Outsider

He felt a sudden chill and shuddered involuntarily. He pulled the sheet over his body, upto his shoulders, deciding against getting up from bed to reduce the speed of the fan overhead. It was the damp monsoon weather which played tricks like this. It was not as if he had a fever coming. There was nothing wrong with his health. Probably the only thing God had blessed him with.

He was alone, in bed, re-reading Albert Camus’ ‘The Outsider’, an excellent piece of erudite writing if there was one. The book was now half-closed, a finger marking the place where he had stopped reading momentarily. The chill had unnerved him. He looked up at the wall opposite and sighed, prolonging the moment with a thought from the past.

This was mostly how his life’s been every evening. A nagging post-dinner routine: mindless TV serials, in bed by 11 o’clock, a book for company. He shifted uncomfortably, propping himself up against the pillow behind him, the slim book held firmly in his lap, readying himself to start a conversation with an invisible person at the foot of his bed.

Yes, this was exactly how his life’s been ever since Alpana walked away as mysteriously as she had walked into his life one day. It had happened almost in seconds. We should be on our own for a while, she had said before leaving. And she was gone. Alpana never took long to decide. But this decision, he envisaged, he hoped, had taken her time.

It wasn’t easy leaving someone you love. He had trouble leaving his home when he was younger. He recalled his parents standing at the door, begging him to reconsider, saying they had never wished him harm. But he had walked off anyway; a few thousand rupees in his pocket, a copy of Albert Camus’ ‘The Outsider’ in his bag amongst his clothes, and a one-way air ticket to Mumbai.

Ten years later, in bed with the dog-eared book, his mind was jammed in a tangle of emotions. He recalled the look on his parents’ faces as he left them standing helplessly at the door of their Calcutta home. He recalled his immigrant life in the new city: jobs, friends, adjustments, and a roof over his head. He recalled how his heart exploded, the pain searing through every fibre of his body, when Alpana walked out of his suburban flat two years ago.

He felt the slow taste of his tears on the corner of his trembling lips as they trickled down his cheeks to the book in his lap.