Today, as she is crying inconsolably in my arms with me holding her, I can feel the hold you still have on her. The tears rolling down her cheeks belong to you. Your name is the one I hate the most. Rohit. I know that this name may continue to haunt me even two years after my marriage to Shilpa. I married her when she was still yours.
Not a single day has passed when I have not heard your name from her lips. Your name is in her sobs when she cries, remembering the time she spent with you, your name is in the hysterical laughter when she recollects the jokes you shared with her. I have heard so much about you that I can very well say that I personally know you. Why you walked out on her that I don’t know, because even she doesn’t know that. When I came near her, she was still nearer to you. She was waiting for you to return, and even in the waiting, she was all yours.
When we make love, and that happens quite rarely, I am inside her but still not inside her mind. We just go through the motions, with her doing it just for my sake. I often wonder how you would have made love to her and how she would have enthusiastically participated in the act, how the two of you would have become one, and how pleasurable it would have been for her. Every time we undress, I can see your name tattooed just above her navel-with the R drawn in a floral design and all of it in stark black against her milky-white complexion.
These marks that you have left on her body are there for me to see. But the indelible marks that are there on her psyche are for me to feel. Rohit, I really hate you for making Shilpa what she is today. She doesn’t laugh, except when she remembers the jokes that you must have cracked. There is just the ghost of a smile whenever I feebly try to make her laugh. Tears rolling down her cheeks have become such an essential part of her very existence.
These are all the telltale signs of her turmoil. But still, I cannot fathom the depths of her despair and loneliness, for she never shares. Two years ago, a few days after the marriage, she shared with me your existence in her life and how you left her. I was devastated. After a couple of weeks, I accepted the fact, and even Shilpa expressed her desire to move on and forget you. I decided that I would love her so much that she would overcome the loss and be mine.
But gradually she began comparing me with you. She would often say, How wonderfully you made love; how you would have done this task in a better fashion; how you could rightly guess what she was thinking without her even saying it. Initially, I thought that I could outdo you and improve myself. But then I realised that Shilpa thinks (or knows) that I could never outperform you and that you would have been a better husband for her. I have lived and survived in your shadow. Gradually, she stopped comparing and grew reclusive. I concluded that she must have forgotten you by now. But I was proved wrong, the comparisons stopped because she liked everything about you and I could not equal you in any aspect. You were her dream, and I was her grim reality.
Rohit, whenever I look into her eyes, I look into her heart as well. There seems to be no space in it for me, you still occupy each and every inch of that pain-struck heart. I really feel sorry for you for having left a girl who so madly and badly loved you and continues to do so. Rohit take my words – it’s very difficult to find a person who loves you so much, she would have done anything for you.
I have to heal that heart. Though initially I felt that she may never become mine but last night when she cried on my shoulders and said, “I really feel sorry for you. You have to bear with me when you could have gotten a better wife.” I replied, “Don’t say sorry,” and reluctantly planted a kiss on her cheeks. She neither resisted nor welcomed it. But I have found my silver lining in the dark clouds of longing and despair. From now on, I will double up my efforts and try to not only match but excel you in each and every quarter. Though she loves you, I am sure my love for her far surpasses that love. I will succeed in my endeavour one day at a time. That day, every single painful memory of yours will be wiped from her mind and heart.