Catching a Wink

Hem sat quietly outside on a wooden rocking chair facing the garden at
the back of his three floored house in the evening. The tea in the cup
on the side table had become cold. Ananta, Hem’s wife, came looking
for him after her tuition class ended. She picked up the cup and
walked back inside to heat the tea and make it warm once more.

Things had started to take turn towards incremental progress after
what felt like a lifetime of silence and inactivity in the house. Hem
and Ananta’s son and daughter, Sudhir and Tanika were pursuing their
careers abroad. Once a year they came to meet their parents.

“Why don’t you both come along and stay with me? After a while, it
will start feeling like home there as well,” Sudhir had said a year
before.

“Maybe another place can resemble what feels like a home, but it will
never completely be this home. Many precious memories which have come
to life in this house have made it a home. However, I am not ignorant
to your worries. Give us a bit more time, a few more years. Then we
will be with you,” Hem had said. Sudhir did not argue with his father,
he could never make peace with the thought of parting with the house
himself.

In the present, while waiting for the tea to warm, Ananta looked
outside the window at the man with whom she had lived for many years.
He had started to look old, and this surprised her for some unknown
reason.

“Well, this is it, our house. It will be the witness to our family’s
story,” Hem had told Ananta, 35 years back, while the movers unloaded
the furniture from the truck and took them inside the house, both of
them saw the blank pages of the new house, waiting to be written and
scribbled upon.

Ananta didn’t always take tuition classes, she and Hem left home every
morning, each towards his/her workplace, out the door of this very
house. When Ananta became a mother the second time, she realised that
her children needed her. She left her office and decided to devote her
time entirely to her children. Everyone in the family believed she had
done it marvellously. Both the kids were loved by family and friends
alike.

“You know, if not for you, all this would have never worked out,” Hem
had told Ananta at an anniversary dinner. Sudhir and Tanika were still
school students back then.

“Why don’t you teach tuitions, the sound and presence of children will
make you both feel better,” Ananta’s elder sister had suggested to
Ananta after Tanika had followed her elder brother abroad and had
started working there.

Hem was struggling with the idea of finally letting go of office work.
Retirement had finally caught up to him after two work extensions.
Ananta used to take care of most of the household work when Hem was
working, and now all of a sudden Hem found himself with less work than
what he used to. It was a day unlike any other, the last day of work
when Hem returned from home, parking his car and feeling his breath,
he rested his head on the steering wheel.

‘So, this day is what all the years of studying and working have come
down to.’ he had said to himself.

Hem returned to the present away from the thought which had drifted
him off. The sound of the door opening alerted him.

Ananta placed two cups of tea on the side table and then she opened
her phone to play music and placed the phone on the side table as
well.

Hem picked up the cup of tea and took a sip and spoke, “We used to
hear this song all the time.”

“… and we are hearing it now,” Ananta said.

Hem looked towards Ananta and smiled and then both of them started
humming the song as the evening dosed off for the night to arrive.

Written by Anuran Chatterji

Hey, Connect with Us:)

• WordPress
• Instagram
• Medium
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest