Live Again

 

Live Again

Lydia took the early morning train to the beach on the third anniversary of Lawrence’s death. She wanted to meet the ocean.

She dropped off an excuse at work which was met with grim, reluctant acceptance. Several vital projects were running, and the boss had wanted all hands on deck. So Lydia had to beg him to gain the leave.

She sat in an empty compartment clutching her handbag and looked out onto the platform as the train pulled out of the station. Was there anybody running up to stop her?

Lydia had vowed never to love again. Only today she realised the weight of the sentence she had passed on herself. Miserable, and utterly alone, she wished somebody would enter her compartment just so she could feel reassured by the presence of another person. Her need for human companionship was paramount.  

At Bally, another gentleman did board the compartment. He sat opposite to Lydia but busied himself with a newspaper. Lydia looked at him for a few seconds, was almost about to make a confession, but decided not to engage him in conversation.

“I have to see mother,” muttered Lydia, “Only she will understand what I have done.”

Even when she was growing up at the Lila Rai Memorial Institute for Girls in Goa, Lydia had felt a bond akin to kinship with the ocean, and for that matter with any water body. Whenever any of her friends at the Institute found themselves a new home, with a new mother and a new father, she consoled herself that the ocean was her mother, the rivers her sisters, and the lakes and ponds her brothers. They were the family she would always have.

Lydia never resented not being adopted. She told herself stories to explain her fatherless and motherless existence. She was like Sita, born from the womb of the Earth, or like Karna born when the Sun God Surya handed a child to Princess Kunti. Her explanations satisfied her in childhood and she ceased to look for any other.

Her youth had been pleasant. She had an urgent need to please her elders in the orphanage, and so, took on responsibilities without being asked. She ferried the younger children at the orphanage to school and back, helped them with their homework and took them to the toilet in the dead of the night. The women in charge of the institute thanked her and complimented her for her care and Lydia was pleased to have been of service to them.

While still at the institute, a certain teacher gave Lydia some kindly advice. The teacher told her that once she turned eighteen she would have to make her way in the world, so it would be wise for her to start preparation for a career. Lydia chose to become a teacher.

But life after the Institute had not been easy on Lydia.

When she left the institute at eighteen and entered a teacher’s training college, she had felt for the first time a case of the “angsty reds.” She had gotten the term from Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It was Holly Golightly’s word for the unexplainable moments in life that cause pain like a stab in the heart. When the “angsty reds” came on, she would burst into tears and wonder why she had been born without a family to call her own.

But it had all changed when she met Lawrence. They met while working at a school in Mumbai. Lawrence was an orphan like her, and when Lydia had found that out she was excited to get to know him. Here was another person like her, the child of the wind and the offspring of the Earth, a child with no beginning and end. Surely they were given life to love each other.

Lydia made the first move. One day she told Lawrence her story, and she could make out in his eyes that some spark of love or protectiveness towards her was emerging in his cold black eyes.

“You’re like me,” he said softly, “the daughter of the Earth.” Then he blushed. “I’m sorry,” he hastily apologised, but his mistake helped Lydia to understand that he, too, played the family game. They were children of the Sun. The Earth was their native place. The Sky was their protector.

From then on, they became inseparable. They spent their breaks together watching the children play in the yard, and on the weekends they travelled together, every moment spent in amazement at the mystery that somehow from the Earth had sprung up two pearls of the same kind and in the vast expanse of the Universe they had chanced to find each other.

*

Lawrence took Lydia to see the Jog Falls in summer, and the Mansarovar Lake in autumn. They went to Sri Lanka and played with the elephants and took long walks at night on Marina Beach.

They always walked hand-in-hand wherever they went. She would play with the strap of her purse. He would feel for her fingers. And, somehow, just as the ocean meets the sky at the horizon, their hands would meet, interlock, and stay encased in the security.  

They never tired of each other. For them, there was no pulling away. There was always a gentle curiosity to grow closer, to grow fonder, to know more about what the other person had to say.

Like lovers they did quarrel. They fought to the rhythm of the rain. There was thunder, lightning, dark clouds, strong winds, but every war ended always with a new dawn, a fresh beginning. The Sun never left off appearing in the Sky even though she had raised black clouds from the depths of the Sea.

They moved in perfect harmony, the way the wind dances across a plain of paddy fields, swaying and bending the frail leaves. He danced with her softly on the terrace, under a black sky full of pinpricks of lights. “Marry me,” he asked one day, “And then we’ll travel the world. Just you and me. And we’ll be in each other’s arms till the day we die.”

Lydia was content to be asked, “All right,” she said, “but you have to promise that we’ll always be together.”

Lawrence nodded and swore with the half-moon as witness. “I will love you forever,” he said.

*

To fulfil his promise to her he took a job with a travel company. It was his responsibility to take groups of people on vacation. Lydia accompanied him whenever Lawrence found a place that felt to him like home. Like this, they had seen all the delights their mother, the Earth, had laid out for them.

Lydia’s angst abated during this period. Lawrence was the Sun of her Sky. She rose with him and worked in the light of his glow. His smile was to her the precious gift of the universe. There was no more solitary existence, no more lonely thoughts. Every idea she ever had, she told Lawrence about it and he bared to her the visions of his soul. They fulfilled the longing in each other for a person to call home.

Then one night Lawrence took ill.

And at once they both knew that the Darkness that comes for everybody had come for Lawrence. The spirits in the sky had taken note of their happiness, and growing wildly jealous had sent Death on their heels. Lydia screamed.

At his funeral she swore with all her might. “I will never love again. I will never live, again.”

Darkness enclosed her. For her, the Sun had stopped giving out light.

*

The long brown swathe of sand on the beach glimmered under a lukewarm Sun. It was afternoon. Lydia walked along the beach alone. She was the only one there. For miles before her the ocean stretched out like a tent.

“Mother, I’m home,” she whispered.

Waves crashed against the rocks in response.

She could feel the sand under her feet. The crunch-crunch sound of gritty dirt was music to her ears. Cool white froth from the ocean bathed her ankles.

“I can’t live without him, mother,” she screamed to the ocean, “I don’t want to.”

Then she began to cry. “I’m going to drown in your arms tonight, so you can reunite the two of us in the Darkness.”

The ocean made no answer.

Night came, and Lydia sat on the rocks and thought over what she would do.

“I can’t go on like this forever. I love him and I can’t live without him.”

But it was hardly true. She uttered the words as if they were an oath though her heart knew that the wound of Lawrence’s death had healed. Now, it was up to her to put away the gloom and take up living again.

Lydia never lied. She had never wanted to. Lawrence was gone, and she was miserable, but her soul, which beat to the music of Nature refused to let her follow him.

“I have to give him up,” she whispered, and loosened his ring from her finger. “But I promised to love only him always! Mother, what should I do?”

“I’ve lived like the half-dead. I’ve given up on life, and I know that it’s wrong! I want to feel the Sun again!”

“Why did I make a vow to love only him for the rest of my life? Was I so wise to see the end of my days? I want to be free from the vow I made, Mother.”

*

The next morning, like a child of the Dawn, Lydia raced to the beach. Fishermen were coming in with their boats. She was smiling and laughing.

Last night, she had thrown Lawrence’s ring into the ocean. For her, today was a new beginning. She had freed herself from the oath of loving him even after his death.

She could feel the warmth of the sun on her face, arms, and legs. The lusty ocean crashed against the rocks of the beach.

Some fishermen were excitedly talking to each other and calling all the others to come and see. They had found a ring caught in a fish’s mouth. They were congratulating the fisherman who found it. It’s a new beginning for him, they cried, he could sell it and buy a new boat!

Lydia heard and joyfully plunged into the ocean.