Meha shifted the phone over her slowly reddening ear, and then flexed
the neck. Her mobile device had begun to feel hot as waves of anger
assailed her. The voice at the other end was becoming increasingly unclear,
ending in a series of gulps and strangled sobs after every sentence. “Sshh, I
hear him calling. I have to go,” Meha strained to understand the garbled words
but the phone had snapped shut.
“Homes are supposed to meet our needs. When do they transform into hell
holes?” Meha sat staring at her Apocalypse pink Blackberry, paralyzed with
concern. Where was the line she had better stop short of? Need she worry
about her anguish becoming interference? Did the meddling clause have any moral
standing in the face of bone weary misery? She chewed on a clove to ease the
molar that had begun to pound more with distress. No amount of inhaling and
exhaling seemed to ease the tension in her muscles and nerves.
A violent vibration lit up the small screen. Meha jabbed at the answer
key, heart in the mouth. “Are you all right?” she asked in a whisper, even
though she was sitting thousands of miles away from the caller. “I have just
come upstairs and locked myself in. He was charging at me,” the stammer
sibilated at her over the transcontinental radio waves.
“Stay calm please. Keep safe. Look after yourself. This is not your
fault,’ Meha entreated forcefully, hunching over the phone as though she could
somehow transport herself digitally through the instrument and across the seven
seas. A muffled sound hit her in reply, “He is banging on the door! I will call
you back,” there was a click.
Meha slumped back on her bean couch, nursing the hot cup of cardamom tea
her maid had brought in. The hot, aromatic, spicy brew was what she drowned
herself in during times of personal anguish. With every sip now, she sat up more,
debating in her mind the several courses of action available. It was hard to
gauge the dynamics at work in another time zone. “Spousal violence in Canada,”
she hurriedly typed into the search box on her IPad.
Clink! Her tinkerbell notification rang with the yellow envelope on the
phone screen. She tapped and read the blurb, “I have had enough. He is
delusional; says he wants to divorce me; told him to go ahead. Don’t worry
about me. I am going to take my pill and sleep now.”
No comments:
Post a Comment