“The moon is up, Dr. Khanna. It is not a dark night. The world is not silhouettes and outlines. You can’t escape it,” Rupali did not open the gate, even though that was only a nominal barrier. Both of them stood taller than the low grill gate, as they talked.
“Yes,” his spoke in a mortified voice, “It was idiotic on my part to even try and escape it. I am sorry, Rupali. I am really sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“For dragging you into this bizarre foolish business. I don’t know what I was thinking. Probably I wasn’t thinking at all…”
“Bizarre yes. But foolish it wasn’t for me. What is your problem?”
“It is wrong, Rupali.”
“I have heard that before, and I had silently accepted that. But you can’t keep doing this to yourself and to me, Dr. Khanna. What is wrong?”
“You are so young Rupali.”
“I am not a minor. I am an adult and can take my decisions.”
“I’m an old, married man. My life is at a dead end.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
“But it is.”
“Why? I know you care for your wife. And I admire you so much for that. But do you love her so much that you can’t move on?”
“It’s not about me. It is about you, Rupali,” he said in a small voice.
“What about me?”
“I have told you that I am no longer angry about it. But when I had first come to know about the bet, I hadn’t acted sportingly. And you seem to be carrying the guilt and remorse since then. You don’t have to be stuck on it, or on me. You have a life full of possibilities before you. Go live it. I can’t punish you life-long for a small childish prank.”
Paritosh found her eyes downcast and she didn’t speak for a while. He assumed that she agreed with him and started moving away, when she finally spoke, “What you have been punishing me all these years for, Dr. Khanna, is a mistake I never made.” Her voice was low and sad, but firm.
“Excuse me?”
“You are so wise, so mature. How could you not see it, Dr. Khanna? It never was a bloody bet. It was never a bet, never a prank. Could you never see it? Not even in all these years? Not after all these years?”
“You are not serious, Rupali,” his voice quivered. He needed a confirmation.
“No. Why would I be serious?” she mistook his question to be a serious objection, “When have I ever been serious? Has there been anything serious in how much I respected you? Nor was I serious in admiring you for how nice, caring and generous you were. I wasn’t serious when I was so affected by your pain, your hurt that I desperately wanted to do something to ease it, wipe it off. I wasn’t serious when I was desperately trying to tell you that what you had heard in the lab that night was a gross misunderstanding. Yes! There had been a bet in a moment of frivolity that you are so willing to excuse. But I had long forgotten about it. But no. Why should that matter? I wasn’t serious, when minute by minute, day by day I was falling in love with you. And I wasn’t serious when in last six years in US I had tried hard to move on from you, from my heartbreak, but had failed miserably. I wasn’t serious when I had followed everything about you obsessively, so obsessively that everyone, all my friends, if I could ever make one, had given up on me. The most concerned ones sent me to a psychiatrist and he kept telling me how unhealthy all of this was. Still, I could not get over it. There was absolutely, nothing serious in any of it. And since coming here… No. Nothing. Zilch. Zero. No seriousness at all. I have been playing pranks with you, with myself, with my life, with my mother who worries so much about me and my future. How can I be serious? Running out of the house at midnight to spend those few moments with you which you would not grant me in daylight. It has all been a game for me, I have been immature, I have been an idiot and I, of course, don’t care about you. How can I be serious?”
She broke into a sob and stepped back. Just then Paritosh noticed someone stepping out of the verandah. Even if it had been a dark night, it wouldn’t have been a rocket science to guess who it was. But there was no need to guess. He saw Mouli very clearly and flushed with embarrassment. He was already regretting his visit to her in the morning. And now this. With Rupali crying. What an impression he was going to create on her? All his life, his reputation was all he had earned. Whatever be his personal miseries, nobody ever got a chance to point fingers at his public conduct or his behaviour with others. And now. In one stroke, he had undone it. But no. It wasn’t even one stroke that he could blame momentary lapse of judgement for it. He had been building up to his destruction and still he had not stopped himself.
Rupali turned her back at him to walk into the house and stopped in her tracks on seeing her mother. She got sick with worry.
“Ma. What happened? Are you all right?” she stopped crying from the shock of seeing her mother.
“I am fine. But obviously you are not,” Mouli replied.
“Ma.” Once assured of her wellbeing, Rupali’s own grief overwhelmed her again and tears came back.
Paritosh stood glued to his spot feeling foolish and mortified.
“Why don’t you open the gate and let Paritosh in?” Mouli said.
“I won’t.”
“This is no way to handle the problems, Rupa.”
“There is nothing to be handled, Ma. Please. Let’s go inside. This is no time for you to remain awake.”
“Open the gate for him and go inside. To your room.” Her voice was commanding this time and Rupali could not disobey. She walked to the gate, opened it and mumbled in a steely voice, “I will never forgive you if something happened to Ma.” Then she turned back without waiting for him or Mouli and went to her room. She started sobbing again once inside her room. Why this mess? What had she done to deserve this? Probably all the admonitions of her psychiatrist were correct. It wasn’t his American view of things that didn’t understand her love. Her feelings were indeed hopeless and unhealthy.
Meanwhile Paritosh walked in slowly, although he would have liked nothing better than running away from there and hiding in some remote corner of the world, where nobody could find and question him. But as Mouli had so wisely said, that was no way to handle the problems.
—
“Tell me more about yourself,” Mouli said after they were seated in the hall, Paritosh’ head bowed. He wasn’t able to meet her eyes.
“Excuse me?” He looked up surprised. He was expecting to be blasted, insulted, blamed, preached, questioned; anything but asked more about himself.
“My daughter has driven herself crazy after you, Paritosh. And from the little I heard, it has been the case for several years now. It is only fair that I should like to know more about you than I do.”
Paritosh took a deep breath before replying. His head was bowed again as he spoke, “I don’t even want to imagine what the circumstances make me look like. But I am not as bad a person, as I currently appear Mrs. Banerjee. I will never be able to justify some of the things I have done recently, but if anybody has to suffer for my mistakes it has to be me.”
“I heard your objections Paritosh. You said you were married. I hope my daughter is not foolish enough to be in love with a married man and try to make it work. I hope there is more to it… I haven’t seen your wife and you never spoke about her either.”
“Right,” he could see that Mouli was getting impatient with his ramblings and worried about her daughter, she was more interested in getting facts. Briefly he told her about his wife.
“I am sorry,” Mouli felt for him. She had known the pain of loneliness all her life. “I appreciate your care for your wife, Paritosh. But I hope you understand that there is nothing wrong in you moving on.”
“No. There isn’t, I guess.”
“Then? Are her feelings one-sided? It seems unlikely, otherwise what were you doing here at this hour?”
Paritosh rubbed his face with his palms and let out a sigh, “No. I had thought mine to be one-sided. And misunderstood her repeatedly. But either way, I am ashamed of myself for how I feel.”
“Why?”
“I… am… surprised that you are asking me that, Mrs. Banerjee. She has been my student. She is so much younger to me…”
“I know,” Mouli interrupted and looked thoughtful for a moment. She was trying to gather her thoughts. “But Paritosh. She is not an idiot and you are not unscrupulous. I can see that much.”
“I have tried not to be. Although I am afraid I have failed miserably at times. Otherwise this would not have happened.”
“Paritosh. I have seen a bit of the world. And the relationships. The most unusual, unexpected ones sometimes become most successful. And the ones everyone looks forward to may fall apart. Because at the end of the day, what the world thinks essential does not matter in a relationship. Only the two people making the relationship matter. If the two of you can find happiness with each other, why should anything else matter?”
“This… comes from… such an unexpected quarter that I don’t know what to say. Forget about me, are you convinced that she has made the right decision for herself?”
Mouli sighed, “We – mother & daughter – are close. But it is a strange closeness. She doesn’t always talk to me. So, I don’t know what is going on in her mind. However, she hasn’t made wrong decisions for herself for most part. She has grown up fatherless, Paritosh. She has seen me struggle as a single parent. I think she grew mature for her age. I never had to scold her for her studies. For anything, in fact. She never asked for extra pocket-money, never got into any kind of trouble. She has been responsible since she was fairly young. So, when I don’t see anything obviously wrong, I trust her decisions.”
Paritosh sighed and appeared to be contemplating on what Mouli said.
“And Paritosh,” Mouli added as an afterthought, “As I told you, she has grown fatherless. She didn’t even have a father-figure in her life. Her uncle was too young, and at best like an older brother to her. So, I would not be surprised, if she looks for maturity and responsibility in her life partner. It is possible that you being older is not only not a negative, but actually a positive for her, although she doesn’t probably consciously think about it this way. And one final thing… I have never seen her cry this badly. Not when her exams went bad, or when she hurt herself physically, not even when she had been told as six-year old that her beloved Baba would never ever come back home…” Mouli looked like she was reliving the time of her husband’s death. Sadness and pain obvious on her face.
Her words jolted Paritosh out of his thoughts. She had been crying so piteously. And he was busy resolving his own confusions! He stood up suddenly, “Mrs. Banerjee. With everything that has already happened, there is hardly any pretence of appropriateness left. Can I please meet her? Where is her room?”
Mouli nodded and got up herself, “I will take you there.”
—
To be continued
2 thoughts on “Hopeless Hope (Part 11)”
The chapter of all the revelations. Finally the inner battles have come to an end. Time to come clean. The Devdas pari is an interesting way of seeing things. Rupa is a tad Jhansi type who is out to dot the Is and cross the Ts. Hmmm Mouli is preety intesting unconventional mother she is for sure. She becomes the driving force behind them coming clean which is pleasant to see.
🙂 Yes. Rupali is a girl of today, who doesn’t believe in being a slave of one’s complexes and past mistakes. She would like to move on. But she has also always known that Paritosh is different. He holds onto things and he is hard on himself. If she could, she would have not remained a slave to his whims. But she is also hopelessly in love with him and finds herself with no option but to take whatever little he is willing to give. When she realizes that he has been having scruples over even that little, she loses it and bursts out. The concern for her mother adds to her fury. And in the end it does some good to all of them 🙂