The flower-bracelet

She was 19 when she got married to him, she had hardly known him before that. He seemed like a nice guy, a dashing young Marine Engineer. She wanted to ask him about his trips to the seas, about the worlds he had seen, she was inquisitive about his life, his friends , his likes and dislikes.
But he was too distant it seemed , always too uninvolved with her. Maybe it was the age difference between them , or maybe he was too good for her she thought. She was after all a wheat-complexioned skinny young girl, all too unfamiliar with his part of the world. Too shy and too unaware of her own beauty.
Every day she would get up, make breakfast, do the daily chores and then wait for him by the window. All dressed up like the new-bride that she was.. He was never around, always came late from work and then went off with his friends, clubbing, partying or maybe just roaming the streets, but never there for his young bride.
She understood his message, she was too backward for him, not his type, his girl friends were all so very different from her. Their clothes, their cars, their long nights out with him and his friends. Why does he never take me out with him , she wondered, maybe she could change and adapt to his new world. but he never asked, almost like he was embarrassed of her presence.
Today, he came to her room , almost shocked her out of her senses, he actually touched her shoulder, and asked her how she was. She could not believe her eyes, her husband had finally noticed her, he wanted to take her out to dinner with his friends. She was speechless, could not believe her luck. She got up, put on her best Bengali- silk sari with a string of pink pearls her dadi ma had given her, and dressed up like the Eastern beauty that she was. All for him, all for the one man in her life...
On their way to the restaurant he was babbling on about how foolish he had been and how extremely lucky he actually was . How elegantly beautiful she was and how foolishly indifferent he had been to her. He commented on her hands and how they would look with gajras wrapped around her dainty wrists.. How he wanted to fill her world with flowers and show her off to the entire world. She could not hear all that he was saying, maybe because she was in too much of a shock and all this was but a little too much for her to grasp…
At the traffic light he stopped the flower boy for a gajra-bracelet, she was leaning against him, he clasped her hand in his to slip on the flower-bracelet.
It was strange, how he was going on and on, he wondered,yet she had not made a single comment, but she never was the talking type. Her deep black eyes would always follow him around, like a sea of thousand questions but would never complain. Never asked him about his whereabouts, even today there were no complaints, no queries, just compliance.
The bracelet slipped into her wrist...and the wrist dropped down lifeless from his hand.
She had died, she could not take the change of his heart and took it to her heart instead….