Love and Trust

Love and Trust

Once upon a time, long long ago, there lived a couple in the kingdom of far far away… Hey, wait!! Why does all the fairy tales begin with this statement? Have you ever wondered? Well, according to the limited wisdom that I have this is because these are all stories having not an ounce of truth in them. Let me tell you a story which lives and breathes in the cubicle besides you. May be you may call you a love story or may be you may discard it as just another crap, its all upto you. I am just here to tell a story coz I don’t have too much work today.

So not so long ago, infact she is still alive, lived a girl. She was beautiful, she was smart, she was cute and surprise, surprise she was married to me. Well, that makes me lucky, doesn’t it? Now, don’t get too jealous. There are flipsides to having an intelligent lady as your wife. You don’t believe me, wait till you hear my story.

It was in December that we got married. After having a gala time at my and my in-laws place, we returned to Delhi, back to where I belonged and more importantly back to work. I worked in one of the leading BPOs, mind you they are no more called Call Centers, Convergys. I was a team lead there with their AT&T account. The process was big, money abundant and work challenging. Oh! How much I loved my job. It was like going to a mint, where in you can make as much money as you can, or rather as much as my team can. A handsome salary was what had pushed me to get married to her. A good job and a beautiful wife, I felt on top of the world.

Well my destiny was otherwise, I was not to remain in perpetual bliss. It so happened that there was this girl in my office named Trisha. We both had a brief affair a long ago. Now as you all know the stress at such a charged up environment as a call centre makes people do things which they don’t normally would do. However, without offering any excuses I would go on to say we had made out a lot of times, sometimes at her place and at times at mine. Now I told about this to my wife frankly before our marriage, thinking that this would strengthen her trust in me. Boy o boy, I was so wrong, she begun suspecting me the very same day. When I asked her later she as to why did she marry me, her surprising answer was that she wanted to sudharofy me. Girls!!

So now that the seeds of suspicion were sowed it had to flourish sometime. She started to search into my smses, my mail inbox, every where she could lay her hands upon, initially discretely and in a few months time, well, not-so-discretely. I knew my marriage was on rocks only two months into it. So much for love and theories that marry only when both of you have spent some time together and understood each other fully. We had been together for three years before marriage and still she doesn’t give two hoots about my honesty.

I was devastated to know that there was no respect for me left in her. She would create scenes in front of my friends and strangers. People who used to respect me, started laughing at my back and with time on my face. I felt helpless.

If this was not enough, she started dictating my life. She had her opinions about everything, my dresses, my shoes, my food, even my undies. She wanted to impose her opinions on me. If I refused, she created such hue and cry about it that I had to accede to her ill opined views. I knew this was wrong but she was like a 3-year old, to be handeled with care. I could not afford to loose her just because I didn’t wish to wear a ridiculous looking pink colored shirt which she liked. So I gave in to all her tantrums, emboldening her further. Day by day her demands became increasingly insane.

Out of my home, this was affecting my job as well as my social life. I was embarrassed to go with her to any of my friend’s. So we mostly stayed back on week ends. In the office I couldn’t concentrate on my work. As I used to work in the night, she used to call me up every hour, just to check on whether “ I was making out with one of the sexy bitches out there”. If I was in a meeting and didn’t pick her call, she would go crazy and called up my boardline number or my teammates’ numbers, she took them from my cell by the way.

All in all, my life was a hell. How did she, a person everyone admired in my friend circle as to be the best girlfriend anyone can have turn into such a lousy wife? May be my honesty initially was not the best policy after all. What she didn’t know wouldn’t have hurt her. But my conscience would not have allowed me to go on without a clean heart. Whatever was happening was for a reason, maybe.

However, all my hopes of her return back to normalcy faded each passing day. She started living in a world weaved out of her fancies. She feared that I will leave her and go for another woman I tried to tell her that to love someone else was not possible for me, but she would not listen to me. Every morning I would find her deeper into her world and farther away from me.

Fearing for the worst, I gave up my job at Convergys, hoping that may be this would comfort her. I stopped using my phone coz any call from anygirl made her feel insecure.I couldn’t watch the TV, read the news paper coz of the fear of what she would feel. There was a slight improve in her behavior, but she would again relapse and become detached from me. One moment she was there in my arms giggling at my silly jokes and saying sorry for what she had done to my life, and the very next moment she was gone. What made her moods swing could never be gauged at the moment.

It was then that I decide to take her to a psychiatrist. This also didn’t help as she was not a willing participant to the treatment. She used to accuse me of trying to divorce her by declaring her mentally ill. I was at a loss to explain to her that if I wanted to leave her I would have had, much ago. I under went so much of pain, giving up every thing I liked for the one I loved, and that was just her and no one else could take her place.

The Doc advised me to take her to some other place so that we could be alone and said that it was only me who could help her now. So we went for a long vacation. My bank balance was dwindling down, as I had not worked for the last three months. I had to plan it very wisely and economically. I decided to go to Kodaikanal. It was the month of June, six months after our marriage that we reached the honeymooner’s paradise, though with no hopes of having fun.
I took up a small cottage on the hills and we put up for the two months to come.

Though the initial couple of days were very awkward with us both looking vaguely at each other, trying to remember the faces we had loved so much once. I cooked the food and she would sit staring blankly out of the window and onto the green mountains beyond. We lived the same way for the two initial days.

On the second night she was very restless, tossing and turning in her bed. I was wide awake and aware of her agony. I was aware of the fact that when the mind is hurt the whole body pains. I was contemplating whether to talk to her or not. Suddenly she woke up and asked me, “Can we go out for a walk?”.

I was startled as it was one in the night and we didn’t even know the routes. But then I thought what the hell, if we had come so far then why not go for a walk. I got up and quickly got dressed. All this time she was looking at me with a gaze that made me feel uncomfortable.

I asked, “Shall I get you a shawl?”.

She replied, “I want to talk to you and tell you sorry for all that you have been all these days.”, in a slow composed tone as if she was specifying the color of the shawl she wanted. I trembled, unable to speak anything. I felt nothing, a nothingness which was so calm and relieving. Numbness swept over my mind and I fell onto a chair near by. She slowly got up, came and sat on my lap.

Tears rolled down my cheek as we sat there. She was also crying. I was unaware of this. Suddenly I realized how much grief I was carrying on my heart for the last six months. My life had been shattered to pieces by this silly little girl sitting on my lap. I wanted to throw her away and leave her there and then. It was a moment of rage that subsided as soon as it had come. I realized how much I loved this girl, and how close I was to loosing her. I had built my life all around her and if she was there then I could build it up again.

I said, “We were to go for a walk”.

She said, “Were we? Let’s go then”.

That was the most wonderful and the longest night of my life. We roamed around on the roads of Kodai hand in han. We never talked during the whole night about what had happened and why did it happen, except once.

She said, “I was always sure of one thing, that you loved me. But what I was never sure of was your loyalty. I was in a constant fear that you will fall for some bitch and though you would never love her go in for a physical relationship.”

I said, “May be now you will start trusting my loyalty.”

That was all. No words. It seemed that beautiful moonlit night we had shed all our apprehensions and moved towards a new life.

We remained the full two months over there, just soaking in the pure beauty of the place and roaming around in the valleys. We were like two teenage lovers enjoying and experimenting with all that we could. It was like the last six months had never been.

After the end of July, we returned to Delhi. I, no more in a mood to join a call centre again moved to Bangalore. There with the very little savings that was left and with the help my friends I started my own venture, a web designing firm.

After two years, when I look back now those days are like a faded black and white movie, which has lost its initial glamour but still is very significant now. My wife has taken up a teaching job with a school.

Well, what can I say, we lived happily ever after. At least the end is very fairy tale like…