“Morning, Ratan. Here’s your book. Thanks for lending it to me,” said the girl with the pretty eyes. Ratan was a shy man who hardly ever spoke to his classmates. But with this girl, he had his next 50 years planned. To him, she was it. It was love, and it was hope to wake up next to her.
However, destiny doesn’t take you where you want to be. It takes you where the plan is coincidental. You can savor it, or you can think about the other way—the land of “could have been.”
Days passed, and shy Ratan had not yet asked his parents about her. He knew that once he enrolled in the army, no parent in the village would say no to giving him their daughter. But he didn’t want just any daughter; he wanted her, the girl with the pretty eyes, his planned 50 years. They didn’t speak like best friends, but the eyes said it all. She never borrowed a notebook from anyone else. Maybe, to her, Ratan had beautiful eyes too. Maybe he was her 50 planned years as well?
“I’m accepted,” he says to her. She looked confused, staring at the floor. “Accepted where?” “The Indian army,” Ratan said proudly. He wasn’t shy about these words, but as soon as he said them, he seemed to lose all his confidence and reverted to his shy self. He glanced around to make sure nobody was watching and was pleased to see that no one cared. Turning his attention back to the girl, he noticed she was still looking at the floor but was smiling. “Congratulations,” she said.
Holding a glass of rum in his hand and wearing a fine kurta he bought with his first salary, Ratan stood in the audience. The girl with the pretty eyes was giving her 50 years to somebody else. Did he plan those years with her? “I did,” Ratan told himself, sipping the rum like it was his medicine to cope with those 50 years without her.
“This is our daughter, Khima,” said the parent. The 14-year-old girl was short and beautiful, but she didn’t have the pretty eyes he had planned for the next 50 years. When he saw her, he couldn’t care anymore. He wanted another rum, hoping that when his mind went blurry, maybe her eyes would look pretty.
Marriage plans and love feelings became distant, and surviving days without her became his reality. He realized he should have fought for his love. Thoughts crossed his mind, but she never said she loved him, and he never told her he loved her. Then why does this hurt? Why can’t I see a life without her? As these thoughts raced through his mind, his newly-wed bride waited for him that night, but he chose the rum. Maybe if his eyes got heavy, he’d feel her presence of her pretty eyes near him.
“Ratan, you have a good heart,” she said one day, her pretty eyes sparkling in the sunlight. “Why?” he asked. “Because you don’t cheat.” “Why would you say that?” he asked. Before she could answer, the teacher entered the class.
Ratan woke up in a ditch, having wet his pants. Ashamed of himself, he quickly ran to the nearby bathroom, cleaned himself, and went home. He was alone; he had left his wife with his parents because he didn’t want her here. She was a reminder that destiny had done him dirty.
Home after four years, he doesn’t go to his house but to his old classroom where she used to sit. She had a scar on her hand—burned, perhaps? The scar was lucky to have touched her; she made it look like a beauty mark. When she put her hair behind her ears, the scar lit up, making her even more beautiful than she ever could be. Four years had passed, and he realized the emptiness in his heart. He knew what would fill the void. He found the nearest liquor store and drank until he couldn’t think straight.
Intoxicated, he went home. Khima didn’t know he was coming, but when she saw his figure from afar, she was happy to see her husband after a long time. She worried, though—why was he not walking straight? Was he sick from all that travel? She ran towards him, leaving her slippers behind. As she reached him, she grabbed his hand, and he rested on her shoulder. She took him home.
His holiday he spent drinking. He forgot why he started, but he knew it filled something in his heart. While he grew closer to his rum, he also grew closer to hating his life. He was making a life he never planned, his 50 years with a woman he could hardly look at. She gave him one son and one daughter; he loved them dearly. But it wasn’t supposed to be her. She took care of him, but he couldn’t bring himself to love her. Maybe it wasn’t hate he felt for her, but rather a deep-seated self-loathing for his own inability to love her.
Rum would make him hate himself less, but hatred toward his wife would build up. One day, he did it. He slapped her. Intoxicated, he saw her, and it was not those pretty eyes. Anger surged in his blood, and he hated this woman with everything he had. He hit her again. He didn’t know why he was doing it. He grabbed her by her hair, took her to the bathroom, and kept her head beneath his feet because it wasn’t her. He kept it there until he would feel better. He put in more pressure to end this torment for her and himself. Hours passed, and he waited. Suddenly, he heard his kids crying, looking at their mother, the woman on the floor almost unconscious. A voice rang in his head: “Ratan, you have a good heart.” He went back to his room and fell on the bed, hoping sleep would help him not think about the person he had become. With every blackout night, he grew further from his family. The previous night’s shame would make him speechless the next day. He wouldn’t want to think about the things he did to his wife or look at the eyes of his kids. When the chance came to stay further from his family, he took it.
His children’s cries were his reality. He drifted further from his family. His wife, a caretaker of his kids, endured his rage silently.
“Hello, daddy. I got first rank,” his youngest daughter would say on the phone. He was proud but didn’t know which class she was in. Closer to his family, he realized this was what he wanted all along, but the void remained. The girl with the pretty eyes haunted him, and Khima was a reminder that this life is not it.
Banging on the door, the kids were all grown up. They were dirty because they were her kids. She was a failure in raising them. “They hate me. Open the door, or I’ll break everything in this house, motherfuckers!” “Let him come, mom,” said one child. “Otherwise, the neighbors will hear him. He’s too loud. Let him in.” The brother let him in while he yelled at his family. The rum had not been able to fill his void anymore. There was one pretty eyes, but now there were four dirty kids he had made who were his to take care of but had taken the features of someone unknown. They did not have the beautiful eyes.
In the kitchen, he was older and angry. He had started fighting back, even hitting him. This was the first time Ratan’s son used fists against him. It was the first time he felt alone, scared, ashamed. He drank in his room for 15 days. He said, “They want to kill me.” He only drank those 15 days and almost had forgotten what sobering was until he woke up in a hospital.
Nearing the end of his planned 50 years, Ratan thought of the pretty eyes but not understanding why was it important to him. “Being sick keeps rum farther and his family closer.”
All grown up, his son would bring him fruits and made shakes for him. One day, while he was telling his son one of his childhood memories that his son would truly enjoy, he saw it. His son was indeed very beautiful; he had his mother’s eyes—light brown. As his mother came into the room and took a piece of the fruit, he thought to himself, ” she is my wife.”
He saw everything he had missed. If it weren’t for the rum, his unplanned 50 years could have been beautiful. A voice lingered in his ears: “Ratan, you have a good heart because you don’t cheat.”
In the darkness, there were no pretty eyes, no family—no one to love or be loved by, not even himself. He wasn’t here, just a consciousness fading into the darkness. A splurge of sadness moved in the wind.
“We lost him,” said a voice. Whose voice was it?
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