When Roger Went

“Can you believe I still want you?” Swapnil asked when he called me today. Again. I sighed and hung up. A flag-bearer of feminism, I stared down at my body with mixed emotions.

People were playing with colors in the street below.

And I played with Roger’s photos. When Roger came back from the theatre, he put an arm around my shoulder and I hid my head in his neck. One day that I remained frozen, Roger knew something was wrong. I told him it was Swapnil’s birthday. Roger lifted my face and asked if I wanted to attend? I broke down, shaking my head. No. It was the end. We had the right to move forward. Swapnil had never hit me or abused me when I had been with him. But one day I had written in my magazine column that ‘every single woman I knew had been looked at with wrong intentions by men. All women, including myself. Once, as young as seven….’

“Can’t you just stop this?” Swapnil had asked the next day, throwing before me a copy of the magazine.

“No. I can’t.” I mumbled, scared to look up.

“You have to. I am getting disturbed.” Swapnil went outside.

I had been a theatre dialogue writer when Swapnil had seen me. He hated theatre. I left it. Eventually, I stopped going out for walks and trips because I was afraid that Swapnil would pester the servants about me. After three years of relationship, he also wanted me to stop writing what I wanted. He was disturbed…. about.. about… what…? That he was in a relationship with a mature woman who could feel pain instead of a doll?

At thirty-five I was burning inside my body, dying to open up. That noon, I went back to the theatre.

***

“Who are you angry with?” Roger said grasping the actress by her wrist.

“Myself, you polygamous male.” She screamed hitting him with the freehand.

I sat among the audience, stunned. After years, I was hearing these dialogues again. In the interval, I went back-stage. It was noisy and shabby. The lead actress was talking to the director and sharing cigarettes. I felt awkward in my shabby appearance. Uncombed hair was falling all over my face.

I did not know Roger then as he was a new actor in the troupe. He was sitting with a make-up artist. I asked them who had written the dialogues, surprising Roger. The make-up artist smiled slyly; he had been my friend once.

Roger laughed, “You did not like it?”

“I wrote them,” I said. Roger’s eyes widened. The make-up artist laughed, passing me a chair. I raised my head to the light. He dabbed a little mascara to my lashes, gloss to my cracked lips. Roger seemed so much younger than both of us that we ignored him. The make-up man was making my hair while I laughed at his jokes.

“I have read your magazine column,” Roger said seriously after a while. He raised his face to meet my gaze. I felt respect for them.

***

As I returned from the theatre, Swapnil saw me with make-up after several months. It was the last time too. Swapnil was mesmerized but he grasped my wrist in anger; the maid had told him where I had gone.

I left. People said I was shameless, disgusting. I asked whether they would say the same if I was a man and Swapnil a woman? They did not understand. Freedom was calling, along with the shame people poured on me. I needed to live. My life was becoming colorless. Swapnil moved on with his relationships as a successful hotelier while I and Roger struggled with our careers. Roger eventually moved from theatre to films.

Four years my junior, Roger became my friend, my companion, my secret-keeper. Finally, we got married, against the world. Marriage was not important to me anymore but I wanted to be a bride someday. Roger stayed with me for seven years while I wrote for magazines, theatres. People made me into a flag-bearer of feminism.

When I was forty-five, Roger collapsed behind the stage one night. He had excruciating stomach pains. Terminal cancer. “I need you,” I begged to him at the hospital.

“You have your whole life before you… to fly.” He whispered.

Roger died within two months.

***

People playing Holi on the roads made me feel joyful. Still, I slipped away, covering my head in the veil. I wandered off into the lonely fields to play with the grass and talk to the flowers. The dry air. I remembered Roger holding my hands when we came to see the farmhouse in monsoons and we both were struggling not to slip in the wet mud. We kept giggling like children.

“But Roger has died. Why would you live like this?” My editor said one night after Roger passed away and I returned to writing.

“You have to move on. You can believe I still want you?” Swapnil said the other day.

Feminists said that I should move on, to show the world that widowhood is nothing. But they were wrong at that point. I am not a widow. I am a love-sick girl.

Four years have passed since Roger went. After a series of unsuccessful relations with prettier women than me, Swapnil is still alone. He talks to me. I tell him I want to be alone but he insists, gets angry, slams the receiver because he cannot accept as a man that I ever left him. My eyes fill up. One day society had blamed me for leaving Swapnil, today feminists blame me for not moving on. I laugh; I cry.

Let me be alone. Roger’s memories will stay with me as long as I live. There is the blood of freedom on my lips.