Tenth Nook
It was the first thought that came to her as she woke up. He was gone. And, soon, this bedroom, the house in whose eastern corner it sat, and the tiny garden outside with its gnarled old red hibiscus and the half-grown mango tree they had planted together, all those would be gone as well. It was the strangest feeling ever. [*] It was as though she could hear the receiver’s knock at the door, followed by the echoes of the auction bids – eighty-five lakhs, ninety lakhs, ninety-five lakhs…. , she could hear no more. That was until the hammer struck, sounding the beginning of the end of her innings at Tenth Nook. And to herald her return to her parental place that he nicknamed Square Peg, her square one from which he promised to take her to the Seventh Heaven. Of course, he did take her there, never mind the means.
“Why am I bogged down with this man-made thing without a thought for the man who made it all happen,” she thought on second-thought. ”He’s only to be blamed for that. Why not, he’s the one who maligned my mind with materialism, didn’t he? Or is it Mammon who had seduced my soul to the core? But how does that mater any way. He did desert me at the first post of adversity and that’s what matters. How shameful. Is it cowardice or callousness? How am I to know? Let him go to hell and I’ll brave it out regardless. But what about our kids, won’t they be worse off, left in the lurch?”
The thought of their children, a boy and a girl, twins, aged twelve, led her to their first-floor bedroom of their duplex dwelling.
“Oh how he raised their hopes sky-high!” she thought on her way. ”Didn’t he tell her he was cutting corners for their crowning future. Doubtful, after all this, isn’t it? No doubt it’s his vanity to cut a figure for himself and his family that could’ve been at the back of his mind all through. That much is clear in the hindsight, isn’t it? But what about me, am I not equally guilty? Well, that’s the fallacy of falsity that we shared but this is the burden of deceit he thrust upon me, really. But am I any less callous than him when it came to our kids? Being a mother, shouldn’t I have been more concerned about them than him? But how do I measure up? He left all of us with equal abandon but lo, I’m worried only about losing the dwelling! Did I think about their plight all this while? Shameful, isn’t it? Could it be the material loss that obscured my maternal vision? Maybe, it’s their bleak future that benumbed my mind. Why this hypocrisy? It could be both, what’s the hell about it. But what a double jeopardy, twice over that is!”