800's and scooters in garages. Fuzzy shrubs here and there. Little nests of hibiscus on straggly hedges.  Overflowing garbage of gaudy plastics and pungent wastes. Rag-pickers. Mongrels with skinny, droopy tails.A common man's street-view from a common man's room. 

He sat on the chair, a little slouched, his feet outstretched and the wet towel still slung on his neck. The 7o clock river of sunlight made gentle forays into his room, the creamy yellow tumbled from the soulful blue sky and splashed softly on the streets, and on the tree next to her apartment. An old old tree with a gorgeous plumage of green, whose leaves shone like it was pickled in mustard oil and sprinkles of fat fresh white flowers sitting jauntily in it, resembling succulent juicy spices. He sat with his morning paper, the one he picked up everyday at 6, left hand pressed against his arthritis-riddled back as he stooped to fish it out from the doormat. A quick warm bath later, he would sit down with it, in his chair placed right in front of the window, his bifocal-ed eyes slowly reading through the tiny prints. He was a neat man, his clothes were old but clean, the shirt pressed to a sharp crease near his shoulder blades,his somber brown pants flapping and flopping at the straight lines that the iron had stressed along its length. His hair was sparse, grey strands slick with jaborand oil and separated from each other, the same distance as the teeth of the green comb he used to run through it. Every now and then, he would pick up the paper to swat at a fly that would buzz noisily around him-he hated flies and that monotonous  irritating way they tattooed an itchy hum right next to his ears.

He knew she woke up at 8. He could see the curtains being parted, the puritan blinds in white. The quick glimpse of her face, washed with sleep, eyes caked with grease- sagging cheeks making pouches. That old nightie with a bib of pink. He got up from his chair slowly, knowing that she would go for her ablutions now- across the terrace lay her bath. A tiny room she lived in, right opposite his window- a rectangle, with tinier rectangles slashed for windows and a huge terrace.The terrace was not stone colored, but shod in what seemed like molded furry velvet with slimy spawns of moss swimming haphazardly. In the corner, there stood a marble slab where she had kept a tulsi plant and a pair of conch shells. A broken chair stood woebegone on the sides.

He lifted himself up, placing the newspaper on the table next to the chair and tried straightening his wizened frame. To the tiny kitchen across the room, he shuffled- slow steps; the slippers  smacking weakly on the stone floor. He knew it took her twenty minutes to take her bath and make her tea,and he knew it took him twenty minutes to make his. An elaborate affair, he had made it. Bring down the kettle with its rings of pale steel on the inside. Boil the water, drop the tea leaves and watch it stain the liquid with its iron tint. Look at his watch and wait for its pointed hands to circle for exactly 10 mins. One spoon of sugar-wait another five. Agitated bubbles simmering to the surface-angry transparent blisters sprouting, while the tea leaves swam serenely in circles at the bottom. Pull out his cup from the hook;he loved the cup-a black porcelain coffee bug inscribed with his name-a gift from his office mates when he retired.  Marie biscuits piled on plate( just two), he would pour the black tea into his mug and carry it back to his chair. And wait. 

And sure enough, she would sit by her own window,- her face fresh, her hair freshly braided to a tiny rat's tail end, her eyes staring vacantly out of the window, the cup of tea perched on the windowsill. 

And then she would take a sip, old woman's finger's clasping the enamel handle of her cup and bringing it to her lips. Her hair frizzing at the sides, her eyes magnified by her glasses, a flat chain of gold on her neck. A red loose cotton blouse. And lips closed over a toothless mouth, shriveled skin that gathered around it. And she took a sip. So did he.

It had been 2 years, and Hariprasad never missed one tea-date with his wife whose name he did not know and whom he never married.