The Husband.

Meenakshi...the keeper of my soul, my angel come to rescue me, my Meenakshi...what worries you so? What is causing those beautiful eyes to brim up so? Pray tell me, my Meenakshi...I will slay the demons that distress you, pray tell me, every crease in your forehead, every tear that falls from your eyes mars my being, I live for you, Meenakshi...do not kill me so...

She was crying again. He had done all he could to make her stop. He did not know why she cried. What reason should a young bride have to cry? A month after their marriage, he still believed she cried because she was homesick. Eleven months later, he could no longer attribute her tears to homesickness. When he left to work in the morning, she stood in a corner, sniffling. When he came home after work, she would be standing at the verandah, listelessly looking at a distance, eyes red and tired and still wet.

"Every night, the same old story...", she sighs and yells, "Shantha, come here, give patient 26 the injection, he is going to sing his death knell throughout the night, otherwise..."

*****
Meenakshi, see what I have bought home for you...close your eyes, feel the softness? Do you like mani? That's what I have named him, look how he wags his tail, here, hold him...Meenakshi, why do you still cry, woman? (Tone raised) What should a man do? I cook in the morning before I leave to work, I take care of you...(subdued again) oh, do not cry, my life, my Meenakshi...

He returned from work that evening to find the puppy standing at the gate, it jumped delightfully when it saw him, he smiled, as if acknowledging the ironies that life doled out to him, he bent down to lift the puppy and walked into the house. She sat in a corner of the house, huddled and trembling, he rushed to hug her and she shrank back...

"How are you feeling today, Sir?", the monotonous tone evokes no response. It has not in the past month, and the doctor did not expect anything new today; he did what he considered his duty, checked his pulse and his vitals, shouted a few instructions to the nurses and moved on to the next patient. It was difficult enough trying to save lives that wanted to be saved...

*****
Where are you? I know I should not have screamed at you, my darling, my beautiful angel, do not leave me now...is that you I see in the distance? Is the rain blurring my vision or are these my tears? Oh Lord...protect my Meenakshi, she is the child that you bestowed on me, help me keep her safe...Are my eyes tricking me? Is that...no! take my life away but she should live...

That night, he came home a bit late, he had spent the evening worrying about how to handle her once he got back home. He had screamed at her in the morning and had left her crying. When he had woken up in the morning and seen her as she had been every other day, no hint of improvement, no shadow of a smile on her face, something had triggered his pent-up anxiety and worries to burst out; the words escaping his mouth sounded alien to him, but days and days of hopelessness and disappointments had numbed his patience and his cognition. That night, he did not find her home. He ran outside into the pouring rain, screaming her name like a mad man...he saw her walking unseeingly in the middle of the road, the car careened wildly as the terrified driver tried to avoid her, he had thrown himself at the car, a final attempt to save her from herself, he felt the impact and then darkness shrouded him, unable to bear his pain?

"6.30 PM, time of death", the doctor moved on, the nurses hustled behind him, they had been through this too many times to be affected by it. "Poor man, they say his wife was mad, he looked after her for a year, could not take it anymore and killed her and threw himself in front of the car...", Shantha said, "The driver saw him pushing her in front of the car, tsk...men like these, God knows what his wife had done to deserve a husband like him..."

*****