Short Fiction

It wasn't a premonition.
I knew for sure that she would do that, but wasn't sure where, when, at what fatalist hour etc.
The rouge in her lips had disappeared long time ago; she wasn't wearing my favorite chinos any longer.
Unconsciously I would have surely noticed these changes and was getting prepared.
I wasn't looking at her face when she ordered a cold coffee for her and a coke for me.
Rather I kept looking at the pink tissue kept on the table to avoid her glassy gaze.

"Let's part ways." She said.

As if waiting for this moment a bead of tear slowly darted its course from my eyes towards the pink towel and made it all ruddy for a second.
I couldn't say anything. Even if I wanted to, I didn't have anything to say.
The echo of her words—let's part ways—kept ringing in my ears and made me flush.
This was the worst moment in my life; from tomorrow I am alone.
Nobody will share the carton of juice that I drink in the mornings.
I will be free to do whatever I want; there will be no more routine walks with her in the evenings.

Why can't I say no?
Why am I not protesting or throwing the coke can on her face?
Why do I feel as if I am pushed to a corner where the only expression that I can muster up is exasperation, writ large on my face?
Why am I not reveling in the fact that from tomorrow she wouldn’t boss me around or that I can get back home whenever I want after a night of intense male bonding?

Basheer had talked about the paradoxical situation of the new freedom of a lover, especially after a breakup, in his novel Mathilukal.
In the novel the hero is imprisoned due to his involvement in the freedom movement. There he develops a relationship with a woman in the adjoining woman’s jail.
Although they cannot see each other, they talk and find infinite solace in each other’s voice.
When the time came for the release from the prison due to India’s independence—everybody waited for this moment to escape from the tortuous conditions—the hero asks in a state of shock—

“Why should I be free…who wants freedom?”—unable to accept his and the country’s new found freedom after almost 200 years of British rule.

My situation wasn’t far different from that of Basheer’s. I wanted to be bossed around. I wanted to find freedom by surrendering to her.
But she might have found my unconditional surrender a sign of my weakness; an inability to live up to ideal masculine expectations.
I was in a deadlock; I had to either surrender my masculinity or play it out with full affront. Either way this was going to be a disaster.
I threw away my coke can out of the window, and finding solace in my new found freedom, walked back to my room.
For, I knew that by keeping away from me she is letting me cling to her with my dear life. For ever.

James Michael