Serious Men

her cry alone.
    ‘I just checked,’ she said, almost inaudibly, ‘There is a flight to Madras in two hours. I have to go.’
    ‘Do you want me to go with you?’
    ‘I know you don’t want to come.’
    ‘I will come.’
    ‘No. It’s all right. She was dying anyway. I am crying because it seems right to cry. I am OK otherwise.’
    ‘I will go with you.’
    ‘Actually, I want to go alone. It’s like a holiday for me.’
    ‘Holiday?’
    ‘Yes. I am such a sick woman.’
    They took a taxi to the airport because Lavanya said he should not drive in the rains, and the black-and-yellow taxi was anyway the same ancient Fiat they had. He had insisted on driving but, as always in these matters, she prevailed.
    ‘You don’t know this, but you cannot see very well,’ she told him, when they had squeezed themselves into the back seat.
    ‘I can see very well,’ he said.
    ‘I will be thinking in the plane how you are going to get back. Today I feel everybody around me is going to die.’
    ‘When are you back?’
    ‘Ten days,’ she said, ‘Maybe more. There will be ceremonies. And I want a break.’
    ‘From what?’
    ‘From you,’ she said.
    The windows of the taxi were rolled up because of the rains. It was hot inside and there was the smell of damp cotton.
    Acharya felt invisible creatures biting his buttocks. He moved in a jive as if to crush them angrily, and that made Lavanya chuckle. ‘What?’ he asked, thinking that she had gone mad with sorrow.
    ‘Nothing,’ she said. They travelled in silence for a while. Then he reached out and held her hand. As though it were a mystical martial art technique, her languid head fell on his shoulder.
    The concourse that led to the departure terminal was a gentle gradient. Acharya walked up like a benevolent genie carrying asuitcase that appeared small in his hand. He felt odd holding a single suitcase. It had the austerity of elopement.
    As a boy, he had once gone with friends to count the steam trains from a footbridge. He had seen a pair of fleeing lovers on the narrow-gauge track running towards the railway platform, fearing that the world was chasing them. The man was holding a black briefcase and the girl was carrying a small cloth bag. For many years after that, even now on this rainy night, in a corner of his mind Acharya associated love with lightness, and marriage with extra luggage. Usually, when he and Lavanya arrived at the airport, he was pushing an overloaded trolley like the hotel housekeeping arriving at a door. There was another reason why he felt odd as he walked up the gradient. This was the first time he was sending Lavanya off. Normally it was she who sent him off. Or, she travelled with him, and that was always an event. She never let him take shoulder-bags. Suitcases it had to be. ‘Clothes don’t get crumpled that way,’ she would say. He secretly admired her logic, and even conceded that she was right, but a bag to him was a symbol of nomadic freedom, an imperfection that said the journey was not important, the destination inconsequential. A suitcase, on the other hand, was a sign of grand departures and self-important arrivals. It was a confession, like the shirt of a dandy, that life was important. Once, when he had told Lavanya this, she screamed, ‘My god what a poet, you travel business class don’t you?’
    They reached the glass doors of the terminal where three guards were checking the tickets of passengers in the middle of bad-mouthing a senior who was not present. Acharya fumbled for Lavanya’s ticket in his pockets. He had just purchased it from the counter. He was pleased when he found it and gave his wife a wide grin. She looked at him with worry. How was he was going to take care of himself?
    ‘Open the door for the maids,’ she said. ‘I have Meenu’s mobile. I will call her every day.’
    ‘Who is Meenu?’
    Lavanya looked exasperated. ‘She is our cook.’
    He pulled up the tow handle of the suitcase and gave it to herwith a deep, grim face, as though it was a lifetime achievement award. She dragged the suitcase, sniffling, holding a kerchief to her nose which was now red. Before she entered the terminal she turned to look at her husband. He waved at her. A young couple behind her mistook her tears for the romantic distress of separation. They gave the seniors an exaggerated look of approval. ‘So cute,’ the girl said.
    Lavanya disappeared somewhere behind the X-ray machines. When Acharya turned to leave he