Page from a Diary
P.S.- Today I fell for him even more. So, now, I’m a step closer to going up to him and saying, “I love you, Aryan.” So, dear diary, let’s hope together.”
The alarm managed to fulfill its duty twelve minutes after its assigned time. She woke up with a mild headache. She almost always has a bad hangover. She stretched her hand to the other side of the bed only to find it empty, and his scent too, receding. She freshened herself up and lazily strolled downstairs to the kitchen looking for breakfast and, well, her husband too. In the kitchen, to her surprise, she didn’t find any breakfast. Not finding her husband, although, was not a surprise at all. Her eyes fell on the Post it note on the refrigerator door, saying, “Had an important pitch. I’ll be late.” All she managed to give away was a sigh. The sigh alone gave window to the reminder of all the emotions that welled up inside her.
She made herself breakfast – toast, tea and some biscuits. The toast wasn’t a perfect one, the edges a bit charred. It didn’t matter, she thought to herself. What stung her heart was taking out only a single dish instead of a pair of them.
She then switched over to her favorite company, flipping through the selected channels on the 48″ screen. The same boring daily soap was bothering her. She looked for some respite. So with a fair share of optimism she picked up her phone and distant friend. A few minutes into the conversation and it all felt so unanimated and dictated that her inner self cringed. Her heart longed for the lively chats she used to have with her old friends. The person on the other end finally escaped by saying, ” Um, Swati, I’m a bit engaged. I have to be somewhere. I’ll talk to you later, dear. Bye.” Left in the void. Alone. Again.
One of the tainted pages caught her eye. She started reading.
“…It was the day when everything seemed to go wrong but I believed that there was a rainbow lurking there somewhere…”
A volley of emotions arose in her mind, with each sentence adding a special variant of feelings to it. When her eyes met “I love you, Aryan”, she gave away a smile, and remembered the ache. She sat at the edge of the king sized bed, mining deeper and deeper looking for diamonds. No the ones she was wearing, the ones she had dreamt of wearing. The honking of her husband’s car shook her back into reality. She glanced at the wall clock. It was fifteen minutes past ten. She realized that her old mate had stolen her from the reality for hours.
She hurried to the kitchen and started preparing dinner. Anil, on entering the house, threw his briefcase on the sofa, his jacket on the armrest and loosened his tie. “I’ve already had dinner. Don’t make anything for me”, he said, taking the glasses off his weary eyes. Swati, still partially immersed in her new found memories, managed a simple nod. She then asked him, ” So, how was your day?”, more out of obligation, rather than care. “Nothing special, tiring”, was the reply. A few moments of thought, and Swati uttered, “Today, I found my old diary. The one I wrote when I was sixteen.”
Anil didn’t react as expected. A few moments of quietness and he said, ” Look, I have to work on some presentations, so, good night.”
