She finally told me-(an excerpt)

The winter sun slanted down on our table, near the black pillar in the veranda of Triveni gallery. In summer we sat inside at our usual summer table, on low stools with embroidered cushions, but in winter we would wait for the veranda tables no matter how long it took. Below the veranda, in the open area that sometimes served as a stage, beyond the straggling green plants and the flowers in the brown pots, there was some sort of sale- cum- exhibition going on. People were walking around buying leather bags, kurtas, handmade paper. 

     “Aloo parathas and raita,” I told Kishen, the usual veranda waiter.

     “Raita finish.” He did not look up, wiping the table needlessly in quick wide arcs.

     “Make it kababs then.”

     “The same,’ said Mina,” and water without ice.”

I watched her face and waited. I knew from the way she was looking beyond my head and the way her lips were pursed that she was lost in thought. The brown mole near her right eye, to which she used to match her brown lipstick, was twitching as it did when she was tense. I knew she wanted to say something. But this was not going to be just a fight. A fight could happen anywhere, in the bedroom or the kitchen or while walking around the house, closing windows, banging doors, straightening books on the shelves or the newspapers on the floor. It could go on in the car, pausing at red lights so that people in the next car did not hear the mutual bitching. A fight didn’t mean that things were changing, it only meant that we were not happy with the way things were and that wasn’t something unusual. Most people I know are probably unhappy with the way things are. So life usually went on as we fought.

Mina took off her bangles and her rings. Then she put back her rings on her third finger, the diamond-studded wedding band and the ruby that she thought was lucky for her. For a while she flexed the finger, vigorously polishing the diamonds with her thumb. She opened her bag and put in her bangles and snapped the bag shut. For a moment I thought she was going to burst into tears.

    “I know that you are going to be hurt by this and…. and I know that you will never   forgive   me.”

     “What’s the matter?” I asked, almost in jest.” You are not going to leave me?”

    “I think so. I ‘ve been thinking about it for a long time. But now I feel things have really reached that point. I have to do something about it.”

     “Do we have to talk about this here?”

She didn’t say anything. The aloo parathas, the kababs and the water without ice came. Kishen set down the plates, then the knives and forks wrapped up in paper napkins. We are in silence and confusion. People ate and left, table by table. Kishen hovered around us, picked up the plates and brought the milky, frothy coffee.

      “You may as well tell me,” I said.

      “Whatever it is, it can’t be too bad now.”

As I said it I was not looking at Mina. I was watching, in the gray and green veranda beyond the ledge, the intense bargaining for a pair of cushion covers.

       Mina was silent, stirring her coffee.

      “Is it about Rajiv?” I asked and looked at her directly.

       Silence.

      “Isn’t it?”

A couple of people in the veranda turned at my raised voice.

       “Yes,” I could almost hear a sigh of relief in her whisper.

       “And of course, as we know, it isn’t the first time.”

       “No.”

There was nothing much else to say. We both began to sip our coffee. It was too hot; it scalded my tongue.

       “You knew?” I was almost an accusation, as if I had snatched away her dream act, read it all the night before the big performance.

I nodded. My lower lip was trembling, I realized. I rested my elbow on the table and cupped my chin in my hand. Something was scalding my eyes.

Beyond the ledge the deal had been struck. The cushion covers were being packed and as soon as she got the packet the woman in the black kurta, a wooden comb stuck in her thick hair, was again opening the packet, making sure that she had been given the right pair.

   Never trust anything, I thought.

Kishen had begun to hover around again, picking up the coffee cups, pocketing his tip, swishing his duster quickly over the table. The circles made by the coffee cups spread and then vanished, rubbed forever into that afternoon.                   

It was all very civilized, all very modern. We only fought once in the ten days that she stayed in the house after telling me that she was leaving. That was the night when I asked her about Ankur.

      “Of course, he will go with me. What else?”

      “ Why will he go with you? He’s my bloody son.”

      “ Don’t curse the boy. It is not his fault.”

      ‘I am not cursing him and it’s all your fault anyway.’ 

      “ He’s too young. He has to be with me. You cannot take care of him, I am not leaving him here under any condition.”

I think I broke some things. An inkpot that made a blue-black splash on the bedroom wall near the wardrobe. A polish crystal flower vase that I know she particularly liked. It splintered in thick angled pieces that could cut an artery.

 She banged the door and left the room, screaming that I was mad and that this was no way of sorting out things. As I picked up the pieces of crystal and collected them on a newspaper, I thought for a wild moment that I would sue her in court and ask for Ankur’s custody. I would prove that I could take better care of him that any mother, certainly a mother like Mina who had chosen purely for personal pleasure- or lust – to break up a family. But Mina would turn around and list out in exasperating detail, with her index finger ticking off things in the air, her brown mole twitching sexily for the judge, how she had always been the one to take care of Ankur, how she had given birth to him by having her abdomen - all three layers- cut open, how she knew exactly what he needed how much vitamins, calcium, inoculations, coaching lessons. And what did I know about all of it anyway? I could barely remember, she would tell the world, what class he was studying in and that the only time  I had gone to buy a woolen trouser for him, I had come back with a gray piece of cloth that had wash- n- wear written in large letters on the border.