“Is Sarah here? Did she come last night?” I heard quiz Chanda the next morning. He had come out to the dining hall. “Which room is she in? Go and ask her if she needs something.”

I walked in and motioned for Chanda to leave. She had already brought the breakfast to the table. Then I held his hands and led him to the head of the dining table. I sat down beside him and served us both.

“The weather is nice today, Sir. The sky is clear, no rains, but not hot either.”

He was not interested in food or the weather. “You haven’t disappeared. You didn’t act the ghost for a change. You are indeed here. You are here for me.”

A drop of tear escaped my eyes. How openly had he accepted his dependence on me?

After breakfast, I took him out to a nearby park. It was deserted at that time.  We sat down under the shade of an old tree in a secluded corner of the park. He pulled me close to him and I didn’t resist. Why should I? That was what both of us liked and wanted.

“You were cruel, Sarah. Do you have any idea what I suffered through on finding you gone? And knowing that you had taken nothing – no money, no valuable with you. Your bank account had not been touched and you had left you passbook and debit card behind. How were you to manage? How did you manage?”

I told him about the four thousand rupees I had. How I managed to reach Pune with the money and how I found a job and a roof over my head. I omitted to tell him how I managed in the first month of my job, when the salary had not yet come and I had practically no money left on me after having paid the advance for the hotel room. How often I managed on tea and a bun. That would have caused him unnecessary pain.

“I was violent in despair, Sarah. But I would not have forced myself on you. You should have told me what you wanted. I would have given you everything without asking for even a kiss in return. It would have given me more peace of mind than imagining you poor, friendless and exploited in some dark alley… Oh Sarah! You have no idea what all I have imagined and how much I have suffered. But I am being selfish. You make it sound like all was rosy for you. But I know, I can feel that it wasn’t. You won’t tell me, but…”

“If I suffered, it wasn’t for long, trust me.” Then I told him about Naman, his visits, the house, the money and also about Amol.

“Did many of your brother’s friends come to your house?”

“Once in a while, he dropped by with some of them. But only Amol stayed.”

“Do you like him? This Amol fellow?”

“He is a good man. Yes – I like him.”

“Good man! How old was this social worker of yours? Forty? Fifty?”

“My twin brother’s friend?” he couldn’t see my arched eyebrows, but my tone conveyed the absurdity of his assumption about Amol’s age.

“A soft, sissy kind of person?”

“A rather vigorous and tough one.”

“Educated?”

“Very well.”

“Rich?”

“Wealthy, but abandoned his wealth for the sake of his work.”

“How did he look?”

“Tall, fair, handsome.”

“Damn him,” he mumbled before asking me, “Did you like him, Sarah?”

“I did. But you have already asked me that.”

He was jealous. And I was leading him on. Because the sting of jealousy was a respite from his dark melancholy. It made him more vigorous. So, I wasn’t going to kill the snake yet.

“Probably you shouldn’t be sitting here any longer, Ms. Jacob.” He didn’t loosen the grip of his arms around me, however.

“Why not, Mr. Roychowdhury?”

“You sound rather smitten by this visionary, charitable young man. And it helps that he is handsome as well.”

“Handsome? Oh yes – he is handsome. Looks nothing like the bear you were on the path of becoming.”

“And what did he talk to you about, Sarah?”

“Oh! Mostly about this work. He wanted me to join him.”

“In his work?”

“Yes.”

“Just that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he want to marry you?”

“He asked me to marry him.”

“You just want to vex me.”

“Excuse me? You are accusing me of falsehood? Mr. Roychowdhury, he asked me. He asked me in such uncertain terms as you never have asked me.”

“I repeat, Sarah. You can leave. How many times do I have to tell you this? Why don’t you leave?”

“Because I am comfortable here.”

“No you are not. Your heart is not here. You love someone else. And you should, although it cuts through my heart like a sharp sword. Go.”

“Then push me away. Because I am not going on my own.”

“Your voice renews hope for me, Sarah. I seem to go back in time, when you hadn’t yet left, and hadn’t met young, handsome, wealthy men of your age, and had loved only me. But since then you have found other people, other comforts. I am an idiot. Go away. Just go.”

“Where should I go?”

“To your chosen husband.”

“Who is that?”

“That Amol Palekar of yours.”

“Amol Kulkarni. He is not my husband and never will be. He doesn’t love me. I don’t love him.”

“He asked you to marry him!”

“Because I would be a faithful worker. To me, that doesn’t seem like a good reason to get married. He doesn’t love me.”

“Is that true?”

Finally I gave up my pretense. I clung to him. “I just wanted to tease you a bit, because you were so sad. You have no reason to be jealous. I wish there were a way to really bare my heart to you, to show you how much I love you. You are my first and only friend. A brother, a little money, a social worker is not going to change that.”

“You talk about friends, Sarah.”

“I do.” Although I meant much more, I couldn’t use another word.

“But I want a lover, a wife.”

“You do?”

“Is that a surprise?”

“Yes. You didn’t talk of that earlier.”

“Is it an unpleasant surprise?”

“Depends on your choice of bride.”

“You make the choice for me, Sarah.”

“Choose her who loves you the most.”

“I choose her who I love the most. Will you marry me, Sarah?”

“Yes.”

“A blind, crippled, bitter man?  Too old for you?”

“Still yes.”

“There will be a lot you will have to overlook, to put up with.”

“If I can be useful to you, I would love you even better. When you needed nothing from me, I felt afraid.”

“I haven’t liked to ask for help till now, Sarah. But probably I would like it now. I didn’t like servants taking my hands and leading me around. But I would be happy to feel your hands around mine and to follow you. Does that frighten you, Sarah?”

“It delights me.”

“Then we must marry, immediately. In the same church where we had planned it originally.”

“It’s getting windy. We should go in,” his old passion was coming back and I grew a little nervous.

“We don’t need much preparation. Clothes and jewelry don’t matter. We must talk to the priest right away.”

He followed me as I led him back to the house, but kept up with his own chain of thoughts. “I would have destroyed your purity, Sarah, if truth hadn’t come in the way. God has punished me for that. And then He has shown mercy, by sending you back. May be there is indeed a God…”

“You are fretting too much.”

“No. I am not. To think that it was only day before that…”

That piqued my curiosity. “Day before? What?”

“You’d think me mad, Sarah. And probably I had gone mad. The pain was too unbearable. The pain of loneliness, isolation, abandonment. It must have been late afternoon, when it grew beyond tolerance. I screamed out. I screamed out your name.”

I gasped, “My name?”

—

To be continued