Short Story: Broken Membrane

It is not that Shyam and Binodini loved each other very much and so they got married. No sooner had their relationship begun than they stepped into wedlock. While they were in an assignation one late night in the back yard of her house, her family set out to search for her resulting in a commotion and Binodini could not get back into the house. They eloped that night, having neither planed for it nor decided on it, just hard-pressed by the circumstance. Had they not eloped that day, it is probable that they would not have tied the knot. In fact, they had known each other barely two months when then eloped.

I know everything.

Shyam cannot love his wife unsparingly. Does he doubt Binodini’s loyalty—for what and since when? Doubt? He does not know that. He is just bored and tepid. He wants his wife to stay at her parents’. Are there any Sabitri-Satyaban, Nala-Damayanti or Khamba-Thoibi now?

This morning Shyam saw the picture of a man who was to die soon. A man whose execution had been ordered. It was the picture of Mr. Moise Tshombe, the former Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo whose commands people ingratiatingly swarmed over once, standing in his black suit by his car with his glasses on and his hands the pockets, about to leave his Madrid home after being sentenced to death by the military government. In his dull mien Shaym saw something unspeakable. Kind of a torpid look. Silence and loneliness. Ah! The grave expression of loneliness. History is not reliable, Shyam thought.