LEAVING HIM OR LIVING WITH HIM?!?! [RAMAN & SEETHA]

[Reading the other side unnecessarily of a very good blog recently published here.]

Raman had to reach Kozhikkode[Calicut] before 8AM to meet the General Secretary of his Association. So he had to catch the 3.30AM Palakkad FP of the KSRTC. He got up at 2.30AM. While preparing a black tea for himself to begin the day properly, with out disturbing Seetha in her sleep, he thought of doing something more to help her in the morning cooking before she goes to her office. While the water for tea was getting to boiling, he took the rice cooker ready with rice and water to be kept over the gas. By the time of his toileting after drinking the hot black tear, steam would-be coming out of the cooker for the two when he could put the weight on the nozzle. Brushing the teeth, a quick bath and dressing, the cooker and the rice would be ready to be put off.

When she gets up and goes to the kitchen, Seetha will see that “half” of the cooking he has tried to complete.

As usual, he had to hurry in the end. That was a perpetual curse for him. He always tried to remember that he was absent minded. When he goes anywhere, he will think in advance what all things he has to take with him. He will set all those things on a side table and take them and put in his bag for his trip just before he left the house..

This time also he got ready all the things required for his Kozhikkode trip. When he was putting them one by one in a typical cloth-bag to be hung from shoulder, he found that his ball point pen was not among the required things. In the background of his subconscious he saw Seetha making a list of things to be purchased next day.

He smiled to himself. If his guess of Seetha’s taking the pen after he kept it on the side table was correct, he was positively sure that she would keep it back in its original place. She does not approve keeping things in an intermediate place. He went to the writing table where the pen stand was.. The pen stand was not standing but lying on the table.

Oh! That was it! Our Marjar[ pet cat] had his love chase with one of his lady loves last.night. I remembered it as in a dream-background. Their warning, threatening, angry, cries, final ling in a tin shearing shout which was in the boarder of a living dead sound. Again he smiled, this time he cannot make it perfectly silent.

During their honeymoon days Seetha asked him-- she must have felt free to ask and say anything and everything—if the cat’s affair was so unpleasant and painful unlike ours- why were they so particular about it?!

He laughed and laughed till his breath was out..

She was a mixture of extremes; He could note that. His “arranged” marriage partner’s special characteristics seemed to be interesting and annoying. She was from a remote village away from the district headquarter town like his.. The poet was wrong when he said that the village girls were simple and straight. She knew many practical intricacies of life much better than him. She began thinking of correcting him from the very second day since marriage. But in matters like cat-affair she was as innocent as a child, he believed.

He knew that the pens in the stand have become projectiles. There was no point in searching for HIS pen on the floor. He got some pen from the floor when he heard the wall clock chiming “ding” “ding” “ding” in its sonorous metallic voice.

Oh! God!! It was three. It will take full 25minutes walking to reach the State Transport Stand. He will have to rush now!.........It was always like that with him.. He will have to rush in the last minute however much he tried to be otherwise.

Luckily the front door can be closed and opened from inside and outside. He must lock it and make run-walk because he suddenly remembered the buses leave 5minutes before schedule from the KSRTC stand to the Municipal bus stand. It was just 3past. If he was ready to run…..why not? The road will be empty. There will be no human being known or unknown to ask him “Entha Mashe odane?”[Why sir, you are running?]

Even News Paper boys or milk men would not be there. They usually come to the road around 4.30.

Raman ran a kilometer and a half coming to a decent walking pace when some stray vehicle light was seen in distance.

“All is well that ends well”, he “proverbed” his entry into the Palakkad Limitted Stop Fast Passenger Bus which was “gur gurring” with driver on his thrown and conductor talking to the fleet manager at the counter. There were only 3 passengers including him.

Then entered : the conductor, ringed the bell unnecessarily loudly, and occupied his seat. He was not coming to the passengers to give tickets. Oh! He forgot! Officially the trip started from the Municipal Bus Stand.

The conductor came to him and he purchased the ticket when the bus restarted from the Municipal Bus Stand and Raman took a second long seat from the front. A three-person seat. Took the legs up on the seat, leaned on the body of the bus, his hands holding on the bars. He decided to even his account of sleep.for the day.

And he did sleep even forgetting where he was for which he was famous from childhood days when he was seen sleep-walking while returning in the early hours of morning from the temple festival grounds after the “Utsavam”. Yes! Sleep he did till he suddenly woke up hearing a hissing sound and saw the bus to have stopped. The conductor and driver were standing near the engine cover, the driver was opening the stopper of the radiator which when partly opened was giving the hissing sound.

None of those activities was causing him any direct concern………..But……but …..but that sound of pressurized steam prompted a familiar resonation…….He felt uneasy…sure!  But when it came it came like a thunder blot, hurricane, flood, and Earth quake!

The sound resonated with that made by the rice cooker on the flame in the kitchen

Which he intended to put off before leaving the kitchen

AND WHICH HE DID NOT DO!!??!! ???! ! !????!!! ! !??????   

Bharatha Vakyam:[Statement of conclusion] Seetha did not leave Raman. She continued to live with him. Possibly she could not come to a comparative study of the risks involved.

LEAVING HIM OR LIVING WITH HIM?!?!?!??!!???!!!