Far Away

I miss my wife. I realized this when I spent mindless evening hours in the office on my first Monday without her. Even more harshly when I returned to the dark and empty apartment afterwards.

She has gone to states on work and will be away for two months. She has promised, or in her own words, threatened to return within six weeks. I’m hoping that it would be six weeks.

It has been more than two days since she has left and it is already beginning to show. I had lived alone for a very long time in my life. Alone not just in sociological but even in psychological sense, I had been alone to the extent that sooner I even began to relish it. I would begin to get restless if anybody stayed at my place for longer than a week. During weekends, I used to rigorously clean my apartment, admire its neatness from afar, or go to Barista, order a large American Espresso and read a book.

Mahesh, my friend saw this pattern and advised me not to get married. He even joked about how I would feel about my wife after a week. ‘She is eating into my space’ is what I would say, according to him.

I began to believe this a little. I’m a loner is what I began telling myself and started behaving accordingly. This attitude cost me a bit at my workplace and among my friends as well because I’m really not a loner. I like people around me and I like to be the center of any discussion.

I didn’t realise this till she came into my life. She made sure that there are people all over. She resumed my connection with my closer relatives and thanks to her I could re-communicate with my parents. I never used to miss my parents and because of her, I began to miss them.

Nothing was important to me except sitting next to her, chatting some meaningless stuff or even arguing over some silly point.

I made a reasonably decent Upma on Sunday. I used the recipe that she had prepared before leaving. I didn’t follow the instructions on the amount of water and the duration of the simmer. If I had, it would have turned into a really delicious one, probably better than her cooking.

I know that she is missing me. She knows that I would miss her too. Perhaps she is not aware how much.

I want to tell her that I miss her so much that it hurts. I’m writing this by sitting next to her teddy doggy that she kisses when she is happy. It is staring at the empty room and is quite sad.