Sapno Ka Shaher

42. The Missing Element

Sameer sat still on the mattress, folding one leg from knee while stretching the other. It must have been more than an hour since he was doing nothing... nothing apart from breathing calmly... rather focusing on his breathing and trying to remain calm.

There hasn't happened anything that he should be doing otherwise... but that was the thing... there was nothing... nothing had happened really...

The night was tranquil. No sound of rumbling of tree leaves, no sound of barking dogs outside of the main gate, no sound coming from any of the windows in the adjacent flats. It was eerily silent. So much so that Sameer could hear Naina's pencil scribbling on her notebook whenever she wrote something. She has been studying for three hours straight.

Sameer had seen her multiple phases of studying till now. Since the time they used to study together in the college library, pretending to study while holding a book in hand but actually staring at each other's photos hidden inside it... when she would get utterly serious and teach him all the chapters rigorously... when they studied together as husband-wife for the final year exam in Krishna-Kaustubhi and he had scored first class for the first time... to her studying here in Mumbai after she filled the form for CA.

Before Naina started with her articleship, she used to have a dedicated time for her studies and some time reserved for her writing. But in August, the articleship in the firm and the articles for the newspaper coincided, with the short stories for Kadambini continuing. Sameer had seen her choosing what to work on according to the submission deadlines of her articles... articles which she had agreed for 10 in the first meeting, which were extended to 12 and later on a special one...

When September started, Naina had shared with Sameer what her colleague Smita advised her regarding the exam studies and she confessed how she had ignored it due to the 9 to 5 job which wasn't really 9 to 5 for her. And he had soon witnessed her managing her job, exam studies and her writing all together. But there was a huge dilemma while deciding what she should prioritize first. There were days when he had seen her thinking about studying while writing and thinking about her article topics when she had books in hand. Naina was never a girl who would lose her focus and Sameer knew this. So one day, the couple had sat together to sort out her confusion and Sameer suggested to her that he could help her with the flow of the article, its tone, and editing, so that it would take the burden off of her. Hadn't he done it while passing her short stories? That had helped Naina immensely and she was back to compartmentalizing all her responsibilities in full force.

They had started having visitors in the house almost every Sunday morning, starting from Mr. & Mrs. Gadkari. Mr. Gadkari had praised Naina heartily about her articles, boasting that he would take the credit of recommending Naina to the Editor. Preeti and Shubham would often talk about it whenever they met. Arjun too had started calling every Sunday, and Rakesh would happily read Naina's article for him.

However, amongst all the articles, her studies, her articleship and the household chores... all the time of her day was getting heavily consumed... her day would start at 5:30 in the morning... sometimes even before that... and end at eleven at night. And when Sameer's day would be busy too, he would hardly get to see her properly the whole day.  And if he had thought that helping her with editing would allow him to spend time with her, he was wrong.

The things were definitely tiresome for her... managing everything, including household chores and cooking. He would be there to help her but when he would have an audition or something, Naina would push him out of the kitchen, telling him his work should be his first priority.

Sameer had recognised that Naina has lost weight in these three months. Of course... she would be constantly running here and there, doing everything possible... her physical activity had doubled up as compared to when she would be at home and studying.