The Kaleidoscope

I didn’t dare check what time it was, lest he become aware that I was up and watching him from my tiny window comprising a small fold in the blanket that enabled me to see the surroundings while I could stay hidden from his prying eyes. At times, I loved playing this game with no one but myself, watching the world go by while I lay invisible in a corner, like a sorceress. For a moment, I was stunned when his eyes lingered on my window for a moment too long, making me wonder whether my eyes had an irradiance like those of a cat but then, he resumed his chores and I relaxed.

I had been watching the bathroom door, waiting for him to emerge from the shower with nothing but a towel around his waist. It was a working day for the both of us but I could afford to go a little late and hence this luxury. As the bathroom door opened, I could see shadows moving through the steam, illuminated with a distant incandescent bulb of a yellow hue, making it appear like it was sunrise in some distant, foggy hill station. Or, was it sunset I asked myself. Presently, he emerged from the bathroom and went to the dressing table to get himself ready for work. I moved just the tiniest bit possible so as to get a better view from the kaleidoscope I had fashioned for myself out of the blanket. However, I was conscious that were I to move too much, the coloured shards in the kaleidoscope would never align, for I would have alerted my quarry about my secret surveillance. 

He went to his closet and started running his fingers over the trousers that hung in there, trying to pick one to wear. After selecting my favourite trouser of his and a crisply ironed white shirt to go with it, he threaded in the belt in his trouser, feeling the belt loops as he did so and then, quickly wore both. He then picked out and smelled the tie that I had given him for our last anniversary, a hand crafted silk tie of a dark maroon hue. He took his time in front of the mirror, knotting the tie a few times and feeling the knot and then, not satisfied with the outcome, undoing it and repeating the procedure with a different type of knot. He finally settled for what I called a samosa knot, although he had a technical name for it that I could never remember. The coloured shards moved as he then tried to select cufflinks. He considered several, like the silver aeroplanes I had gifted him as his wings when he had learned paragliding or the beer kegs I had gifted the morning after we had had a fight. However, he finally chose the Bullet motorcycle cufflinks. 

Through my kaleidoscope, I almost felt the wind ruffle my hair and the raindrops lash my face, as I remembered the impromptu motorcycle ride we both had embarked upon in the monsoons. It felt like it was just yesterday that, drenched in the rains, my skin had sung an ode to the Sahyadri Mountains, and to the Bullet motorcycle. We were riding to work, with me as pillion, when he avoided turning towards the office and instead, clutched my fingers and whispered just loud enough to be audible over the wind, “I don’t feel like staring at a screen for the next nine hours. Mind if we looked at something else?” Having given a miss to our respective offices for a day had turned out to be one of the most serendipitous decisions for the both of us, for it was there, standing in the rain on a deserted mountain, that he had told me that he would like to spend the rest of his life with me. He had also told me about the testicular cancer scare he had had in the past and that if I had any reservations about that, I was free to walk away. This morning, I was glad that I had brushed apart any reservations I might have had, for this was the most blissful relationship for me. His routine medical scans had shown nothing, although even if they had, I would still have been where I was this minute. 

The shards moved again, jolting me to my senses as his favourite brand of after shave hung in the air. As I looked again, he was trying to comb his hair into a coherent mass, something they had stubbornly defied all these years. He finally let them be and picked up the shoes I had polished for him the previous night and kept at the usual place, along with freshly washed socks. He had told me several times that he could do that for himself but it was out of habit that I couldn’t resist doing it and he too had finally accepted it. 

As he was putting on his shoes, a thin sliver of sunlight landed on him, as if the Sun wanted to paint him gold. The beam crisscrossed his eyes, making them stand out like fiery, orange balls. However, the compassion in them overcame the sun’s fiery wrath and they sparkled brilliantly, as if a solitary oil lamp was floating on the dark Ganges River in the night. He sat meditatively, running his fingers through his hair, occasionally glancing in my direction. He wasn’t particularly bothered with the sun shining in his eyes. My mind played games with me, telling me that maybe he sat there like that for he knew I was watching and he was enjoying this game of – Do you know that I know as well? 

With a smooth, practiced motion, he flung open the curtains, letting copious amount of daylight stream in unhindered. I secretly knew that it was his call for me to wake up. He did not like waking me up with words and hence let nature do the talking. I knew that he would not wait for me to wake up but would rather go ahead and fix breakfast for the both of us. In the past, whenever I was late, my breakfast would have been waiting for me unfailingly. He left the door slightly ajar as he left the bedroom and veered for the kitchen. I could hear his now practiced footsteps, for he knew where everything was kept and followed a clockwork precision in retrieving it. 

I abandoned one kaleidoscope for another as I tiptoed noiselessly to the ajar door, peeping out with a single eye. The breakfast had been almost completely fixed and he was just about to sit down on the dining table. I could have joined him for breakfast, something that I did on most mornings. However, today I felt like watching him for just a bit longer. I wondered what words would he have chosen were we to interchange places, with him observing me from the kaleidoscope and I going about my diurnal chores. His prowess over words was legendary and he could write vivid prose, creating magic out of imagining the mundane. 

I finally opened the door and walked towards him, my hair still ruffled. I stood behind him and placed my hands upon his shoulders as he pressed his fingers on mine when I leaned closer to him. His skin smelled like the wet jungles we had ridden or hiked through countless times, his hands guiding me around rocks covered in scree or camouflaged mud patches. Both of us had spent countless nights in jungles, sleeping under the stars, trying to figure out constellations or making our own, spotting wild animals through our binoculars and staying cosy in our sleeping bags. As my hair fell over his face, I remembered how he had once described my hair as a golden sieve through which the sunlight craves to filter, wanting to be caressed by them. His fingers seemed to tell me that he was ready for adventure even today. 

I sat down beside him and made small talk about our next planned adventure. He finished his breakfast and got up to leave for work. I observed him carefully as he walked to the door. I knew that time was running out but suppressed the urge to check my watch. I took a deep breath and started counting in reverse under my breath. "Ten, nine, eight, seven..." I could not complete my reverse countdown, for he had reached the door and, with a practised motion, grabbed his white cane that was hanging on the wall. I rushed forward to embrace him. Rarely, if ever, did I cry but today was one of those days. It had been a freak accident over seventeen years ago in which he had saved my life but had lost his eyesight in doing so. His eyes, which could see the world in such hues and colours that often made me wonder whether nature had accidentally spilled its palette in front of him, those eyes had been rendered colourless. Maybe it was nature’s cruel way of taking back its beauty, for he could describe it in ways that even nature itself might not have thought of. 

As I shed a tear on his cheeks, he smiled a kind smile and said, “Don’t cry sweetheart. It was your pair of eyes that really cast the colour in whatever I saw and wrote. And, they still do.” I wiped my tears and, as he left for work, started making plans for our next ride where he would ride pillion with me and got lost in thoughts of what words would he use to describe that ride.