For The Aleph Review’s newly launched ‘Spotlight’ series, Shunali Khullar Shroff has penned a touching, vividly imagined story on falling out of love and infidelity, offering a raw snapshot of a marriage gone wrong.
It was the 11th of March, 2019. This would be my last email to him.
My marriage to Viraj had begun to unravel steadily after our second child, Alisha, was born. Arav, our son, was four at the time and we should have been a family content in its wholeness. Except that we weren’t, because my feelings for my husband of eleven years had eroded for no ostensible reason.
Falling out of love is as disagreeable a process as falling in love is magical. The loathing starts small but it builds up quickly, like a raging forest fire consuming everything in its wake.
It wasn’t that Viraj was a bad person, he was by all accounts a decent husband and a good father. But he was deeply insecure, a man at odds with himself. Still, I could not blame him. My decision to marry him had been a hasty one. So impressed was I with the window dressing that I forgot to check the wares within.
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