The Inherited Custody

CHAPTER XI

"When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less."
Arundhati Roy, God Of Small Things

At times, their marriage seemed like a temporary matter. Over time, it lingered like a long shadow.

In the beginning, everything seemed too ordinary if there existed such things. Things were shy, and time stood as a moving grace. Rustom took her to his father's cafe, by that time it already belonged to him, and freshly made for her white and luscious butter, a warmly baked and puffed bun. He asked the Maharaj to fry some keema samosas, along with warming up some Irani chai. It was a date. An official one, their first one, after marriage. Before that, they only met at the ceremony.

Like the delicate petals of the sensitive Lotus, love blossomed in the most unprecedented of places and situations. Even though it took time to happen, like the summers in March and the winters in October, they grew, they spoke, shyly, softly, and then longingly and knowingly. He eventually recognized her voice, the sounds of her bangles, the taps of her feet, the sensation of her breathing. He even got used to her sleeping on his bed, sharing the same space- an almost impossible thing to do, to share one's peacetime.

But to them, even as they were taught and buttered, marriage was meant to have no boundaries between each other. No known secrets. Like every newlywed that was arranged in the summers, they grew fond of each other's presence like that of a new fragrance, as one grew used to the unpredictable monsoons.

It took months, almost a year for things to happen, for the plant to grow- lingering through their bodies. He first kissed her on her cheek, and then on her opening of the face, slipping his hands through her forbidden flesh, tearing through her blouse and petticoat, cupping her flesh shamelessly. She obliged, so giving, she tentatively tested her new experience, one she'd never known before.

He smiled while licking her, finding it funny how she only existed in the places he moved his wet tongue on.

In that very building in the lowland, the big room they shared, was where Rustom impregnated his wife for the first time. They both touched, danced, but didn't scream and created something out of genuine love. But the love was yet to last.

For nine months, almost, they waited for something more, something divine, beyond their expectations. Or at least for the first seven months, they did. The tragedy was yet to strike, like the rising of a wildfire, surrounding as a ring and growing warmer, taller, and becoming suffocating.

In the stifling heat of a beautiful Bombay-Summer afternoon, while Rustom, like clockwork, was where he was supposed to be, her entire body stung with pain in the womb, and eventually, the body gave in. Fluids of human juice began to flow out of her vagina. She was rushed to the hospital by the neighbors when they heard her scream, one of their children sent off to call Rustom from the restaurant. After a couple of check-ups, the doctor, a male, told them what it was. The sonograms visualized no movement in the womb- nothing but stillness and calm.

When the child was born, already lost before it was claimed, Rustom was there, awake while his wife lay there on the blue hospital bed, tired and unconscious. He held the limp body, the skin going blue by every hour, the bulbous eyes shut away from the earth forever. It was a boy, cleaned up. The doctor had suggested holding the baby and saying his grace and Rustom agreed, spending the first and last moments of a young, bite-sized human being before giving it away for good, to be lost. He looked at his supposed-to-be son, the tiny hair black, the fists curled into themselves, and the lost eyes that looked through it's lids. Rustom liked to think that he was always the first thing the baby saw, out of his mother's womb.

Months followed, like that what had never stopped happening- like time and sea. Trees grew, leaves fell, fruits took birth, flowers died and went, life set on reset. They came back home, silent really, none of them in the knowledge of which words to use to balm the other. Both of them sat in different rooms, unsure about whom should've been consoled first, themselves or the other. What'd they said? What did they want to know? Silence sat between them, like an uninvited guest, on the dinner table, the couch and in bed, when she cried her heart in silent hiccups. The vacuum from where Rustom sat to where she did, the air had filled with thoughts, ambivalent words, emotions unresolved, questions unanswered. And they loomed like a fishing eagle far up the sky, moving in circles, looking for the right turn- one that came and slipped. It never returned.

They became quiet, quiet so that people (neighbors) began to notice their odd behavior and cold ignorance- when she didn't see him off at the door or they never even looked at each other. They didn't. Not at all. Their separation blended in, like flavors in a dish, like the scent of flowers in the garden, the sun with the sea at the horizon. Separate and unknown.

——