Reunion (Part 1)
She was twirling around with her dupatta flying high. When she let it go, it flew straight to him and draped itself over him. He slipped it off his face. A sudden chill invaded his nose.
He had slipped the blanket off his face while dreaming and the morning was unusually chill for Kolkata weather. What on earth was he dreaming about? Rather who?
A memory from last night crept in.
He had excused himself from celebrations last night. He had just landed after a 24 hour journey from US and deserved to take rest. But jetlag had kept him from falling asleep. Bored, he had peered through his window and watched people in the yard below. Everyone looked busy. Or unaccountably jolly. Like her!
She had run in laughing, her dupatta barely holding around her long, slender neck. Somebody was following her and bidding her to return his wallet. He was stern, but she wasn’t daunted. Recklessly ducking her pursuer, she couldn’t care less for the elders glaring at her disapprovingly. There was something familiar in her laughter. But the familiarity was distant. As if he had heard it in some other life time.
Jetlag was getting to him, he had thought and had come back to bed. Then he had dreamed about her and her dupatta. And in such a cheesy fashion too! He shouldn’t have come to India. He was losing his mind.
But he had to come back! It was his sister’s wedding. She was going to go away, leaving him with so much to worry about… He hadn’t slept well and was groggy. But at that thought he dragged himself out of bed.
—
“That’s enough, Piyali. You have been wreaking havoc,” he heard his cousin, Shroban, reprimanding someone. Piyali! The name rang a bell.
“What do you know of wreaking havoc, Dada Babu? You have never left a pen at the wrong place in your entire life?” she grinned as Mukundo tried to recall why the voice and name sounded familiar.
“I know all about it, when you are around. Anyway. Mukundo. You remember Piyali, of course?”
Mukudo looked at Shroban quizzically.
“Maitrayee’s cousin, Mukundo! Don’t you remember staying with him in Haldia once? I can’t believe you would not have come across this brat.”
Ah! The memories came flooding back. She had been singing that night. Her room was just above his. Sitting at her window she seemed to be addressing the darkness of night with her song, seeing something cheerful even in that. It was some recently released song with nonsensical lyrics. Her voice was not trained. But it was sweet. And lively. And full of mischief, especially when she had broken into “Pari hoon main…”
Aporna’s death was barely four months old affair by then. He had been consumed by guilt and confusion. The biggest source of his guilt was that he did not mind her death as much as he should have. It grew worse whenever he recalled the accusation in her eyes when she had died. As if he was responsible for it.
Presently he saw Piyali flush unaccountably.
“What is it?” Shroban did not miss the change in her countenance either.
“I was hoping to avoid him,” she replied.
“Whom? Mukundo? Why?”
She giggled and ran away.
“I have no idea,” Mukundo shrugged when Shroban turned to him, although he did have an idea. A faint one… That chewing gum on his coat must not have been an accident. He had thought so even then. But she was the grand-daughter of his host, who happened to be a distant relative, a professional mentor and also the principle of the school where he was going as an examiner. He couldn’t have created an issue over it. He had to do with his regular sweater, instead of the formal coat he preferred for such occasions.
“Baba,” he started at the sound. It was his five-year old daughter, Sumedha, “Dadu is calling you.”
“Tell him, I am coming in a bit,” Speaking to his father was an exercise in enduring unpleasantness. He respected his father too much to avoid him when asked for. But he would need to gather all his will power before he went to him.
“Baba?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t I go with, Pishima?”
“No.” He shouldn’t have been so curt. He should say something tender, comforting. It was his daughter. A five-year old innocent child. But why did she make him so miserable? “Don’t worry, Sumedha,” he managed to pat her head in a gesture of reassurance. It didn’t have any effect on the child.
—
“You aren’t thinking of leaving your Ph. D. for that chit of a girl, are you?”
“I could take her with me…”
“Bah! And you think you can concentrate on your work while feeding a five-year old.”
“What is the alternative?”
“I am not dead yet.”
“Baba. You can’t…”
“Run after her. Yes. But I can afford to send her to a boarding school.”
“I don’t know… I will have to think about it.”
“I have already thought about it.”
To put it mildly, his father didn’t encourage arguments. Not that Mukundo knew what he wanted to argue for. His sister, who had taken care of Sumedha till now, even if less than perfectly, wanted a life and family of her own. So, he had to decide now what he wanted to do with his daughter? He should take care of her. But could he? He had left for his Ph. D. in US when she was less than a year old. In last four years, his only contact with her had been over video chat. She was comfortable in talking to him. But living with him? She had only known her pishima as her guardian all this while. What was he to do if her pishima was abandoning her now? But when her father had abandoned her so long back, who was to blame her pishima?
—
To be continued