Three Men

Nirban (Ban) is leaving ultimately. I just left him to the airport. His flight is at 9.30 pm tonight. A chilling sense of loneliness and boredom is gripping me slowly. Is it due to my feelings of seclusion or the idea of living without him, I don’t know it yet. Right now, the feelings that I will be free and all by me, is insignificant to anything else. But at the same time I am not eagerly waiting for this separation. Sometimes I am feeling that this is required to keep the relationship always ‘fresh and interesting’. On the other hand a voice inside me is telling that it may cause a rift and we may not be together again.

Ban is currently very happy because he will be with his family and friends after such a long time. It was always tough for him to leave everybody for me and he hardly can answer his parents, how come he loved me and living with me, when we are not married. They will never understand the degree of compatibility we cherish. We are so satisfied with each other that we almost banished the rest of the humankind from our world. In these 5 years we hardly felt the need of another person. Our fights are always as interesting as our discussions and the contradictions are as passionate as the love makings. We never felt the urge to get married as we are so confident of living together without any formal bond. Now Ban wants to marry me as he thinks then I will be accepted by his family. He is going back to his parents to convince them about me. But somehow I am not very enthusiastic about it.

I know I will be happy being with Ban but I am scared of marriages. My mother married once and lived with 3 men and I have never seen my first dad. He left my mom before I was born. My mother removed all traces of my father from the house well before I was born. She does not want to put any influence of a coward man on me. She wanted me to be brave and a knowledgeable person. She tried her best to achieve that in that small village in Madison County.

I consider Jason as my father figure. He was with my mother since my birth and till I attend teen. He was a very lively and funny person. He opened my wings to the world and taught how to fly. He taught me how to ride a bicycle, do fishing, clean the garage, fix the refrigerator, change car-tire and build different houses for different types of birds. He taught me the difference between a sedan, a SUV and a truck. He is my true teacher, my friend/philosopher and guide. I still cherish the cold winter hunting trips in the mountains. The snowing and how we lost the way back home. But be brave and hide our secrets from Mom. I can never forget the fishing trips during summer and the long boat rides, the berry picking and the apple plucking. He taught me how to rescue and take care of the injured or abandoned dogs and cats. He was not rich but his heart was big.


He has given me everything which my mom never able to. She was too busy with her teaching job and maintaining the family farm and raising a kid all single handedly. Jason used to stay few miles from us in the nearby fishing village. They were fishermen by generations. But every weekend he will visit us ignoring the weather and work load. He used to call me the ‘Nightingale’, because of my horrible musical talents. According to him whenever I sing, to his ear it seems like the bird is singing.
But one day he left my mom for another woman. My best friend Casey told me several times that Jason is getting married in winter to a widow whose husband died in the war. I never believed it but never had the courage to ask Jason about it.
I still remember the night when he said he can never see me again. It was my 13th Birthday and it was winter. My mom prepared the best lamb roast and ginger bread for dinner. Jason came with a cute little puppy for me and some roses for my mom. We were having dinner then Jason suddenly hugged me and started crying. I was surprised as he always taught me to never cry in public, those are for foolish woman. My mom already knew and she said, “So you are not even coming to meet Shia?” I was hysteric seeing her calm and but burning as the candles in the table. I ran into my room and closed the door with a bang. I cried the whole night. Jason came in between to see me the last time. But I was adamant. The very next morning he got married and within a week he left for South to live with his new family.


After that my mom had few short term relations but none can replace Jason. Then I went to New York to attend college and slowly get busy with my studies and life. Twice I used to visit mom, once in summer holidays and then in Christmas. In one of my summer holidays I met Daniel Dean as my mom’s new boyfriend. He was tall and handsome with a pair of very nice and expressive eyes. He was a retired English professor from the local State University and his main interest was Plant. I was easily drawn to him because of his pragmatic attitude and sharp intelligence. He opened a new world of literature and Science to me. My thirst for reading multiplied and I spend few of my most knowledgeable summers and winters with him. But he died within 4 years due to a sudden heart-attack the month after one of my summer visits from Madison. It was like I lost him even before I know him.


I lost interest in men. These two men I had in my life were like epitome of maturity, knowledge and humanity. They both loved me like their own daughters and taught me to face the world in valiant and positive way.


So I spend a long 7 years all alone with occasional visits to mom. We were never close and now with so much physical distance it was hard to come close mentally. It is a mystery how we enjoyed the company of similar men without understanding each other. We were both lonely in our own worlds. Then in one sunny lazy but wintry morning in the weekend I met Nirban in the local coffee shop. The shop is small but sells the best coffee and blue-berry bagel in the area. So in a morning like that the shop was filled with a very noisy crowd. I was sitting on a table by the window, alone. Nirban was looking for a place to sit and may be to talk, and found me. So we shared the table and then the next 3 hours together. After that he had to leave for a photo exhibition.


Then it was everyday in the evening either in the gym or in his flat or in my flat we met and talked. Nirban has the complex mind of a matured man with a simple heart of a child. He was a professional wildlife Photographer and he worked in some documentaries for National Geographic. Like me Travel is his passion and he spends 8 months in a year outside his present home, New York. He is from a small town in Bali, Indonesia and has 3 sisters and 4 brothers. We both are nonbeliever of God and marriage. After 1 year he shifts into my flat. After that I accompanied him in all his photography trips to Africa, the place to peruse his passion and photography.


The last 5 years were significant to me as I get to know a person who can fill up the void created due to the absence of two great men in my life. I was slowly gaining back my confidence and zeal for life. After a long time I started feeling complete and happy. Nirban visited my mom and they liked each other very much. But the pressure from his family was getting slowly heavier on Nirban. His society and family was ready to accept me only as his wife but not as his partner or his friend. He proposed me to marry him several times but I could not. He tried to convince me saying that marriage will not make any difference in our way of living. We will remain as independent as we are now. But I know with marriage the competitiveness to satisfy each other will die, the satisfaction that will grow out of loss of ‘fear of losing each-other’ will kill the adventure we have in everyday life, we will become too much certain and mundane to each-other. I will lose the Nirban I love.

Ultimately he decides to visit the family, to talk to his parents and try to convince them. He will reach there tomorrow night. I am waiting for his call but enjoying this loneliness. I am getting back to myself who seemed to remain too much engulfed in Nirban and his activities. I have no regret even if he left me as I have the gallantry to face life as it is imbibed in me from my mother and fostered by these three great men in my life.