The Price of Time. A Novel By Dipjyoti Sharma Chapter 4

 

The Price of Time. A Novel By Dipjyoti Sharma Chapter 4

Chapter 4: First Confession

 

Meera's Flat, Shivaji Park — November 2019

 

He told her about the writing on a night in November when the city was loud with Diwali preparations and the whole sky above Shivaji Park was flickering. They were on her balcony. She had made filter coffee the South Indian way, in the small steel tumbler-and-davara set that had been her mother's, and it smelled like another era.

Arjun: "I submitted a story to a magazine. Three months ago."

Meera: "What kind of story?"

Arjun: "About a man who runs a small shop and every day he tells himself tomorrow he'll do something different and the story is just one of his days."

Meera: "Did they take it?"

Arjun: "Yes. It comes out in January."

She looked at him.

Meera: "Arjun. That's—"

Arjun: "I haven't told my father. He doesn't know I write."

Meera: "Why not?"

Arjun: "Because writing is not a real thing in the Malhotra family. It's something people do when they can't do real things."

Meera: "That's your father's voice."

Arjun: "Yes. He's very loud."

She was quiet a moment. Below them, someone was setting off a string of crackers and the dogs in the lane were going mad.

Meera: "When Krishnan was alive, I used to sketch buildings at night. Just for myself. Buildings that no one would ever build, that existed only on paper. He used to say they were better than my real work. I thought he was being kind. After he died, I found that he had kept every one. Forty-seven sketches, in a folder in his desk."

Arjun looked at her.

Meera: "The things we do in the dark for ourselves are not the lesser things. Don't let your father's voice convince you they are."

He looked away. His eyes were wet. He was twenty and trying not to cry on a widow's balcony during Diwali, and the absurdity of the situation was not lost on him, which made it worse.

Arjun: "Meera-ji—"

Meera: "Just Meera. You don't need to —"

Arjun: "Meera. I want to say something and I need you not to be—not to handle it. Not to manage it. Just to hear it."

She set down her coffee.

Arjun: "I think about you. All the time. Not the way—I know how it sounds. I know what you're going to say. But I think about what you would say to things. I hear your voice when I'm reading. I write better when I'm going to show it to you. That's—that's not a client thing. That's not a—I don't know what it is. But I needed to say it."

The fireworks cracked over Shivaji Park. The sky went orange and white.

She sat with what he had said. She did not rush. This was one of the things about her: she never processed important things quickly, which most people experienced as coolness but which was actually the opposite, the care of someone who understood that important things deserved the full weight of attention.

Meera: "I hear you. I need you to understand what I'm going to say, which is not a rejection and is not an acceptance. It's the truth."

Arjun: "Okay."

Meera: "I am fifty years old. I was married for nineteen years to a man I loved completely. I have a daughter. I live in a building where every person knows my business. I am a widow in a community that has very specific ideas about what widows should and should not do. And I am—" she stopped. "I am not as untouched by what you've said as I should be. That's my truth. But my truth also includes the word 'should.' And 'should' is heavy. Understand?"

Arjun: "I understand the words."

Meera: "But?"

Arjun: "But I think 'should' is a word other people invented and put in your head. Not yours."

She looked at him for a long time.

Meera: "Go home, Arjun. It's Diwali. Your family will be waiting."

He went. But they both knew, in the way that people know things that have not yet been said aloud, that something had shifted. The ground was different. Small, almost imperceptible. But different.

 

To be Continued .......................

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