The Whiteboard
Mehr froze. Was this Joy? The well-built, handsome guy, whom she had loved and married, was now a frail, stooping person with a beard and blank eyes. A nurse was bringing Joy in a wheelchair to the visitor’s room where Mehr sat on a sofa. The nurse stopped the wheelchair in front of Mehr. Mehr looked into Joy’s eyes searchingly. What she found in them made her shiver. The blank stare without an iota of recognition was far from what Mehr had come prepared for. This was definitely not the love of her life and father of her two children. She hesitantly reached out and gently held his hand. Joy did not react. Mehr kept sitting like this with tears slowly streaming down her cheeks. She lost track of time and was suddenly shaken out of her self by the nurse who had come to wheel back Joy to his room. The visiting hours of the Senior Living were over. Joy went away just like he had come; without any expression on his face.
Was this fair? 66-year-old Mehr was thinking. Just a week back, when Mehr sat reading before going to bed, in her London home, she had got a call from her son Ayaan. He lived in Melbourne. “Mom, I have to tell you this. Dad has been suffering from Alzheimer’s for the past two years. He is living in an assisted living for seniors, in Mumbai. I just got a call from them saying that he is not doing too well.” Mehr could not believe her ears.
The news shook her very being. Joy had Alzheimer’s and was living in a Home for seniors in Mumbai! He had been diagnosed with the disease two years back but had told both his children to keep it from their mother. Suddenly Mehr wanted to see Joy. And here she was. She couldn’t move to leave even after Joy had been taken to his room. Had they written this present vision on their white board along with the other goals when they had planned their life together, 45 years ago?
Mehr could clearly see young Mehr and Joy of many years past. How well she remembered their first meeting! It was over a case study at IIM Ahmedabad. At the presentation, she tore apart his assumptions. He came up with better ones. After those few hours together, they were madly in love, with each other’s brains!
For Mehr, at 24 and Joy a year older, it was a love marriage. A decade later, they were a power couple and inspiration to their juniors.
Mehr was Vice President at PWC India. Joy was Partner, Global Consulting. They had two kids, Ayaan and Sara. They lived in a beautiful sea- facing South Mumbai flat, had three luxury cars and an efficient team of helpers running their house. The children, studying in international schools, went for exchange programmes to elite schools in other countries. They had everything that they had written down on a whiteboard when they were in their early twenties.
While their professional lives showed a steep elevation in the graph, there came countless small changes in their personal lives. Both of them were working in different time zones. Joy’s international business trips increased, and his role as a storyteller to his children at night could not be sustained. Much to the children’s disapproval, a well-trained nanny replaced him. Due to U.S. calls, Mehr had to miss dinner with the family on most of the days in the week. The steep success climb made it impossible for both of them to be home at the same time. They would hardly get to see each other, physically. Their post-dinner coffee, early morning yoga together and movie outings, gradually tapered to almost zero. The heady success clouded their whispering hearts, and they kept on living for tomorrow — independently. Before they could realise, they had become independent of each other in every possible way. Neither needed the other one. They had drifted apart.
The children were growing up fast, and the couple decided to get Joy’s parents to shift from their hometown to stay with them. Now they felt assured of their children’s needs being taken care of. Fortunately for them, the children, emotionally fed by their grandparents, managed to do well for themselves. Both Mehr and Joy, separately, did make efforts to resume their duties as loving and involved parents but somehow could not connect with the children. Mehr planned leave during their final exams to be with them, but the children clearly told her to leave them to their routine and the way of studying that they were used to; her extended help seemed like an interference to them. Mehr spent all the leave she had taken sleeping in her room! Joy, on one weekend, sat with Ayaan and Sara to help them with Math. In less than an hour, a frustrated Joy stormed out of the room. His method of doing the sums did not match the school teacher’s!
There would rise intense desires for togetherness in both often, but the drift between them would not let them be fulfilled. Both Ayaan and Sara went abroad for college. Suddenly one day, late evening, sitting on their sea-facing balcony, as Mehr watched the turbulent sea, something snapped in her. She felt empty. There was an unexplainable void choking her from inside. She could not breathe. She wanted to call out; but who would hear, she asked herself as she sat there, numb. Joy was in an online conference in his study. Mehr lay sleeping there all night.
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The void stayed with Mehr, and after a week or so, one night she opened the study door. Joy looked up and smiled, pointing to his ear pods. He was on a call. Mehr returned a half smile and sat on the sofa. She picked up the magazine from the table and started flipping through it. After almost 45 mins, the call got over. Joy asked in surprise, “What brings you here today, Meh? Have something to say? Well, I have ten minutes before my next call. Will that work?”
“ Yes, it will,” she replied. “ Well, let’s separate. Let’s get a divorce.”
“Come again, Meh, what did you say? Let’s get a divorce? Why?” Joy could not quite assimilate what he had just heard.
Mehr looked at Joy blankly.
“I see no reason for us to be together. We are living our own lives completely independent of each other. Different time zones, different schedules- do we need each other in any way, Joy?” Tears were trickling down her cheeks.
“I am sorry, Mehr. I have to join this con-call. Let’s talk later.” A stunned Joy managed to speak. Mehr quietly went out of the room, shutting the door behind her.
They spoke a couple of times to understand the issue. There was no complaint, no accusation, no apology; there was only blankness, vast and consuming like an ocean. Regret too seemed like a long-gone traveller who had forgotten its origin. They had started their lives together with love but had forgotten to nurture it and keep it alive!
The process was smooth. As it was mutual, the divides were clean and sharp. Thankfully, Ayaan and Sara had grown up very independently so they weren’t much emotionally impacted. They were studying abroad in their chosen streams. For them, Mehr and Joy would have the same role even after their divorce.
After a few years, Mehr took a VRS and relocated to London. She got deeply into Yoga and Spirituality. She and Joy did not keep in touch with each other at all.
“Madam, visitors can’t stay here after 9 pm.” Mehr looked up at the receptionist, who stood in front of her.
“Oh yes, of course,” she mumbled as she slowly got up and started walking towards the door. Suddenly everything was dark in front of her eyes. She fell sprawling on the floor. A sudden pain and tightness distorted her face for a brief time, and then all her muscles relaxed. Forever. She had suffered a massive cardiac arrest and was gone before the doctors there could even get to her.
Even such an end was not there on the whiteboard, 45 years ago!
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