Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 20: The Monsoon

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 20: The Monsoon · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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I've been writing, I said, for months now, in
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the notebook. You know that. I know, she said.
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I've seen it on the table. You haven't read it,
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I said. No, she said. I wouldn't. A small pause.
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You know I wouldn't. My Playful Wife, Episode
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20, The Monsoon, written by Mia. The monsoon
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came early that year, which everyone in Delhi
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treated as both a gift and a mystery, the way
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the city treats any unearned mercy. There is
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nothing quite like a Delhi monsoon for reminding
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you of the basics, that the city has been surviving
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its summers for centuries, long before anyone
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alive was here to doubt it would, that the heat
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which seemed, two weeks before, genuinely unsurvivable
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a thing that could not be born for one more day
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was in fact entirely survivable had been survived
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was already receding into the unreal way that
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suffering recedes once it stops and that what
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follows the impossible is very often something
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beautiful that the same sky which had pressed
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down white and merciless for two months could
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turn in an afternoon into the thing that saved
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you I had spent a year learning, slowly and against
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my will, that the unbearable is mostly a story
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you tell yourself about the present, and that
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the present keeps moving regardless of the story.
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The monsoon arrives every year to teach the same
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lesson to a city that forgets it every summer.
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I was that June in a frame of mind to receive
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the lesson gratefully. The first rain came on
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a Tuesday evening. I was on the balcony when
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the sky went that particular green -gray, the
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color of something about to happen, a bruised
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and pregnant color, the light going strange and
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underwater the way it does just before, and I
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felt the pressure change in my ears and the first
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cool exhalation of wind come up out of nowhere,
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carrying the smell, the unmistakable mineral
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smell of rain about to land on dust that has
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been baking for two months. I called to Saloni.
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I didn't have to say why. She heard the why in
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my voice and came. Fast. The way you come for
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the first rain. And she stood beside me at the
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railing. And we watched it arrive. It arrived
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the way it always arrives and the way it is somehow
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always astonishing. First the smell, then the
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sound. The first fat drops on the broad leaves
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of the neem tree below us. Individual and countable
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for a moment. Talk. Talk, talk, and then the
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full weight of it all at once, the sky simply
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opening, the rain coming down in ropes, the temperature
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dropping ten degrees in the space of a breath,
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the dust laid flat, the whole exhausted city
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sighing out two months of held heat in a single
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instant. We got slightly wet before we moved
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inside. The rain blew in under the balcony's
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edge, and neither of us stepped back from it.
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We stood and took it, the cool of it, the relief
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of it on skin that had been hot for weeks, and
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neither of us moved immediately to go in, because
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there are mercies you do not flinch from when
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they finally come. I love this, she said. Her
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face turned up slightly into the spray, her eyes
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half closed. I know, I said. She stood a moment
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longer, and then she turned and went inside,
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leaving me to it, the way she does. She takes
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her portion of a thing, and then leaves you yours.
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I stayed at the railing alone for another minute,
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watching the rain hammer the neem and the parked
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scooters and the empty street, watching the gutters
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fill and the children -somewhere -to buildings
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overrun shrieking out into it. And I thought
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about the year, because the rain made me think
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about the year. The way everything that arrives
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after a long, unbearable thing makes you think
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about the unbearable thing it has ended. What
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follows the impossible is usually something beautiful.
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I had not believed that a year ago on a plastic
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stool in the dark. The rain on the neem was the
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evidence. I went in wet and did not mind being
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wet. The monsoon had its own rhythm, and we moved
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back into it gratefully. The evenings changed.
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The balcony, which the summer had made uninhabitable,
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became again the best room in the flat. The temperature
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bearable, the air washed, and carrying the green
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smell of a city that has remembered it has trees.
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We moved back outside. We started having dinner
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there on the weekends. The two of us with our
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plates on our knees and the city below doing
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its washed, gentle, post -rain version of itself.
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The harsh edges rinsed off everything. The lights
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smeared and soft in the wet air. Saloni had started
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a new project. A second collection for Caveri.
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Smaller than distance, more personal. A tighter
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and quieter body of work. The success of the
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first had done what success does. It had created
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demand, a waiting list of people wanting things
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that did not yet exist, and more than that, it
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had redefined for her what was possible, had
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moved the ceiling up so that she now reached,
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unconsciously, for things she would not have
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dared reach for a year before. But she worked
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on this one with a different quality, and the
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difference was the most interesting thing I had
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watched in months. The first collection had been
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made under the pressure of proving something.
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to Kaveri, to the buyers, to herself, to the
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part of her that had spent years being competent
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and wondering if she was only ever going to be
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competent. This one she made from the other side
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of that question. The proving was done. What
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was left was the thing itself, made for its own
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sake, by a woman who no longer had to wonder
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whether she could. There is a confidence that
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comes only after you have already done the impossible
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thing once, and she had it now. and it changed
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the way her hands moved. I watched her work.
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I was always that monsoon, watching her work,
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from the doorway, from the next room, the witnessing
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that had become one of the central pleasures
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of my life, and I thought about how much a single
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person contains, how little of it is ever visible
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in ordinary time. You can live beside someone
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for years. can think you know the dimensions
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of them, and the truth is you have seen perhaps
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a tenth, the part that surfaces in the daily
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transaction of a shared life. The rest is down
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there in the dark, vast, mostly unwitnessed,
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surfacing only under particular pressures, grief
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or rain, or a commission that asks for everything.
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I had been married to a tenth of Saloni for three
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years and called it a marriage. I was married.
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Now, to far more of her, and I knew it was still
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not all, knew there were chambers I would never
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enter, and the knowing did not trouble me. It
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had stopped seeming like a deprivation and started
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seeming like a promise, that there would always
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be more of her, that I would not finish learning
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her, that the well had no bottom I would ever
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reach. There was a weekend deep in the monsoon
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when it rained for three days without meaningfully
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stopping and the city gave up resisting and simply
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became a wet thing, and we gave up too and stayed
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in. It was, I think, one of the best weekends
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of my life, and almost nothing happened in it.
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That is the kind of weekend it was. The rain
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came down. We did not go out. We cooked slowly.
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the elaborate things made possible again by the
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cool, and ate them late, and slept in the afternoons
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the way you are only allowed to sleep in the
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afternoons when the weather has absolved you
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of all obligation. Saloni worked in stretches
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and stopped in stretches. I read and wrote and
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watched the rain and watched her. On the Sunday,
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she called me into the workroom. This was not
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nothing. She did not call me into the workroom.
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The workroom was hers, entered by invitation
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only. On the rare occasions she had decided something
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was ready to be seen. I went in. She had three
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pieces of the new collection on the rail, and
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she stood beside them with an expression I couldn't
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immediately read. Not the pride of the show,
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something more exposed than pride. Look at them,
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she said, properly. Tell me what you see. You
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have the vocabulary now. Use it. I looked properly,
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and after a while I began to see it. The thing
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she had called me in to find, and could not say
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herself. The thing she needed me to discover
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on my own so that she would know it was actually
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there, and not only in her head. The first collection
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had been called Distance, and it had been the
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year seen from outside. Its shape, its arc, the
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thing that looked like closing and was opening.
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This one was the year from the inside. There
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was a piece in a gray that was exactly the gray
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of a particular bad morning. There was a seam
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in the second one that almost tore the fabric
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and then held, and I didn't have words for what
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it was, but I knew it. I had lived inside it.
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And the third was unmistakably about the two
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of us. It had the rose -dark color in it again,
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just a thread of it. Run through a darker ground,
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the old wound woven small into something larger
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that carried it. This is us, I said. This is
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the year. You're making the year. Yes, she said.
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Very quiet. The way I'm writing it, I said. You're
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doing the same thing. You with cloth, me with
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the notebook. We're both just trying to get it
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down. To understand it by making it into something
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we can look at. She nodded. Her eyes were bright.
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I didn't realize I was doing it, she said, until
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it was half made. And then I couldn't stop. I'd
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reach for a color, and it would be a color from
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then. From the worst of it. My hands knew before
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I did. She looked at the rail. I was afraid to
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show you. I thought you might feel exposed. that
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I'd taken our private thing and made it into
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garments for strangers to buy. No, I said. It's
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the opposite. Strangers will buy them and never
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know. They'll just feel something and not have
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the word for it. I almost laughed. We're very
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good at making things people feel and don't have
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the word for. She laughed too, then... wetly
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and leaned into me, and we stood in the workroom
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in the rain light looking at the year hung on
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a rail, and I understood that we had been, all
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this time, working the same seam from opposite
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ends, she in fabric, I in ink, both of us trying
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to turn the unbearable into something that could
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be held, and looked at and survived. We made
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chai and took it to the workroom doorway and
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sat on the floor we had become that year. a couple
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who ended up on floors, as though the important
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things could only be said below a certain height,
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and looked at the three pieces while the rain
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went on outside. Kaveri will ask what it's about,
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Saloni said. She always asks. She'll hold one
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up to the light and ask. What will you tell her?
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She thought about it. That it's about a year,
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she said. I'll let her find the rest. She found
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distance in one look. She'll find this. People
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who see in people always do. She turned her cup
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in her hands. But I won't tell her it's us. That
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part's ours. She can have the year. She can't
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have us. The parts that are only yours to carry.
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Mira's sentence, surfacing months later in my
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wife's mouth in different words. It had become,
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without my noticing, one of the load -bearing
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beams of how we lived. The understanding that
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you could make a thing public and keep its heart
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private, hang the year on a rail in a South Delhi
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boutique and still have it be, in the only way
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that mattered, no one's but ours. Come out of
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here, she said finally, when the chai was gone.
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You'll start composing notebook sentences at
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me. I can see it happening. You're faced as a
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thing. My face does not do a thing. It does.
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It's doing it now. She hauled me up off the floor
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by both hands, and we left the year hanging on
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its rail and went back out into the rest of the
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rainy Sunday. The cooking, the reading, the sleeping,
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the ordinary surface of a life under which all
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that depth just went on quietly being there,
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holding everything up. One evening she looked
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up from the sketchbook and put it down. Talk
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to me, she said. I've been in my own head for
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three hours. I need to be pulled out. Talk to
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me. About what? I said. Anything, she said. Tell
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me something I don't know about you. There must
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be things. After all of this, there must still
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be things. I thought about it. There were not
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many left. That was the strange truth of the
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year, that we had been emptied out toward each
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other so thoroughly that the reservoir of unsaid
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things had run low. But there was one. I've been
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writing, I said, for months now, in the notebook.
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You know that. I know, she said. I've seen it
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on the table. You haven't read it, I said. No,
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she said. I wouldn't. A small pause. You know
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I wouldn't. I know, I said. I've been writing
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about this year. About all of it. From the kitchen.
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From the beginning. I've been trying to get it
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down, what happened, what it did to me, who I
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was before, and who I turned into. The whole
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of it. She went very still. The rain came down
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outside, steady now, the night kind, the kind
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that has settled in to fall all night. Not to
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publish, I said quickly, because I saw a question
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move across her face. Not for anyone. Nobody
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will ever read it. It's not a, it's not that.
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I'm not making us into a story for other people.
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I'm just trying to understand it myself. The
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writing is how I think. I can't think a thing
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all the way through until I've written it down.
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That's all it is. A man trying to understand
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his own life by writing it where he can look
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at it. Do you, she said, understand it? More
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than I did, I said. Less than I will. It's a
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moving target. Every time I think I've got it
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down, a month goes by and I understand it differently
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and have to write it again. I don't think I'll
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ever finish. I think it's the kind of thing you
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write your whole life and never finish, and the
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not finishing is the point. She looked at me
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for a long moment in the monsoon light, the lamp
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and the gray wet window behind her, her face
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doing the thing it does when she is deciding
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how much to ask for. Can I read it someday? She
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said. It was not a small question. We both knew
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it was not a small question. In that notebook
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were things I had never said to her and might
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never say aloud. The worst of what the year had
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made possible in me, the darkest stretches of
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the plastic stool nights, the things a person
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thinks in the pit of a thing like that and is
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ashamed of later. To let her read it would be
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to let her all the way in, into the last closed
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room. The one even our remarkable honesty had
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not opened. Someday, I said. Not yet. Okay, she
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said. She did not push. She never pushed. It
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was one of the ways she made it possible to give
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her things, the fact that she never grabbed for
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them. Someday. When you're ready. I'm not in
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a hurry. We have time. We have time. I agreed.
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She picked up the sketchbook again. But she looked
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at me once more before she went back down into
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it, a look that said she understood exactly what
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she had just asked for and exactly what I had
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just promised, and that the promise was enough,
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was more than enough, that the someday sitting
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out there in the future was its own kind of gift,
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a door I had agreed would open eventually, the
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agreeing as good for now as the opening. Outside,
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the rain. Inside, the two of us. In the ongoing
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work of knowing each other, the work that is
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no end, that is not a project to be completed
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but a practice to be kept, like the rain itself,
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arriving and arriving, washing the same city
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clean over and over, because clean is not a state
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you reach, but a thing you keep doing. That night
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I wrote in the notebook. She asked if she could
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read it someday. I said someday, not yet. She
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didn't push. There is a last room I haven't let
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her into. The plastic stool nights. The worst
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of what I thought. I will let her in eventually.
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Not because she needs to see it, but because
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a marriage should have no permanently locked
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rooms in the end. Just not yet. The someday is
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a thing we now both own. The rain came early
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this year. What follows the impossible is usually
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something beautiful. I have the evidence now.
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I'm sitting in it. To be continued in episode
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That was episode 20 of My Playful Wife. If this
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story is staying with you, the next episode is
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already waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss
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it. The complete book is on Amazon and early
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episodes plus bonus chapters are on my Patreon.
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Links are in the description. I'm Mia. Thank
19:54
you for listening.