The Space Between Us

"The thin woman in the green sari stood on the slippery rocks and gazed at the dark waters around her. The warm wind loosened strands of her scanty hair, pulling them out of her bun. Behind her, the sounds of the city were muted, shushed into silence by the steady lapping of the water around her bare feet. Other than the crabs that she heard and felt scuttling around the rocks, she was all alone here - alone with the murmuring sea and distant moon, stretched thin as a smile in the nighttime sky. Even her hands were empty, now that she had unclenched them and released her helium-filled cargo, watching until the last of the balloons had been swallowed up by the darkness of the Bombay night. Her hands were empty now, as empty as her heart, which itself was a coconut shell with the meat scraped out.
Balancing gingerly on the rocks, feeling the rising water tonguing her feet, the woman raised her face to the inky sky for an answer. Behind her was the lost city and a life that at this very moment felt fictitious and unreal. Ahead of her was the barely visible seam where the sea met the sky. She could scramble over these rocks, climb the cement wall, and reenter the world; partake again of the mad, throbbing, erratic pulse of the city. Or she could walk into the waiting sea, let it seduce her, overwhelm her with its intimate whisperings.
She looked to the sky again, searching for an answer. But the only thing she could hear was the habitual beating of her own dutiful heart..."


"...When she walked into the living room, the stereo was already on. 'Moonlight sonata,' he said, looking up. 'I thought something pensive and beautiful would be appropriate. We can leave this room and pretend we're in a place where moonlight dances on the water.'
Sera smiled thinly and sat beside him on the couch. After a few minutes she felt the music enter her body and make it relax. She closed her eyes so that she was lost in a dark and orange world, where nothing intruded except the sacred sound of a single piano. 'When I was young I used to think the piano was my favorite instrument,' she said, modulating her voice so that it did not overpower the music. Her eyes were still shut, but she felt Freddy shift in place. 'But now,' she continued, 'now, I love the deep sound of the cello. Somehow, it sounds most like life - sad and sweet and lost. Lonely. I always think that if the heart could sing, it would sound like a cello...' "


" 'Feroz,' she said, wanting to explain everything to him - how certain notes of the Moonlight Sonata shredded her heart like wind inside a paper bag; how her soul felt as endless and deep as the sea churning on their left; how the sight of the young Muslim couple filled her with an emotion that was equal parts joy and sadness; and above all, how she wanted a marriage that was different from the dead sea of marriages she saw all around her, how she wanted something finer, deeper, a marriage made out of silk and velvet instead of coarse cloth, a marriage made of clouds and stardust and red earth and ocean foam and moonlight and sonatas and books and art galleries and passion and kindness and sorrow and ectasy and of fingers touching from under a burqua...."