Darkness is not the absence of light…It’s the absence of right sense.

Insomnia was steering my life those days. A good sleep sounded like a boon for me. Some bewildered thoughts, few unsaid words, unending wait and an acute pain were my only companion of my sleepless nights and hopeless days.

It is 8^th of June, says the digital table clock. And with it the clock of my mind reminds me that it’s been two months I have been robbed off all my happiness. And most importantly I have spent this gruesome period of two months without a person whom I thought I can’t spend a day without. Time teaches you a million lessons, resurrects many a disbelief of yours. But I am yet to believe the fact, that believing in loving her was my disbelief.

I am reclined onto my couch staring helplessly at the starless night sky through the partially open window with a can of beer in one hand and lit up joint on the other. It was just another beginning of a sleepless, sadist, drug laden night. A part of me was dying to see a glimmer of hope on the endless canvas of darkness above me. But then it was just a wish…or yet another disbelief. There was an erotic pause in the stratosphere, the trees stood erect at their positions without creating a charm of rejuvenating breeze. Just the way my heart was following an ill-mannered rhythm after been succumbed to an irreplaceable loss. I walked up to the window stealthily and stretched my hand to further open it. I took a long drag and allowed the smoke disperse into the darkness of the night through my slightly parted lips. With every single drag I tried to find my mistake that led me to this.

I took a sip from my can as the nuttiness gave my head a spin. I controlled myself by holding the window grill and stood there unmoved. I took out my cell phone to read the last few verbally emotional encounters of ours. And I did feel that for an aching heart, it’s neither beer nor a hard rolled joint, but the reason of ache itself that can gift you the ultimate soothe. With the messages of her wishing good night caressing my forehead and kissing my eyes, came flashing all the moments of love we shared and also the moment that separated us. The sky was far away from changing its colour, the real night had just set in but the 3 by 2 inch cell phone screen flashing its neon light did illuminate my heart to a certain extent. I dropped the lighted joint’s bud in the astray and turned to read the messages, once again.
The messages did bring back the moments but this time the moments were accompanied by wet eyes and not grinning lips. The beer slipping down my throat did make me feel guilty somewhere. Deep down I felt I was a dolt to have treated her badly. Had I not been that rude to hurt her innocence that arose out of her love for me, I wouldn’t have been trading with insomnia now.

I kept my phone back; the messages had enough warmth to set my eyes watering and soul jittering with guilt. I turned towards the window looking at the darkness and lighted yet another joint. I closed my eyes with the first drag and tried to recollect something…

“Baby, you are overreacting…” She said with an airy gesture.
“Are you nuts?? I am absolutely not overreacting. It’s you who had pulled up this drama.” I spoke as my hoarse voice seemed to choke with the last word due to extensive shouting.
“All I want is your sweet little time….”
“If I devote my entire time to you, will that pay for my bread? Can you please grow up?”
She was already in tears. All these years I had lived seeing the kohl in her eyes sparkle with joy and now I am seeing it smudged with tears of grief and shattered expectations, never did I thought that I would be the reason for her tears.

“Baby…you may not earn bread by devoting time to me, but no nutrition is as nutritive as the nutrition of love and care…” she replied like a child with her left hand wiping her moist cheeks.

“You and your Cindrella dreams...Just enough. Look I think, I devote you enough time that can keep a relationship alive.” I said to her. She sat on the bed hanging her face with a pillow tugged in her arms.

“No dear…you don’t devote enough time. All you do is to get back from office…freshen up…finish your dinner…get drunk and sleep with me. Do you even know how you treat me??”

“What else can I do?? I need to work as well….” I was still not at the verge of accepting my guilt.

“I thought you loved me. I was wrong. This kind of love can be achieved with money. For your kind information I am your wife…not a prostitute…” She said with a trailing voice and left the room immediately. I stood there clueless and like every other arrogant Indian male I didn’t make any effort to stop her, instead I was confident that she will be back. Unfortunately the confidence brought to me two months of insomnia and drugs.

The conversation resounded in my mind as my blurred vision from behind the rising smokes of the lit up joint could see the flaws on my end. Just an apology wasn’t enough. I was ready to be on knees begging for another chance. And this was the first time in all these two months I felt I was wrong. My train of thoughts was interrupted by an irregular chirping of birds that neatly floated across the night shedding sky. I looked at the western sky that was gradually dissolving into faintest shades of red. The night was about to be drained. The morning was about to begin. And the darkness of my life guarded by ego and arrogance just got wet in the rain of love and care.

The endless cans of beer and unlimited joints that had been intoxicating my entrails all this while were showing effects. I was finding it tough to keep myself standing. My head was hurting badly but amazingly the ache in the heart was comparatively less. The window grill slipped off my palm as I fell flat on the ground on my back. All that my shutting eyes could manage to see was a rising sun…and the very sight made the heart promise to itself an apology to her the following day. I dozed off on the lap of many realizations.
               

The curtains of darkness were getting pulled over from my life…with the right sense sipping into the soul.