Shadow

She was looking at him crying helplessly. Yelling out her name, as he always did when he could not find her in the house. But this cry was more painful, dreadful, loud & disheartening. She wanted to sit beside him & calm him down. But she simply could not. She tried several times but he did not acknowledge her presence. What was wrong? And then she saw herself lying on the floor cold & white. She was dead six hours ago. A small slip from the bedroom stairs & there she was lying dead on the living room & there he was sitting beside her dead body devastated.

A courtship of five years and marriage of five months and a relationship of an entire lifetime-all disappeared in a second. It was much more hard than difficult for him to come back to his normal routine. He would try to occupy his mind in work, work late & avoid coming back to his dead house. Sleepless nights, wet pillows & an empty bedside. Flipping through all her photographs & to keep looking at her wanting to touch her, kiss her, and feel her. And she would sit beside him all the time looking at him undergo such pain. More painful was the fact that she was around but yet not. He couldn’t see her & she couldn’t tell him.

She had refused to go with the Holy light & start a new life. She wanted to be with him & see him recover & get a normal life. She had become restless & wanted to make her presence felt. She started finding out various ways of communicating from her state to the living world. She needed it so badly that finally happened. One morning when he woke up he heard the bathroom shower on. He thought she must be in there, but on the second thought he rushed inside the washroom to see the shower running. With a cup of tea, he went to his living room & smelt the same old fragrance of white lilies. She had liked them & would always keep them in the vase near the kitchen. They were there even today. But then who else would have brought it today. May be some of the servants were trying to remember her. Rushing through the pages of newspaper, he saw some words highlighted with red. And to put them together, it said “ I am here”. The hint was loud enough to capture. He was happy to know that she was around & could see him & probably hear him too.

Now he would talk to her without expecting any reply & she would listen to all his useless talks. But with time his talks became less with her but more on phone. She felt forgotten & like every housewife does at least once in her lifetime. One day he came back with one of his colleagues. They chatted all evening, had few drinks together & went out around midnight. She was worried for him more than she was worried for herself. That same girl started coming home very often. He was happy talking to her & caressing her hair sometimes. She was angry as any wife would be. One morning, she got a coffee mug spilled on his newspaper, a broken window of the bedroom, scattered pens 7 papers in the study room

He was ready to start a new life with someone new. He didn’t want her around. He wanted her to leave him & go. But she had nowhere to go. She had refused a new life only to bring him back to his normal life and now when he was back to enjoying life, he demanded her absence. She stayed in the same house without making her presence felt ever. She saw him marry that girl, saw them making love in her very bed, have children & live happily ever after. While she remained to be a shadow.