Sonal Singh On Sonal's Table

The quiet of the morning was broken by a ‘thud’ that echoed in the tranquil valley air like a gun shot. Then all was quiet again. It was 3 am. No one heard anything. No one stirred. No one rushed to investigate. Come morning, they discovered her. She lay in a crumpled heap, blood congealed around her mangled body. There were no suspects. She had been a woman madly in love, just a tad unhinged. Her possessiveness had bordered on psychotic control or so everyone had been told. So, suicide it was then. Not a homicide.

Would you believe it? Not a single relative shed a tear at the funeral including my wife and kids. I tell you, I had half a mind to cancel plans for ascendance and haunt the nightmares out of them. But, I took the high road and resisted the temptation. Finally, I was laid to rest. As the first shovel full of soil hit my casket, I panicked.

We went out often after that for meals and even movies. We discovered that we had much in common. We talked endlessly and shared stories of our childhood. I told him about my family, he told me about his. He was an army brat who had been raised all over India. His older brother was a software engineer in America and had recently married an American girl. The specifics of our friendship gradually changed as we discovered more about each other. Something grew between us but was yet unspoken. It was Rohit who confessed it first on one of our outings.