"Subhash, here." I answered the phone a bit irritated.
"How does it feel, now?"
First thing I hear from the other side of the phone. The voice is as old as my heart but sounds brand new. I just got home a while ago after attending a wedding all night long. I probably shouldn't have gone but I did. I was physically exhausted, and emotionally wiped out. "You know how I feel. Just got back from the wedding. You saw me there, didn't you?" I replied as calmly as I could.
"No, I did not." Her voice was firm but I could sense the tremor behind it. All I could see in that wedding was her. She felt me all the time all over her, I know that. How couldn't she?
"Were you there?, really?" Another fiery question flew at me. I did let the silence prevail this time.
"Oops, I am sorry. Who are you, again?" she questions my identity now.
"What's the point?" I sank a bit. Then, sank more and more and finally ceased to exist. Almost.
Ten years passed by. I attended many more weddings, including my own, after that fateful one. But I could never forget that wedding, and especially the phone call the next morning. I used to see her in all the brides all the time from the day one I met her a few years back. I saw her in my wife as well.
I am all alone in the basement, now. My senses completely swept off. I can feel the tears my ravaged heart pumping up streaming down. Flashbacks crashing at each other, thunderbolts of yesterdays pounding on me, and there I am abandoned. I suddenly hear some one breathing close by. Did not have enough time to wipe off the tears and recompose myself. I saw my wife dazed, and our son a bit terrified. Even if I wanted to, I could not have explained how I felt what I felt. Even if I could, I probably would have drawn a different kind of reaction from her. The kind I, perhaps, could not recognize the way I wanted to.
"The name was printed wrong on that wedding invitation, and you're the one who caused that" she used to mention in her occasional emails to me. She was correct. I had my own reasons. My reasons don't mean anything anymore. A serious accident this morning pushed her off to the history leaving a vaccum all over the place but also between the two men, the one who claimed her and the one she claimed.
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