The first ray of sunlight touched the top of the bed, making its way through the aperture between the embroidered curtains of light blue colour which he rarely opened even in the mornings, for his life had been cocooned in that two room apartment where a housemaid visited everyday and cleaned the house and cooked for him, and made him realize that a new day of loneliness and mental exercise was ready for him.

He slowly raised the part of his body above the waist and rested it against the back of the bed, facing the framed photo, hanging on the wall facing him across the bed lengthwise, of his beloved wife who had left him only after three years of their marriage. Instead of getting up and parting the curtains, he moved towards the switch board and switched on the light. He did not mind whether it was a day or night, for when he felt tired he slept and when fit to type again got up.

The morning duties of nature and dressing up did not take long and after about half an hour he was sitting in front of his computer, ready to add a few pages to the novel that he had been writing for more than seven months.

There were six apartments in that building but he had kept only one two room apartment for himself and rented out the other bigger apartments. The rent from the five apartments was much more than he needed for his monthly expenditure, so his bank balance kept on increasing but he never cared about that. He had inherited that building from his father who had died of a heart attack after the death of his mother in a car accident. He was the only child of his well off parents so everything was transferred to him very easily. He was past twenty five when his father had died and he remembered how much his father insisted on bringing a daughter-in-law in to the house. Unfortunately, the daughter-in-law came but only after his death.

Seema was a writer, an upcoming writer, and she was working for a famous magazine. He had met her in the Coffee House, the known rendezvous for writers, poets, professors, and intellectuals,. He had already got his Master’s Degree in English Literature and he had been approached by many publishing houses to work for them but he decided to be a full time writer. It was not difficult for him to get his first book published. “The Buddha in Me & Other Stories” was equally admired by the young and old and in a few months more than a million copies were sold. He was instantly a name to be talked about in Kolkata.

Though he was a little scared and nervous, he proposed to Seema. She looked in his eyes and smiled. It was too quick but it was the smile of approval. They got married in a very simple ceremony. Now life began to take new meanings and his house began to change rapidly: new furniture, new carpets, sofas, chairs, bigger television, latest style of bathroom and toilet, and so on.

Since both of them had common interests, most of the time they talked about books, writers, writing style, sentences, and their interpretations. He began to invite his friends from the Coffee House.

A selected group of writers and thinkers began to take shape in his house and a different school of thought developed. They were the writers who believed in extreme realism and never hesitated from spending a few hundred words on the description of a trivial thing like a twig or a leaf. There was romance in their writings, there was depth in their words, and their sentences were the mirrors which reflected different shapes if viewed from different angles and the interpretations often led to long discussions.

Seema was proud of him because he wrote from his heart and every line seemed to be talking to a reader. She often tried to imitate his style but her diction failed her.

“I wish I would write like you!” said Seema one evening, resting her head on his chest, lying beside him in their bedroom.

“I think you write better. I keep on exaggerating but you write to the point,” he tried to encourage her, caressing her head along the length of her long hair which reached up to her hips.

“I can’t find words to fit my thoughts but you are so spontaneous. I am surprised how easily you fit the words in your lines!” she raised her head and looked in his eyes.

“I am able to write because I feel the strength of the subject and proportional effect of the words which I use. I write because I know nothing better than writing. It is neither my profession, nor my livelihood, on the contrary, it is my lifeline and I can’t live without writing,” he smiled and kissed her on her lips.

“You are too difficult for a layman. Many of my friends say that half of what you write flies over their heads!” she said with laughter.

“They will have to raise their heads to retain my words,” his laughter mingled with his wife’s.

“You could reach wider audience if you wrote in the language which they could easily understand and feel convenient with,” said she.

“I have already told you that I don’t write to please others.”

The discussion continued late in to night but the embers were rekindled the very next morning. It was a very healthy environment of intellect, understanding, and learning in the house. Their maid servant often looked at them with her suspicious eyes, for she was habitual to seeing couples quarrelling over food, outings, relatives, clothes, television programmes, and so much so on the topics like ‘where is my mobile…where have you kept my blue shirt…why are you late today… who was that girl you were talking to….why don’t we go out more often…you have not bought me any gift this month….’

The maid servant felt very happy when she entered their house in the morning because she felt that she had left the clamour of the ignorant world outside and entered a place where no one would object to her tea, lunch, dinners, or the way she performed her duties.

Three years passed happily and rapidly. They didn’t have time to plan about anything like having babies, starting a business house, getting a new house constructed, etc.

That unfortunate day everything stopped in that house. Seema had to go to Mumbai to cover a story for her newspaper. He was there at the Kolkata airport to see her off. After that day, everything changed for him. That plane crash and the death of sixty eight passengers and the crew did not leave any chance of getting his Seema back in any recognizable form.

A kind of phobia began to overpower him and he began to remain more confined to the four walls of his room. His friends visited him frequently but when they saw that responses from him were diminishing, the frequency of their visits began to decrease.

The door bell startled him and he looked at the screen of his computer where his novel was taking shape. He got up and moved towards the front door.

The maid greeted him and directly entered the kitchen. In a few minutes she was standing, holding a cup of tea, in front of him.

“Sir, shall I remove these curtains today? They need to be washed,” said she timidly.

“There is no dirt in the house and I have never opened the windows. How can they be dirty?”

“But still…”

“All right, if you say, they must be dirty. Send them for washing,” said he with a smile that was merely a formality.

“Sahib, why don’t you invite your friends? I shall cook dinner for them. This is the month of festival and it is auspicious to invite friends to lunch or dinner,” said the maid.

“You see, all my friends are there in those racks,” he smiled, pointing to the rows of books.

“No, Sahib, your friends who used to visit you and Memsahib…”

“No, Sugandha, I don’t feel like it. I will inform you when I am ready for that,” he began to type again.

There was bright light in the room, once the curtains were removed. Out of curiosity, he came close to the windows. He knew that there was a women hostel across the road but that is all he knew.

Suddenly, his eyes stopped at a balcony in the women hostel. On the third floor of the building, sitting at the balcony, a young woman was reading a book. She was in a white sari and blue blouse. Her loose flowing hair reminded him of Seema.

“She is Professor Madhuri Sharma. She is a widow. I clean her room in the evening,” the voice of the maid startled him and he turned.

She was standing behind him, holding the curtains in her both hands.

Before he could say something, she resumed, “She often asks about you. When Seema memsahib was here, she often told me to introduce her to you people but I was scared…”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” he was surprised.

“I thought you would be angry. You and madam were so happy together and I did not want to bring a widow in this house to meet you,” said the maid in a very sincere tone of voice.

He looked in the direction of the woman again and then turned to the maid, “You can invite her in the afternoon, I mean, after her college, if she likes.”

“I will inform her,” said the maid and resumed her work.

He began to concentrate on his story but his mind was restless, the face of the young widow appearing and disappearing regularly. He felt a kind of restlessness he could not describe. He had thought that he was the only one who had to face such harsh circumstances bestowed by the destiny but that young widow had been suffering alone for four years, after the death of her husband.

Grieved hearts develop proximity more quickly than happy hearts. He began to feel strange pangs and he decided to get ready for the afternoon. He entered the bathroom, shaved again, took a bath again, put on a nice dress, and ordered the maid to buy a few things from the store.

She was happy to see that the master seemed to be happy. She felt that she was someone important who had reintroduced happiness in his life.

“She will be here after four o’ clock,” said the maid when she came back from the shopping.

He did not say a single word but gave her a smile of approval.

Just before four o’ clock he was standing in front of Seema’s photo on the wall. He had tears in his eyes and he was whispering, “Sorry, Seema, I am going to meet this woman this afternoon. You know, she is a widow, a young widow. May be we can share each other’s grief. I know you won’t disagree. I just want to talk to her, to be with her, to befriend her. I assure you that no one can take your place…”

The door bell brought him back to the present. He composed himself, wiped his tears, and entered the study.

Professor Madhuri Sharma was stunningly beautiful and he could not move his eyes from her face.

“Hello…” she smiled.

“Hello…I am…”

“I know…and no formalities.. I know everything about you and your late wife, Seema…”

“Please come in. Feel at home,” he pointed politely to the sofa.

“She said that you wanted to meet me?”

“Yes, she told me about you and the sad incident that shattered your life…”

“That is past now. I have already learned to live alone. I teach children and spend my remaining time in reading, cooking, watching television, etc. I am all right now..”

“You are a brave woman, Professor Madhuri…”

“This Professor word makes me feel like your auntie so please call me Madhuri…” she gave him a pleasant smile.

He returned the smile and this was spontaneous, a smile arising from the heart of a young man who is sitting in front of a beautiful young woman.

After that day, smiles, laughter, and discussions returned to his house. Since she was living in a hostel, she could not invite him there.

After about a month, he was standing in front of his wife’s photo on the wall and whispering, “Seema, she is a very sincere woman. She is very intelligent but not as intelligent as you…I have to request you something… She wants me to go out with her for dinner…I don’t want to but I know you understand my position…I know you won’t refuse…”

The sound of the door bell brought him back to himself and he moved towards his cupboard. He opened the bottle of perfume which Seema had gifted him and sprayed it over the front of his shirt, under his arms, and around his neck. He put some money in his pocket and called the maid. He gave her some instructions and moved towards the front door.

That dinner was very special for him, for he had almost forgotten that a world existed outside his house.

In the following three months, not even a single day passed without meeting Madhuri. She had crept very soberly, gradually, firmly, and very decisively in to his life.

For the past three years, he had been regularly buying flowers to be placed in the vase that was kept on the table under the photo on the wall. On her death anniversary, every year he ordered a beautiful bouquet of roses. Seema liked roses.

He had just entered the house, holding the beautifully wrapped roses, when the bell rang. Holding the flowers in his left hand, he opened the door. Madhuri was standing there, with her bright smile and dreamy eyes. She was in a blue sari with a matching necklace.

“We have to go out, get ready quickly,” she slipped past him into the room.

“In a minute…” he stammered.

“What are you holding in your hand?”

“These…these are roses…red roses… for you…” he handed her the flowers.

“Oh…my God, I love roses…” she kept the flowers on the table and rushed to him. Before he could steady himself, she hugged him tightly.

His resolution began to fail and he began to kiss her passionately like a mad man. The dinner was forgotten, the roses were forgotten, the distance was erased, the boundaries were broken, and for the next two hours they were exploring each other passionately and lovingly, totally unknown to the realism that the front door was open and the maid had already entered the kitchen. She had closed the door without a sound.

When the first explosion of the sleeping emotions was over, they looked at each other, their eyes talking and exchanging promises. They got dressed and went out for dinner.

Next morning, he was standing in front of the photo hanging on the wall and whispering, “Seema, she wants to be with me. I see your reflection in her. I believe Madhuri is my Seema. We are getting married next month. Believe me, I am not lying, I am doing this because you always wanted to see me happy. Look, last night I brought roses for you…”

After one month, Seema’s photo was gently placed inside the cupboard and in its place a framed photograph of the newly married couple was hanging.