Page 74 of Mrs. Pandey
I put on a light maroon kurta with a golden dupatta. I wore matching accessories and a little makeup. I forgot to worry about whether I looked like a soldier's wife or just a woman who was starting to fall for her husband. All that mattered was how the touch of the soft fabric felt on my skin, an effortless comfort in a complicated world.
Prashant was waiting at the door, wearing a white kurta pajama with his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He was the epitome of effortless modesty, a stark contrast to the coiled tension I knew still existed inside him. His deep, dark eyes lingered on me for a moment, a moment of quiet assessment.
"You look just beautiful," he said in a low, warm murmur as he handed me a shawl.
"Thank you."
He smiled crookedly, a slow, gentle twist to his lips. "I never thought you could look this beautiful in suits and sarees."
"I'll also look good in bikinis," I winked, making him break into a laugh.
He took my hand, his fingers clasped in mine as if he didn't trust himself to let me go once he had me. I didn't pull away as his touch was a bond. We walked along the paved path that led through the village. Lanterns fluttered overhead as if the stars were pretending to be closer than they really were. The air was filled with voices and the shrill, unabashed laughter of children running between food stalls and handwoven bamboo swings.
He brought us tea in a kulhar and offered it to me, a gesture of intimacy that felt impossibly vast. It was too hot and too strong.I grimaced, my eyes watering slightly. He laughed, his voice emerging from deep in his chest, a sound I hadn't heard in so long that it sounded new again. He laughed like a boy who had never seen cruelty, never known the crushing weight of silence.
"I forgot you hate strong tea," he said, smiling.
"No," I whispered, my voice barely above a whisper. "I just forgot what it feels like." He looked at me, his smile turning into a quiet question.
"What?"
"Being in a place where life is allowed to be ordinary."
It silenced us both because neither of us had been living ordinary lives for a very long time. I saw the ghostly flicker in his eyes, as sharp as muscle memory. I knew he was recalling something, and it wasn't the taste of tea. It was something deeper, something that slowly ate him alive, his haunted memories. I squeezed his hand, just once, in silent support, and he stopped.
A woman with silver anklets gave us puffed rice wrapped in newspaper. Prashant told me about his school teacher, who used to punish him when he wrote "Soldier" on his hands and in his notebook. The memory was so special, so innocent, as if someone had lost their life.
"Prashant..." An old man approached us. He was half-drunk and completely lost in nostalgia, hugging Prashant tightly. "I thought we had lost you forever," he said in an emotional voice. I saw Prashant soften, accepting, allowing himself to be seen once again, not as a uniformed man, not as a broken body, but as aman who had once stolen apples from trees and was chased with chappals.
By nightfall, we returned to our house, carrying a lantern and a bag of fried bread filled with anise and jaggery. The moon was shy but full, its light a gentle splash of silver. Inside, the house was quiet again. Not the empty silence from before, but the silence that only follows laughter.
We didn't turn on the bulbs, preferring the dim, flickering light of the lantern. We placed it near the threshold and sat outside, backs against the cold wall, legs stretched out on the open veranda. There was a new chill in the air, but we were close enough to warm each other. Above us, the sky was torn into constellations, a vast, swirling galaxy of stars, waiting for the Dawn.
"I kept staring at him," Prashant said, pointing upward, his voice low and husky, a voice that seemed to come from some deep, hidden place. "In captivity."
I didn't ask which one. I just waited, my heart beating like a quiet drum against my ribs. I knew he would tell me when he was ready.
"It was all I could see through the tiny window above the metal door. Every night, the same piece of sky. That star," he said, drawing a line in the air, "the one at the end of the hook, that was mine. I gave it a name."
"You gave it a name?" I smiled.
He nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "Ira."
My breath caught. I blinked, trying to understand the sound of my name on his lips. "It was my... name."
"I know," he whispered, and the quiet determination in his voice broke something inside me. "I just missed you so much." He swallowed hard, looking away from me.
I looked down, focusing on the tips of my feet that were hitting the edge of a discarded lantern wick. The world seemed distant, blurry.
"I'm sorry... I..."
"I think we should not talk about it," he said softly.
We didn't speak for a long time after that. The air, once filled with words, was now filled with the sound of the wind rushing through the poplar trees and the distant barking of a lonely dog. It was a silence that carried the weight of a life lived and a life lost.
Then, he spoke again. "Want to know who broke me?"
I slowly turned my head and met his gaze.
