A Game of Chess | Ruhi Jiwani

“What shall I do now? What shall I do?    
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street    
With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?    
What shall we ever do?”    
                          The hot water at ten.    
And if it rains, a closed car at four.    
And we shall play a game of chess,    
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.    
                    –T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

They had always been Rachna and Ravi, her name coming first because of its length and slightly ornamental quality, his name coming second because it was breezy and logical-sounding.  That had been how they had connected within the relationship as well—she had brought the emotion and he had been practical.
They weren’t caricatures by any means, but both had always recognized that Rachna was the emotional core of the relationship.  Ravi had surrounded her like the iris surrounds the pupil.  He’d surrounded her with his logic and his boyish, carefree attitude, protecting her from the world around them.
At times, he’d tried to make inroads into her core—as though it was possible for the iris to invade the pupil, as though they weren’t clear and distinct biological parts with their own purposes, as though they could ever be one!
Now that Ravi was dead, Rachna wondered now if she had rejected his advances to be closer to her.  There had been times when she’d felt him longing for something more.  Was it compassion he’d wanted, or just some kind of recognition of who he really was—the person behind the façade?
She’d resisted, afraid of what was lurking beneath, afraid that it would send her running in the opposite direction, ruining their fragile equilibrium.  She’d encouraged him to keep on going with his work, to be normal, to resist the stronger emotions that crackled under his surface like barely-held-in lightning.
She’d had a vision for herself, but that vision had always included Ravi.  He’d been her one true thing, the one she didn’t doubt, the one she recognized as a piece of undeserved good fortune.  It was as though she’d painted her door red to invite prosperity, as they recommended in feng shui, and he’d walked in.  
They had met over the internet.  It sounded funny when she told her friends about it.  After all, how many people meet over the internet and actually have a full-fledged relationship?  How could you be sure of someone you met that way?  What if they had deep, dark secrets lurking within?  What if they were stalkers, serial killers or pedophiles?
For some reason, none of that had daunted her back then like it did now.  Had it just been the early days of the internet when you trusted people to represent themselves truly?  Or had it been fate bringing them together and forcing them to believe in each other?
She didn’t know, and she was beginning to tire of all these questions.  The idea now was to move on with her life—to work, build a social circle, maybe even find another partner.  This constant self-examination struck her as torturous, and she didn’t know why she indulged in it.  It wasn’t like her.  
She felt angry all the time, angry that they’d been too busy to spend time with each other.  They’d both delayed gratification, spending more time at work than with each other.  It wasn’t that they didn’t enjoy each other’s company.  They’d just maintained the illusion that they would enjoy it more in the future when they’d achieved everything they wanted.
She couldn’t remember how this illusion had begun.  At times, she remembered waiting in the hope that he’d come to be with her more often.  She’d deliberately done nothing but wait, even though her work kept calling out to her in insidious whispers egging her on towards greatness.  Still, she’d seen only flashes of him, barely enough to confirm that he was there.
When he was alive, it was easy to forget him and just be by herself.  Now that he was dead, she felt the opposing forces of depression and anxiety battling it out within her.  The depression was like gravity, scientifically defined as the attraction of two bodies towards each other.  The reason why we are pulled down towards the earth isn’t just because the earth calls to us but also because we call to it.  We are both physical bodies; the earth is just a much bigger one and its pull is greater.
When Rachna felt depressed, she was pulled downwards but with the knowledge that there was something within her that concurred with the pull, an almost physical quality that was as responsible for her sadness as Ravi’s death.  Death was an independent entity but life, which resided within her, was also to blame for her lingering sorrow.
It was hard for her to stay at home now; she took every excuse she could to get out, writing in the library or in a noisy coffeeshop where it was hard to concentrate.  She thought that if she treated life like a continuous battle, then she would eventually win the war against unhappiness.  She didn’t want to indulge in self-pity, but she had to recognize the fact that she was alone, a part of her cut off.
And it hadn’t just been cut off by accident.  It might have been easier to accept a car crash or even a terrorist attack, in the face of which human beings were usually helpless.  It was the fact that he had taken his own life that clung to her like a ghostly shadow.  No, it was actually a part of her, something that had emerged from her pores, ready to leave.  But now, its viscous nature made it stick to her body, causing pain with every movement.
Yet it was difficult to understand the nature of this pain.  It wasn’t physical discomfort or even fatigue but more like apprehension that with every step, her true nature would be revealed.  After all, she must have driven him to it.  They had been together for seven years and although she’d recognized that he wasn’t a happy person, she hadn’t plumbed the depths of his despair.
It sounded like a clichéd thing to ask but how could she have been so blind?  How could she have lived with him for seven years without realizing what he was going through?  And had she been responsible, in some way?  Either by ignoring his misery or worse, causing it?
Yes, she had known there was more to him, beneath the surface.  But in her experience, this was true of every human being.  There was an outside veneer, a smooth skin that covered everything gory beneath—a flood of organs, blood and entrails.  Should she have cut it open and let it all flow out?  Or performed some kind of surgery that would have restored him to normalcy?
The sight of blood had made her nauseous, as had the fear that one wrong snip could have killed him entirely.  So she’d tried to invade him through his pores, willing him to stand up tall and claim what he deserved.  She’d had to feel her way through and she had really thought that she was helping him in some way.
Until she’d seen his insides splattered on the walking path of their building.  He’d jumped twenty-six storeys, a dauntless act which had left him completely unrecognizable, his smooth, light skin torn apart in hundreds of places which had been unable to hold the pain in anymore.  And the blood had poured out in gushes and trickles, finally free of the binding that held it in.
Rachna still lived in the same apartment.  She’d moved out for some time after Ravi died, taking solace with her parents.  She’d thought that she needed their support, but it was too difficult to live continuously in pain around people who were going on with their everyday lives.
She only had to meet them at mealtimes and maybe spend an hour or two watching TV with her mother in the evenings.  But every time, there was an awareness of her difference.  She was now what Ravi used to be—a flesh and blood organism trying to move beyond its physicality to express emotion.
But it only emerged in the privacy of the bedroom she’d had as a child.  She cried there in the night, remembering what it had felt like to hold him under the blankets, sometimes completely naked but more often, clothed.  It had mostly been a Platonic kind of love, except for the weekly sex which had awakened the sleeping lion of her physicality.
She’d tried to tamp down those feelings during the week, only succeeding in carrying them with her wherever she went.  Sometimes, they would emerge in the form of irritation against strangers who got in her way—women pushing and pulling to get in and out of the trains, hijdas at the traffic signals and professional beggars carrying starving babies to eke more money out of passersby.
If she yelled at someone, she felt contrite for the rest of the day, sometimes even for weeks.  She tried to make up for it by being the perfect wife—making dinner every night and giving Ravi massages when he came home feeling tense, even though she was equally tired.  Yet, that feeling of inadequacy persisted, like a stepchild being punished in the corner of the room.
In the beginning, right after his death, she’d felt as though she was responsible while knowing, at the same time, with a tiny but firm conviction, that she wasn’t.  But as time had gone by, both of those feelings had torn apart.  The guilt had lightened without going away entirely; its very mildness now irritated her to no end.  The conviction, however, had turned into rage which drove her, over and over, to reexamine all his actions and blame him for taking the easy way out, for leaving her to deal with this loss, for leaving her alone in a world which seemed populated by strangers.
***
Today, Rachna was about to do something different, something that didn’t fit in with her daily routine.  She was going to play a game of chess with a friend in the park.  She wasn’t sure how the idea had come up out of the blue.  She hadn’t played since she was a kid and a member of the chess club in her school.
Her friend had also been a member of the chess club and he was, as expected, a bespectacled, slightly potbellied guy with a charming smile nonetheless.  They’d always continued to be in touch, even while Rachna had been married.
She’d known, of course, that Chintu, or “little one,” as she had playfully called him in school, had always had a crush on her.  But after one lame attempt to take her hand at the tender age of fourteen (she’d slapped it away) he’d never tried to get closer to her, at least not physically.
He was a safe friend for a woman who was married, because she knew she’d never feel attracted to him.  And Ravi knew it too, and had no reason to feel jealous.  Still, she’d seen the look of doubt on his face sometimes when she’d told him she was going to meet George, which was Chintu’s real name.  And once or twice, he’d used the pet name Chintu with real derision, a form of jealousy which had made Rachna smile inwardly.
After Ravi’s death, every interaction with friends and family had taken on a different significance.  She felt as though she was more aware of people and really listened to what they had to say, more than she had before.  She’d never been conscious of being inattentive before, had always considered herself a good friend and conversationalist, only a little graver than might have been good for her.

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Ruhi Jiwani has a Master’s degree from Columbia University’s English and Comparative Literature department. Currently, Ruhi writes blogs for small businesses and I’ve also done some fashion writing. I’ve published poems in Femina, The Writer’s Eye, Off the Coast, The Binnacle and The Eclectic Muse