Free Cobalt Blue by Sachin Kundalkar Page B

of the cupboard. His bag was gone. Also some of his clothes. Other things too. That’s when it hit me: he had left me. I had not eaten, I began to feel dizzy. I found that I had two hundred rupees in my pocket. In one of his trouser pockets, I found another fifty- rupee note. I had dinner and returned to sit on the steps with the door open.
    Nothing.
    Next day. Nothing.
    I began to get frightened. There had been nothing to warn me. In the past few days, he had taken to sleeping on the floor alone but we had not fought or anything like that. I asked the few acquaintances we had made if they had seen him. I described him to those we did not know. Such a small town but no one had seen him. In the evening when I returned to the room, I began to feel dizzy again. I did not have the nerve to tell the police. I tried instead to figure out what had happened.
    Bag? Gone.
    Personal stuff? Gone.
    Clothes hanging on the wall? Gone.
    Had he planned this? What was I to do?
    Finally, I got up and packed. The rent for the next two months had already been paid but that didn’t matter. I didn’t know where to go. I hadn’t much money left. As I put on my shoes, I realized I would have to go home to my parents. Where else?
    I sat down to think about it. It took me all day. Where could he have gone? Would he return? I kept looking for reasons. I tried to remember exactly what he had said, the precise words he had used in the days before his departure. But I could find no clue to his behaviour.
    I had never spent so much time thinking about someone else. I hadn’t even thought about an issue in this sustained way. I was impulsive; if I felt like it, I would do it. I had once been a climber. In the heat of the afternoon, I would drag myself up narrow footpaths to the top of a hill. Keeping fear at bay, I would scramble up steep hillsides, often with the help of ropes. When the group arrived at the top, huffing and puffing, everyone would take a breather and stop to admire the view. Not me. I would walk to the very edge of the summit and look down as the wind screamed around my ears.
    From there, the villages and fields look like they belong in a picture, the jagged edges of the mountain framing a burning sun. Then I would suddenly be filled with a great joy and my mind would say, ‘You want to. You know you do. What is there to hold you back? Jump. What you feel now, what you want now, that’s all there is. Jump. Just jump.’
13July
    If truth be told, Aai and Baba should not have felt so bad about my going away with him. I had done it before, left, I mean. Usually, I would tell them and go. This time I had not told anyone and left. That was the only difference. Otherwise, I had always planned on leaving.
    How long could I have stayed in this world of Aai’s religion and her swamis, her rituals and fasts; this world of Baba’s, he who was always afraid of what ‘they’ would say; this world of marriage and children and aunts who performed the Mangala Gauri ritual to signify their happiness with their married state, and cousins who organized rose-giving competitions on Valentine’s Day? I messed up my first escape attempt. I wonder if there’s something wrong with me.
    For the first time, Aai took some time to try and talk to me and be my friend. What she wanted to tell me, I had learned from books and from the conversations and experiences of my friends. I listened, keeping my face blank. I wonder why she had never tried this before. The strange thing is that she never tried to do the same thing again. It was a game she played with me for a single day. She was ashamed and she wanted to hide her shame. Once you try something hypocritical, you can never sound convincing again.
    Until yesterday, I thought I was feeling better. But in the afternoon, my limbs began to feel heavy and I felt alone again. The future frightened me so much I began to cry. I did not know what was going to happen to me. I felt that everyone must be laughing at me.