Dear Rupali,

I don’t know if you will ever read this. Perhaps some day. Perhaps never. But in case you do. I want you to know that when you told me about your relationship with your father, I had wanted to say more than just “I am sorry”. I had wanted to say that you will never again be uncared for. Whatever happens, I will always care for you. I had also wanted to tell you that I will care for you despite knowing that you are perfectly capable of taking care of yourself. I also wanted to tell you how proud I am of you.

I couldn’t say all this. And a lot more. You know why.

Perhaps you still understand everything I don’t say.

Perhaps you don’t.

Perhaps someday I will find out.

Perhaps never.

Right now, this letter, like all others, will take its place in my locked drawer.

Love
Paritosh.

—

“Aniket! I haven’t seen you in a while. How are you?” Paritosh motioned his brother and Meena inside his house.

“I will make some tea,” Meena walked to Paritosh’ kitchen with confident familiarity and Aniket sat down on sofa. For a long moment, he didn’t utter a word. Since their confrontation in Paritosh’ office, the brothers had not talked much. Paritosh pretended that nothing was the matter, but Aniket wasn’t as obliging. Paritosh was about to conclude it will be another one of those fruitless meetings, when Aniket finally spoke.

“I want to speak to Rupali.”

“Okay,” Paritosh replied with studied casualness, “When you want to speak to someone you call them.”

“I can’t.”

“The last I remember,” Paritosh added cautiously, “You were the one who had stopped taking her call. So just call her now.”

“She is the one who is not taking my calls now.”

Paritosh sighed. “In that case, it is obvious, that she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“That’s why I am here. You can get her to talk to me.”

“How can I get her to do something like that?”

“She works for you.”

“Of course. And that’s why I have no business dictating who she should or shouldn’t talk to outside of work.”

“And it is your business to fall in her love with a woman half your age.”

“That has got nothing to do with you.”

“Has it not?”

“Aniket. There is nothing between her and me. There can’t be. She works for me. It is unacceptable at the university. Don’t you understand?”

“I don’t think so. I think something has been going on between you two since even before she set her foot here. Come to think of it. She was my friend. How come I didn’t even know that she was applying to your university, and specifically corresponding with you to be her supervisor?”

“Have you considered,” Paritosh no longer felt like he was talking to his baby brother, but rather an adversary; his tone became caustic and harsh, “That the reason could be the same that you have yourself told me a thousand times? That you were least interested in her Ph. D. applications and were struggling with your backlogs while she was diligently applying for the Ph. D. programs, writing Statements of Purpose, getting recommendations, and was also helping you with stay afloat through the last semester of the college?”

“Paritosh!” Meena had come back with tea, “Why are you talking to him like that? Weren’t you the one who had always warned me against making an issue out of his academic performance?”

“Well – you know what? He is no longer a vulnerable adolescent. He needs to grow up.”

“You can help him, Paritosh.”

“Meena ji. He is not asking for a fancy car, or a permission to go to a college I know would be too difficult for him, or an expensive toy. No, I can’t help him.”

“Let me talk to her.”

“It might have just worked out in India. But in this country, if the two of you follow her against her wishes, you will be in trouble for stalking. So, for God’s sake, take my advice. Leave that girl alone.”

Then he stood up to leave, “I have some work to do. I am going to my office. Please remember to lock the door when you leave.”

He called Rupali up from his car, “Have you finished reading those papers?”

“No Dr. Khanna. I need another day–”

“Never mind. Meet me with your notes on whatever you have finished reading. I will be at the coffee shop in fifteen minutes.”

—

When Aniket announced that he was taking up a job on the East Coast and was planning to leave, Paritosh told Rupali about it.

“Is his mother going with him?” she asked.

“I won’t trust him with another person’s responsibility.”

“It is so sweet of you to take care of her. To take care of them both.”

He thought for a bit, trying to decide whether he wanted her to know. Then he spoke, “She had taken care of me when I needed it. I can never forget that.”

Paritosh’ father was violent man. His mother died when he was fourteen. Perhaps succumbing to the injuries from domestic violence. With nobody to manage his father’s temper and drinking, Paritosh lived in constant fear of being beaten up; fear that was realized far too often. He would have run away from home and lived the life of vagabond had the old man not decided to remarry and bring a much younger bride home. Meena was barely ten-years older than Paritosh. He could never bring himself to call her mother and hence always addressed her as “Meena ji”. Whenever it felt like his father was about to lose temper, she would find a way to take her husband to their room. She would keep Paritosh away from them at such times and he never quite figured out if she also took the beatings like his own mother or if she had a way of calming him down. But he did know that she protected him in those crucial years when his life could have been destroyed forever.

Two years later, Paritosh left for college, Aniket was born and his father died. The drinking had consumed him. After Paritosh finished his degree, he came to the US for Ph. D. and brought Aniket and Meena with him. His father had left considerable family property for them. Over time he sold them all, brought all the investments to the US and bought two adjacent houses – one he stayed in, the other was for Meena and Aniket.

“I knew I wasn’t going back to India. The memories of my father would haunt me,” he told Rupali.

“Neither of us has a happy father story. But yours is too horrible.”

“It’s over. It has been a long time.”

“Thank God for that.”

—

To be continued