SCENE 12 — (CLOSING SCENE) SWYAMPRABHA IS RELIEVED
CHARACTERS
- SWAYAMPRABHA
- ARUNDHUTI
- CHAT VOICE (BODHISATWA)
SETTING
SWAYAMPRABHA’s home. Early morning light. The kitchen is awake: kettle, clink of steel. Everything looks aggressively ordinary.
SFX: pressure cooker tick, ceiling fan, birds outside.
(Lights up. SWYAMPRABHA makes tea. Calm face. Efficient hands. No trembling. No checking the phone. The phone lies on the table—quiet. She places two cups—then realizes she’s alone. She pulls one cup back, smiles privately.)
SWYAMPRABHA (to herself)
What a fool.
(Doorbell. She opens. ARUNDHUTI enters, already reading her face like a doctor.)
SWAYAMPRABHA
Tea?
(She doesn’t wait for an answer—pours, brings a cup, gives it to ARUNDHUTI. ARUNDHUTI watches: SWYAMPRABHA is unusually steady.)
ARUNDHUTI
You look… calm.
SWAYAMPRABHA
Yes. I am.
(SWYAMPRABHA sits. Glances at the phone once—without hunger.)
ARUNDHUTI
Is he leaving today?
SWAYAMPRABHA
Yes.
Tonight.
ARUNDHUTI
Will you meet him before he—
SWAYAMPRABHA
No.
ARUNDHUTI
What?
Yesterday you were ready to burn your house.
Today you’re… like a room without echoes.
SWAYAMPRABHA
There is no echo.
Not anymore.
SWYAMPRABHA (looks at her cup as if the tea is holding the answer. contd.)
Last night I came back smiling.
Like I got what I begged the universe for.
I slept deep—
as if my body said, “You have done everything.”
ARUNDHUTI
And… in the morning?
SWAYAMPRABHA
Morning came like always.
Sunlight on my face.
I got up.
And now tea—with you—here.
(smiles)
ARUNDHUTI
And BODHISATWA?
SWAYAMPRABHA
He will catch his flight and go home.
ARUNDHUTI (serious)
You loved him.
Didn’t you?
SWAYAMPRABHA
Yes, I did.
And some part of me will always care.
But the fever is gone.
ARUNDHUTI
What changed overnight?
SWAYAMPRABHA
Last night… I stopped imagining.
I touched the truth.
(looks at her cup)
And the truth is smaller than fantasy.
But it’s real.
ARUNDHUTI
So what was it then—love?
SWAYAMPRABHA
It was a hole he left in me.
For thirty years I kept calling the hole “him.”
Unfinished things shine.
(beat; almost a smile)
Last night I finished the shine.
Now only the shape remains—
and I can live with a shape.
He pulled out the girl I buried.
ARUNDHUTI
You won’t even send him goodbye?
SWAYAMPRABHA
Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.
What is a relationship, Aru?
Is it something we maintain…
or something that maintains us?
ARUNDHUTI
Perhaps both.
SWAYAMPRABHA
And connection?
ARUNDHUTI
Connection… is what stays even when desire changes.
SWAYAMPRABHA
I was upset because my life had only one shape—
wife, mother, caretaker.
BODHISATWA came.
Suddenly my life got another shape—
a woman.
ARUNDHUTI
And you liked that shape.
SWAYAMPRABHA
I liked it too much.
I thought it must be love.
But it was…
(ARUNDHUTI starts, then stops—lets her speak.)
SWYAMPRABHA (contd.)
Permission.
Permission to feel.
ARUNDHUTI
BODHISATWA is the wind that opened a window you forgot existed.
Now you decide to close it…
SWAYAMPRABHA
I won’t close it.
But I won’t jump out of it either.
SWYAMPRABHA (stands, picks up the empty cup. contd.)
Come. Help me cut vegetables.
ARUNDHUTI
Arre!
I came for emotional support, not knife training!
(They move toward the kitchen together.)
(Lights fade on the two women entering the kitchen—life continuing.)
BLACKOUT.
— END —