It had hardly been a week since Mukundo had left, but Piyali’s restlessness was driving her mad. How could less than a week with a man change the meaning of everything? She no longer enjoyed any of her usual pursuit. Reading, dancing, friends in neighborhood, the little kids, nothing and nobody interested her. In the few days he treated her as the love of his life, he had awoken the woman in her. The women who pined for her lover, who wanted to shower her love and care on him as much as he did on her, and who could no longer be bothered about her girlish interests.

“Pihu? Is something the matter, child?” Her grand-father finally could not help asking. She had been spending hours in her room alone and as far as he had noticed doing absolutely nothing.

“No Dadu. Why do you ask?”

“You look pale and starved…”

“I guess, I am just bored, Dadu. The school doesn’t start for another two weeks.”

The old man sighed. Both of them were skirting around the issue. His grand-daughter was obviously not comfortable in discussing her love life with him. An idea struck him.

“Hadn’t you mentioned that Sonali was in Haldia?” Sonali was Piyali’s school-friend who had been married soon after her graduation and now had a baby girl. She was visiting her parents in Haldia then. “Why don’t you go and visit her? It will be a change for you. Her father had called me the other day. Her daughter is apparently quite a handful already. Should keep you busy too.”

Piyali liked the idea. Everything in Kolkata seemed to have been marked by Mukundo for her now. Going back to her childhood home could help her calm down. She left the same day.

—

The introduction and initial friendship had been harmless enough. Rohan was Sonali’s cousin who stayed in the same neighborhood and worked as a plant manager at the Tata Chemicals factory. The three of them made quite a gang and went about having fun while Sonali’s parents were happy to take care of her daughter.

But over her ten-day stay, things did not remain as innocent. At first it was the pranks and complements. He made her laugh and feel special. Despite herself, she started liking his company. Then he started bumping into her when she was alone.

“Did I startle you?”

“No. Just surprise…”

“What were you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” he would arch his eyebrows.

“Well, nothing important,” she would chuckle.

“Tell me about nothing important, then. There wasn’t much work at office today. I am at leisure.”

“Arr…”

“What?”

“You are impossible.”

“I am totally possible for you. But you don’t want to try… Let’s see… Why is it? Your eyes – ah! Your eyes. That’s it. What are you hiding from me?”

Although she never told him what she was really hiding – her informal engagement with Mukundo, because he had forbidden her to say anything even to her friends. “Defeats the entire purpose,” he had briefly said and changed the subject. But Rohan did get her to talk. About herself, her family, her childhood in Haldia, her father whom she missed even more in Haldia than in Kolkata….

And then the day before she was to leave, he did what her experience with Mukundo wouldn’t have prepared her for in a thousand years.

He came rushing to her while she was in the backyard.

“You are leaving tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you would stay longer.”

“That was never the plan.”

“I had hoped you would extend your stay.”

“Rohan…”

He grabbed her and before she could figure out what had happened pressed his lips to hers. Piyali felt dizzy. Not from the effect of the kiss, but simply from the unexpectedness of it. What was happening? She should stop him. It was wrong. Mukundo Babu! She was engaged…

“Piyali. You are the most intelligent woman I have ever knows. Surely you know by now what you mean to me. And you cannot deny me my life’s only happiness. I will come to Kolkata soon and I will call you…”

Sonali called her from inside the house just then, and she rushed in.

But she was not engaged… He had never agreed for the engagement. And yet – it would be wrong. Would it? How different her experience with Rohan and Mukundo had been. She was always insecure with Mukundo. She could not believe that a man of his age and stature can really be in love with her. And he didn’t show the desperation Rohan showed for her. Was she was just a convenient choice for him?

—

Human mind has this extra-ordinary ability to find justifications for whatever it believes in. Once the idea that she was just a convenient choice, and not really a passionate love interest for Mukundo entered Piyali’s head, she started finding all sorts of reasons to believe it. If she had believed otherwise, she would have known that his phone calls were short because he was working hard to finish his thesis in time. Instead she thought he wasn’t really interested in talking to her, and the calls were just a formality. She could have seen how tender and protective his feelings towards her were, when he abstained from being a demanding and aggressive lover, but she saw the lack of passion in him. The decision to postpone the wedding until his Ph. D., which she herself had earlier seen as a mark of respect for his father, now seemed like a weak alibi to her. Her feelings nose-dived further, when she visited Mukundo’s house on her grand-father’s insistence. Mrinmoyee was visiting for the first time after her wedding and Mr. Banerjee thought it would be a good idea for Piyali to get acquainted with her. It wasn’t Mrinmoyee’s intent to make her feel isolated, but she was surrounded by her friends when Piyali went there. They could hardly have an intimate conversation appropriate for future sister-in-laws with so many people around them and Piyali felt that Mrinmoyee deliberately didn’t even try. It didn’t help that the one-time Mr. Thakur came downstairs to discuss something with his daughter he did not even acknowledge her presence.

—

To be continued