What We Leave Behind
By Lokanath Mishra
The Story
Rohit told the first story as if it were something he wanted to wash out of his mouth.
“I was on a flight,” he said quietly. “I needed to use the lavatory. Someone was inside, so I waited.”
When the door finally opened, a young Bengali girl stepped out. She was beautiful in a tired, unguarded way—dark hair tied loosely, soft eyes lined with exhaustion. She looked at Rohit and froze.
Her face changed instantly.
Not anger.
Not defiance.
Fear.
As if she had hoped no one would be there.
Rohit didn’t understand then. He nodded politely and stepped inside.
The smell struck him first. Sharp, metallic, suffocating. Then the sight.
Blood.
Urine.
Everywhere.
The seat was splattered. The lid flipped up and stained. The floor soaked, sticky, humiliating. She had been menstruating—and she hadn’t sat. She had hovered. And she had left everything behind exactly as it fell.
“She didn’t even try,” Rohit said, his voice low. “It felt like she knew someone else would suffer and chose not to care.”
He stood there longer than he should have, trapped between disgust and a strange sadness. Someone else’s pain. Someone else’s body. Someone else’s responsibility abandoned.
He called the flight attendant.
Later, when he passed the girl again, she avoided his eyes. Rohit looked at her—not with cruelty, but with disbelief. How easily people walk away from what they leave behind.
At the time, it was just an ugly story.
Later, it became something else.
Rohit’s parents had been married for forty years.
Forty years of shared mornings. Shared worries. Shared silence.
The morning his mother died, she was doing what she had always done—walking downstairs to make tea for her husband. The heart attack came suddenly. No warning. No goodbye.
She fell.
His father heard the sound and ran. He held her face. Called her name. Lifted her with hands that had grown old only because they had spent decades working for others. He carried her to the truck and drove like a man who had nothing left to lose—breaking lights, whispering prayers, crying without sound.
By the time they reached the hospital, she was gone.
At the funeral, Dev Mishra said nothing. He didn’t cry. He didn’t collapse. Grief had hollowed him too deeply for noise.
That night, after the rituals, after the guests left, he looked at his children and said:
“Take me to her.”
They hesitated.
“Baba… it’s late.”
He didn’t raise his voice. He only said:
“Don’t argue with a man who has lost his wife of forty years.”
So they went.
⸻
The śmaśān was quiet except for the low crackle of dying embers. Smoke clung to the air, heavy with the smell of wood, ghee, and finality. The river nearby flowed slowly, untouched by human sorrow.
Dev Mishra sat near the ashes of the woman who had been his entire life.
He folded his hands. He prayed. Then he spoke.
“Forty years,” he said softly. “One life.”
His eyes stayed fixed on the ashes.
“When we had nothing, we shared it. When we moved, we moved together. When life hurt us, we hurt together. When we failed, we forgave each other.”
His voice trembled.
“She stood beside me when I was weak. I held her when she cried. We watched our children grow. We prayed in hospitals. We buried loved ones together.”
The fire popped faintly.
“Now everything is over,” he whispered. “And tonight, I am thankful.”
The children looked at him, confused and broken.
“She left before me,” he said. “She doesn’t have to stand here. She doesn’t have to feel this emptiness. She doesn’t have to burn my body and return home alone.”
His shoulders shook.
“I will carry this pain instead. That was my last promise to her.”
No one spoke.
The ashes cooled.
Later, Rohit sat beside me in silence.
And my mind returned to that airplane lavatory—
to the filth left behind,
to a stranger who walked away,
trusting someone else would deal with her pain.
Then I thought of Dev Mishra.
A man who chose to stay.
A man who carried what remained
so the woman he loved never had to.
Some people abandon their mess for strangers.
Some people take it upon themselves for love.
That night, standing near the ashes of forty years,
I finally understood what love truly means.
Not romance.
Not comfort.
But the quiet, unbearable choice
to suffer
so the one you love never has to.
Peace be in your hearts.