The monsoons had just cooled the green expanses after excruciating heat. It was a respite for the first few days, but what followed with the blazing sun shining everyday was even more unbearable. The natural phenomenon of Water Cycle was working overtime and Jassi did not like this time of the year. To her humid weather was like constantly living in a used hamaam.
Astonishingly, today Jassi was unmindful of the weather pang. Jassi was leaning on the chestnut wood cabinet in the living area staring aimless at the paralyzed ceiling fan. The domestic help was holding a glass bowl, which Col Brar had ordered him to. Jassi’s starched peach kurta was pockmarked with darker shades of peach, courtesy the saline perspiration.
‘oye..khothe…rakh thale’, roared Col with all the remaining might of an ex-army man at the domestic help. Jassi side glanced at Chotu; hinting at following Col’s instructions. Col was on a roll today…Again. A retired army man who was honored with all due respect and dignity at the time of retirement. He was living with his wife Jassi and a help in his owned house in a suburb. Col was active and agile at the ripe age of sixty three. He had been married to Jassi for almost forty years now.
Col had kneeled down and was cleaning the Swaroski pieces with Mr Muscle, Colin and other gears he had kept handy. He had scrubbed other grimed points in the drawing and the living area. The staircase railing and the bed rooms were pending. To Jassi’s best knowledge Col would do it all today and take no rest before accomplishing each job.  She knew the reason why Col was behaving the way he was on a Tuesday morning…because he was under stress. Blame it on the psychosomatic fit of the Col. This was the second time Col was behaving so in a fortnight.
Jassi was Col’s shadow, five years younger to him, but she was the soul and he was the body. She was the inspiration and he was the form. Jassi was in the third year of her graduation, when the proposal of a fauji had come to her parents. What more pride than being the parent-in-law to a real son of the soil. Jassi was not even aware about any such alliance. ‘Kudiye, hun tune tur jaana….’, announced her mother when Jassi came back from the college. Poor Jassi did not even understand what her mother was referring to. She flung her bag in her room and sloshed. Storming entered Jassi’s mother ‘Hun uth, Gurudware jaana hai…baat pakki hogaye’, echoed her mother in the small room that Jassi shared with her siblings.  One can only imagine the turbulence in Jassi’s mind.  Like a sheep to the flock, Jassi followed her mother for accomplishing the wedding ceremonies. Sunday was just a day away. Jassi had just twenty four hours notice period to her civilian life.
What followed were days of living a caged life for free-spirited Jassi. Carefree but obedient, Jassi was often teased by the village women, ‘Kudiye, tenu fauji chuk lenga’. Jassi always chuckled at them and made her way out.  Least did she know that soon, she would be living in cantonment areas as a wife to one of the fauji.
After the wedding; army formal events, luncheons, dinners, protocol, stiffness, had become a part of their routine life. Col who was not a Col then was still as firm as he was later in his life. The placement of the cutlery and housekeeping had to be as perfect has it was even when they resided in the Junior Staff Quarters. But Jassi did not complain or give any reason for the Col to complain. She had never made an eye contact with the Col until they got married, which was of course the norm then. However she got her first streak of love when the side talks and sniggering at her in-laws place made Jassi uncomfortable, that’s when the Col excused her form the rest of the family and told her to take some rest. The family was quite appalled by their munda, but Jassi felt a sudden rush of emotions in her.
In the years they spent together, Jassi and Col travelled the length and breadth of the country.  Jassi would resume working as a school teacher at which ever station Col was transferred to. Jassi adapted to the likes and dislikes of the Col.  The two soon became very popular amongst Col’s batch mates. They were the ‘must be invited’ couple to all parties and social events.  Though Jassi didn’t like it much, but she still shadowed the Col.  She liked being with him and observing him at these social dos. She loved Cols style of talking and articulating. Col had a fetish for neck ties, which he always wore to these parties. Bizarrely so Col never repeated the neck tie at any party.  Jassi loved buying those neck-pieces for him and see him wear her choice of colours and prints. Parties in a way got the couple a little closer. Jassi soon started liking these parties because Col would always hold her hands tight when they would walk around meeting colleagues and batch mates, announcing. ‘Meet my wife Mrs Jassi Brar’. This introduction was Jassi moment of zenith, which reverberated in her ears for the rest of her life. Jassi believed that she was Cols prized procession and he reassured this by holding her firmly in a public forum. It was like saying aloud ‘she is my beloved wife’. 
Their love story was strange. They never exchange the quintessential three letters. They never sent red roses to each other.  They never went out on dates or traded stuff toys and chocolates. Col had taken Jassi to be his skin, he could not breathe without. He looked up to her for anything or everything. Be it the ration from the canteen or the errands for the kids. Starting with a short prayer in the morning to clearing the last glass on the dinner table - they did it all together. Jassi did not have a landline phone in her house for a long time, but the neighbor lady was cognizant of the punctual call Col would make to his wife everyday at 4 p.m. To stop this inconvenience to her neighbors Jassi would say, ‘Col Saheb, lets devise a way. If all is well dont call, if all is not well then your right hand fingers shall twitch.’ Col laughed at this jovial proposition and nudged it under.
Col and Jassi may not have gone for long walks together but a strange bond united them. Col never wanted to be without Jassi in the house and so was the case with Jassi. Whenever Col had any official tours he would plan Jassi’s visit to her parents place. On one of many such occasions, Col’s official assignment got over before time, he did not return to his house but to Jassi. With each passing year their love for one another had grown with each passing day. And also a thing of animosity amongst the other family members.
 ‘Where did we go wrong in her up-bringing’, was a constant question in the mind Jassi.  She remembers the call that she had got from her daughter Simran from Perth. A call which was followed by many similar shocking calls from Simran in the coming days. Jassi and Col stood stoic in their days of trial.
‘No, Simran, I know that you are a girl of the twenty first century, but we don’t approve of this arrangement’, remembered Jassi blasting at her daughter, after she had decided to have a live-in with her boyfriend. Col and Jassi weren’t so much against the arrangement as they were against Simran’s boyfriend, after they had heard a feedback from the local Asians about the boy, during their last visit to Perth.  Simran however disapproved of her parents’ feedback and after four months of live-in period, married her boyfriend. Col and Jassi attended the wedding much in dismay. It was then when Col had gone into this mode of cleaning and scrubbing his artifacts and furniture.
In the second phase of their life, they were left to settle the love affairs of their own child. ‘Jassi? This generation leaves me puzzled. Is e-chatting and eating at expensive eateries decide how good life partners are they? How do I tell my own daughter that her parents had never even seen each other before marriage? And look at us now…rock solid for forty years…’, implored Col. Jassi only adding a touchwood to it. 
‘Col, not much we can do.We are happy when our kids are happy’, added Jassi.
Today after forty years of their marriage as Jassi stands still piercing through the still ceiling fan with her eyes, she knew the tsunami brewing in Cols mind.  His fanatic wiping of the house indicated that there has been a recent show down. And yes it was. Simran had decided to break off from her husband and had called her father to be with her. It was the same old unfathomable reason –Compatibility. Simran had only asked for Col to come and not Jassi, saving herself from her mother’s melodrama.
But Simran in her short-sightedness was not aware that her father was once again running up n down the house with a duster – not because his daughter was divorcing but because he was travelling without Jassi. He had never been out on a personal trip without Jassi. Col had a clash of sorts in his mind. At one end his daughter was beckoning him and at the other end he was leaving Jassi alone.
Col ticket was booked for Wednesday. Jassi packed his bag, worrying how will he manage without her. Simran would not even know the medicines and the timing for his food and diet. She wished Simran had been empathetic towards her parents and not selfish.
Wednesday morning at the breakfast table, Jassi served his favorite aloo paratha and Jassi special mango pickles. Col devoured it all and did not share any eye contact with Jassi. He was in his deep thoughts. May be somewhere ashamed of what his own child had brought upon the old couple...separation at this age. An experience which they had never faced in their entire lifetime. Jassi started a conversation to break the chilling silence, ‘don’t rebuff Simran for anything. Just understand her and that is what she expects from us.’ Col lost his patience and beamed, ‘Well! What can I say for my own brood? They are an indecisive, impatient and selfish breed. Hauling her father at this age to settle her own marriage. Till some years back, she was adamant on marrying her Australian born and bred Indian boy and today she wants to divorce him because they have compatibility issues…What do they know of marriage? It only one more arrangement for them.’ Jassi got the mood of the moment and tried to divert the topic, ‘Chotu get the bags out in the driveway’.
Col and Jassi walked towards the drive way. The driver opened the car and Col mounted the car. He got into the car and kept his handbag on the side seat. He raised his hand to bid adieu to Jassi from the window pane. Jassi stood standing still outside waving back with trembling hands. The driver ignited the car. A flash of a though in Cols mind; communicated well in time to the drive to switch off the car. He reversed the car. Jassi ran towards the car thinking Col had forgotten something. The car stopped at a few millimeters away from Jassi. She craned down, when Col banged opened the door on his side and leaped towards Jassi.  He held her tight and hugged her. Jassi was shocked more for Col hugging her in front of Chotu and the driver than being at the rush of emotions. Jassi felt a wet shoulder and turned to see that the Col was sobbing. Profusely. ‘Jassi, I don’t want to go without you. I can’t go. Please …I can’t leave you back. I love you Jassi. I can’t exist without you.’ wailed Col. Jassi had wet eyes but she shied away from showing her emotions to Col. Least he would feel more week. ‘Please don’t say that Col. I shall join you soon. You carry on. Simran must be looking forward. She needs us there’, said Jassi.
Col was in the car just fifteen minutes away from his house when he felt a twitch in his fingers. He knew what he had reached upon. In the next ten minutes Jassi ran bare feet towards the drive way upon hearing a familiar horn. She opened the car door to get Col inside. But only to find herself lying next to him on their last journey.