Mish' Fiction

“Yes. And that was followed by a maddening hallucination. I felt like you heard me.  It was your voice that I heard. You asked someone – ‘Did you hear that? My name?’ And then you also howled back  – ‘I am coming.’ And then everything fell silent. I screamed your name again, but I did not hear anything back.”

I stopped breathing for a while and remembered to do so only when he broke the silence. “You think me mad, Sarah. But the experience was real. And yet, I know you weren’t here. You would understand now why it was so difficult for me believe last night that you had really come.”

“Yes,” I said at last, “I believe you and I understand you.”

—

We got married, of course. We pulled Ananya out of the hostel and shifted to Bangalore. I never asked him to get his eyes checked up again, because I didn’t want him to feel that he was inadequate in any way. But after a while, he himself expressed his wish to do so. “I do want to see the world again, Sarah,” he said when he asked to be taken him to a doctor. “If possible, that is,” he added hastily, not wanting to hope too much, not wanting to jinx the possibility by hoping. He did get partial eyesight back in one of his eyes with treatment. After a while, we managed to get an eye donation and his second eye recovered completely with transplant. About a year later, he was fit enough to restart his old job at Bangalore University. With more time in my hand, I also took up a job as a school-teacher and happily settled into a stable, loving married life. Naman visited us often and at my insistence, Protim made his peace with him. I think he even began to like him a little. “Not a bad sort of fellow, this brother of yours,” he would say.

Anaya was difficult for some time though. The experience of last few months had shaken the child. Hostel life hadn’t done her any good either. She was withdrawn from us. Thankfully patience was not something I lacked. Over time I won her heart again, but it was her father that she found difficult to forgive. For sending her away. One day – she must have been about seven and half years then – she said something particularly insulting about her father and for the first time I lost patience with her.

“You think your father doesn’t love you,” I seethed at her, “You think your father doesn’t care for you because he sent you to a hostel for your own safety. What do you know of the fathers who don’t care? What would you have done if you were left on the church steps, or worse – in a municipality dumpster – as a one-day old? Or if he had abandoned you as a child when he realized you were not…”

“Sarah!” It must have been the first time in my married life that my husband had shouted at me, and a good thing it was that he stopped me at the right time, before I had revealed something too damaging, “You are scaring her. What has come upon you?”

I came to myself and noticed that he was right. She had gone pale and was shaking with fear. But something good came out of it. Protim went to her and picked her up; and she let him, sobbing her heart out on his shoulders.

“That’s enough, that’s enough Annie. It’s all right. Sarah Auntie was not saying anything bad. She was saying the right thing. I do love you.”

I apologized to Ananya later and she was sweet about it. But I was dreading his reaction. I managed to avoid meeting him alone for the rest of the day, but when the night came there was no option. Steeling myself for his vexed outburst, I tiptoed into our room. He was sitting sprawled on the bed and reading a book.

—

Protim

If it weren’t so obviously unhealthy, I would have both of us resign from our jobs and keep her by my side every moment of the day. Sometimes I felt tempted to fire entire household staff so that I could get her alone more often. But practical concerns came in the way again.

Today, however, it had been deliberate on her part. She had avoided me the entire day. I was annoyed to the core and was determined to teach her a lesson. If she was angry that I shouted at her, couldn’t she just talk it out with me? Must she play those games? I didn’t look up from my book, even though I knew she had come in. She still had the ability to noiselessly tip-toe around the house. But she couldn’t surprise me with that any longer. Now I could catch the faintest scent of her, even from far away. Probably an ability I developed during my days of sightlessness.

She sat uncomfortably on the edge of her side of the bed.

“Protim!”

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You are?” I finally looked up and arched my eyebrows, deliberately. The fact was that my anger was melting away with her mere presence and all I wanted to do was pull her in the bed with me and make love to her senselessly. But I couldn’t let her go just like that.

“I don’t know what had come upon me…”

“Anger, probably? Pointless, childish anger?”

“Anger, yes. I just lost it because…”

“Because? Yes? Give me one good reason!”

She bit her lips. I felt like helping her with that, but…

“It won’t happen again, I promise.”

“Why did it happen in the first place? What was going on in your mind?”

She lost patience and cried out, “I went mad, okay? It was about you – I have been putting up with it for almost two years now. I know it’s your daughter and you love her to death. I do too, but I am a human too? My patience is also finite.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What do you mean what am I talking about?”

“What does Ananya have to do with you sulking the entire day? You were quite pally with her this evening, playing your little games.”

“Me? Sulking? What are you talking about?” she was puzzled and annoyed.

“Why the hell were you avoiding me the entire day?”

“Because I was scared.”

“Scared? Of what? Me?”

“Of course you.”

I burst out laughing. “My little ghost was scared of me?”

“You think it’s funny,” she made to get up, but I grabbed her and pulled her back. Before long she was pinned beneath me.

“Stay still and talk to me,” I hissed in the way I knew would make her acquiesce, “Why have you been avoiding me?”

“I shouldn’t have scolded Ananya like that. I was embarrassed and scared of your reaction.”

“Stupid, stupid girl,” I rolled off and settled beside her. Then I had her turn on her side, so that we could look at each other. “Don’t you realize what you have done? You have opened up a path to our reconciliation. It was the first time since I have brought her back that she has spoken to me properly.”

She stayed silent and bit her lips again.

“Stop biting those lips, else I won’t be able to finish this conversation.”

She let go immediately and I marveled again at her capacity to blush so furiously even after a year and a half of our wedding.

“I’m sorry I shouted at you,” I said so softly, I surprised myself. She looked startled as well.

“I was about to blunder and I was indeed scaring her.”

“I could have stopped you without shouting.”

“You are not angry at me, then?”

“I am,” I grinned, “I am angry. Don’t provoke me by staying away again. Is that understood?”

She nodded.

“Once you had left without talking to me. I cannot forget the misery that followed, ever,” my tone grew somber.

“Please don’t…”

“And now the time for punishment,” I grinned again.

I had always felt such all-consuming need for her that wasn’t equalled by anything I had felt for any woman earlier in my life. The result was that I could be quite aggressive in bed. But she took it well. That night I was going to literally chew up those teasing lips of hers. The next day was a Sunday. She could afford to wake up with swollen lips and probably then I would have mercy and leave her alone for a day.

– The End –

“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

In her drunken, drugged state, Sunita had slept off with a cigarette stub still burning. That’s what had caused the fire. It had spread slowly in the beginning and by the time Protim had woken up a large part of the house was already engulfed in it. He had hurried woken everyone else and sent them outside. Then noticing that the source was Sunita’s room he rushed to save her. It was too late to save her, even though he had dragged her burnt body outside. But he had damaged his eyes in the process. There were also burns on his neck, Kaveri had told me, but they healed with time. His eyes might improve if he went to Bangalore and seek better medical care. But he refused to do that. “There isn’t much left for me to see,” he had said and silenced everyone who tried to argue otherwise.

When I entered his room with the dinner tray, he was standing at the window, looking out at what he couldn’t see.

“Leave the dinner on table, Chanda,” he said, “Give me some water.”

I approached him with a glass. “Is the water cold?” he asked before I could hand him the glass.

“No Sir.”

“Who is it? Kavita, isn’t that you?”

“No Sir.”

“Who are you then? Whose voice is it?”

“Do you want me to bring cold water, Sir?”

“Who are you?”

“Chanda knows me. She let me come into the house. Into your room.”

“God! No. It’s not possible. Am I mad enough to hallucinate now?”

“You aren’t mad, and you aren’t hallucinating.”

“Where are you?” he groped around for me, “If it isn’t my hallucination, let me touch you, let me feel you. This voice will drive me mad, if I am not already so.”

I arrested his hand in mine.

“Sarah!” He freed his hand, his strength was still intact, and grabbed my shoulders. He frantically ran his hands over my face, neck, arms, waist and finally pulled me in a hug.

“This is her. This can be nobody else. I know these arms, this body…”

“And this voice.”

“But it must be a dream. I dream of it often. Of her coming back to me, and loving me, never leaving me.”

“And I will never leave you now.”

“You always say that and then disappear. You will disappear again. But hold me before you go away Sarah. Hold me close.”

I tiptoed and kissed him first on his eyes and then on his eyebrows, “There!”

“Sarah!” he finally seemed to have started entertaining the idea that I was really there, “It’s you. You have come back to me.”

“I have.”

“You are not dead. Not abducted by goons. You are safe. And you haven’t had to suffer for want of money?”

“I am safe and sound. I earned enough for myself and I have more money at my disposal.”

“Money at your disposal? Your family?”

“My brother mostly.”

“This is real. Shadows won’t talk about money, family. You have money at your disposal, Sarah. You are  a rich woman now?”

“I have a house in my name. If you don’t let me stay with you, I will sell it and buy the one next to yours. You can come there when you need company.”

“You have money Sarah. And you are united with your family. They would not let you stay with a blind old man like me.”

“It’s still not my family and they don’t take my decisions. My life is still my own. If they take away their house and their money, I could still rent a place near you.”

“And you will stay with me?”

“Of course. Unless you don’t want it. I will be your neighbor, your nurse, your housekeeper. I will be your companion — to read to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be your eyes. Don’t look so sad now. You must not be lonely and sad again until I live.”

He didn’t speak for a long minute. I started feeling embarrassed. Had I been too hasty? I had assumed that he would want to marry me. That he would claim me as his own at once. That’s what had prompted me to speak all that I had spoken. But he just stood there not reply, not giving any hint that he wanted it to be so. I realized that I might have a made a fool of myself. I began to withdraw from him, but he eagerly pulled me closer.

“No, no Sarah. You can’t leave now. I have felt the joy of you presence. I have so little of it left that I can’t give up on it. The world will call me selfish, brute. Let them. I need you. I want you, Sarah. Else my very soul will unravel and burn the entire world down in seeking its revenge.”

“I will stay with you; I have already told you that.”

“Yes. But you may mean one thing by staying with me, and I another. You know how to be kind, generous, how to serve. And you will be happy to be my nurse, to be my eyes, my housekeeper. You will make a sacrifice because you pity me. Of course, I should be happy with that, shouldn’t I?  Come on Sarah, tell me.”

“I will be whatever you want. If you think it better for me to be only a nurse and a housekeeper, I’d be content to do so.”

“But you can’t always be my nurse and housekeeper, Sarah. You are young. You will find love and marry.”

“I don’t want to be married.”

“But you should. If I were what I once was, I would make you want it. But now… A blind, old man… Burned and injured…”

He grew gloomy again. But I was cheered. He did want me. It was his blindness that worried him, and that didn’t worry me at all.

“When did you last shave? Or cut your hair? Or clipped your nails? You have grown to look like a bear, all hairy and black. I think it’s high time someone humanized you again.”

“At least on one hand, nails don’t grow anymore.” I hadn’t noticed him wearing a thin glove on his left hand. He took it off and I saw the stumps of his four fingers. The top of the fingers had been burnt away. Something burning must have fallen on his hands, while he was trying to drag Sunita away. Kaveri hadn’t mentioned this. She probably didn’t know. I lifted his hand up and planed a moist kiss on it.

“I thought you would be revolted. This ghastly sight…”

“You don’t even know what it looks like. And you aren’t doing well in your judgement of me. I am tempted to say something insulting to you. By the way, does someone even clean this room any longer? When were the sheets last changed? Why is there so much of dust on the heater? Let me call Kavita and make this room more livable. I will also have Chanda cook something more substantial for dinner. I am famished. You are too, but you seem to not remember to eat.”

—

To be continued

‘Saraaaah!’ I heard it again and stopped in my tracks. It was unmistakably his voice. I was in the garden by then. The main gate of the property was open and in my sight. But he was nowhere to be seen. The weather was warm, but I was chilled to the bones and started shaking.

Amol came running after me, “Sarah. What’s wrong? What are you…”

“I can’t talk right now, Amol,” I found my voice with difficulty, “Meera will arrange for anything you need. She knows you. Please find her.” Then I rushed back to my room.

I tossed and turned in my bed for couple of hours. I refused tea and snacks that Meera came to ask for. Finally I made up my mind to go to Hojukeri. I’d only try to find out about him from afar and not meet him. And I would try to steal a glance at him to convince myself that he was all right. Then I’d be back.

It was seven in the evening. If left for the bus-stop right away, I should be able to find an overnight bus to Bangalore, and another one to Madikeri from there. I called up the headmistress of my school and gave her some botched up excuse for a leave and packed up lightly.

Amol had left, I was informed to my relief. Meera insisted on packing dinner for me and as soon as she handed me the box, I left for the bus stop.

—

I got down at Madikeri this time and hired an auto for Hojukeri. Nobody was expected to pick me up this time and walking six kilometers would have meant losing time. Besides I would have to come back to Madikeri to find an accommodation if I needed to stay overnight. The auto would come in handy.

About a kilometer before Hojukeri, I stopped the auto and got talking to a shopkeeper on the pretense of asking directions for his plantation. What I heard there made my heart sink. Apparently there had been a fire in the house and the owner was injured badly. He no longer stayed in Hojukeri, but had shifted to Madikeri with the rest of the household. Would the shopkeeper know where in Madikeri did they live? I was a friend who had lost touch and did not have their number. He didn’t know, but I could ask his daughter’s nanny, who did not go to Madikeri with them and still stayed in the village with her own family. I thanked the shopkeeper and set out to look for Kaveri. Thankfully she was easy to locate. She screamed in excitement and delight on seeing me. I must see him right away, she insisted. He had suffered so much since I left.

“What happened?” my heart threatened to leap out of body and I was dying to go back to Madikeri to find him. But I also needed to know exactly what had happened. Kaveri’s narration of the events, as I later confirmed, was quite accurate.

—

Protim

“Oh dear, dear husband! How lonely you must have been without me to have fallen for that minger!” Sunita had grown more vicious during her absence from my life. Why had she come back anyway? Had she run out of handsome lovers? I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had. Drugs had taken a toll on her. She was still pretty, but the glow of youth and health that made her irresistible was gone. Her eyes were sunken, cheeks hollow and lips chafed.

And her presence had become toxic.Sarah’s abandonment had been hard enough of Annie. Sunita’s presence did not help her get over Sarah though. It only terrified her. It was difficult to imagine that Sunita was her biological mother and Sarah had been the adoptive one. I had to take Annie to Mysore with me on the days I was there. Neither she, nor I felt comfortable in her staying back while Sunita was around. It was wreaking havoc on her studies and well-being. Finally I had to take the hard decision. If it wasn’t possible for me throw Sunita out of the house — she was still my wife and still refused to give me a divorce without bringing Annie in between — Annie must go to someplace she was safer. I admitted her to a boarding. She was devastated, and her tears wouldn’t stop for weeks after I left her there, but I could think of no other solution.

I had steadfastly refused to let Sunita provoke me with anything. I pretended not to listen when she taunted me about Sarah. When she insisted on occupying my bedroom, I gathered my things and made myself comfortable in Sarah’s old room. There were other rooms in the house. But I took up that one only to spite Sunita. She knew whose room it was. I hadn’t let anyone touch it since Sarah had left.

Her inability to provoke me annoyed her. She couldn’t accept failure in even so petty a mission and doubled up her efforts. I don’t want to recall all the name-calling and taunting she subjected me to in those days.

And then the fire happened and it all ended abruptly.

—

Sarah

The gate was unlocked and I didn’t see anybody as I walked through the doorway. I could hear faint sounds in the kitchen and I tip-toed in. Chanda let out a startled cry at first, and then another one of – I don’t know what. Surprise? Happiness?

“Sarah! It’s you,” she ran to me and hugged me. Our relationship had always been cordial, but I wasn’t prepared for this display of affection.

“How are you?” I asked her; my Hindi had become better during my stay in Pune.

“It was wrong, oh, it was wrong. Yet, nothing has gone right since you left. Are you really back? Would you meet him?”

“Is this his dinner?” I pointed at the paltry spread on a tray. A young woman, presumably a helper for aging Chanda, was holding the tray. A bowl of soup, a little lemon rice and a cup of tea! Tea? For dinner?

Chanda understood what I was thinking. She explained, “It is so difficult to feed him anything. Even from this, half of the soup and the rice would come back, if he would eat at all. He wouldn’t use the dining table for his dinner. I would leave the tray in his room and then hope that he at least looks at it.”

“Let me take it. Where is his room?”

—

To be continued

His belief in his work and its importance was ferocious. It was difficult not to get impressed and impacted by it. We often got talking in the evenings that followed. He was in Pune for some fundraising events and was quite satisfied with the way things were going. “Monetary help is not a problem,” he told me repeatedly, “What we lack are the people who can make a difference on the ground. This is not a job for the careerists, but for the passionate.”

“I know that monetary help is not a problem for you, Amol, but I hope it still helps,” I said as I handed him a check written out for half the amount that had accrued in my allowance account.

He looked at the check and was startled. “Sarah. Naman had told me about you. Are you sure you want to give away so much?”

“It doesn’t really belong to me, Amol,” I repeated my mantra to him too, “Talking to you has given me ideas about how best to use it. My church here can also use donation for its charities. And the poor children I sometimes teach can make use of books and stationary.”

He looked at me curiously, but did not say anything. I could read neither approval, nor skepticism in his demeanor. It was strange, but Amol was strange in many ways. You had to be strange to be able to do radical things with your life as he did. So, I shook off the feeling.

Naman and Amol stayed for two weeks. Then Naman left for his business trips and Amol to a village some hundred kilometers away from Pune. His organization was working there to improve the quality of education in the government school.

But couple of days later, I was surprised to find Amol waiting in the drawing room when I came back from school.

“Hi! What a surprise.”

He bolted out of the sofa on seeing me, almost toppling the laptop he was working on.

“Sorry. I startled you.”

“No!” he shook his head rather vigorously, “I’m sorry to have come unannounced, without asking you first.”

“If you are really worried about formalities, this house is your friend’s really. It doesn’t matter how many places he makes me sign.”

“Yeah… Even he doesn’t know I am here.”

“Okay?” his strangeness started sounding eerie.

“I need your help, Sarah.”

“How can I help?”

“You have given beyond your means to my cause. Monetarily. But Sarah, in you I see a person who can give more. You have led a life of deprivation. You can understand people who suffer it like even I can’t do. You can contribute much more than your money to the cause.”

“You are asking me to join your NGO?”

“NGO is just a vehicle for what I want to achieve. I am asking you to join me.”

“How?”

“Be my partner. In work and in life.”

“Excuse me?”

“The journey I have chosen is tough, Sarah and roads abandoned and lonely. I need company and support to keep me on the right path. But it isn’t just any woman’s cup of tea, to put up with a man like me. I don’t offer romance and roses. I only offer hard work, mud roads, thorny rides, in return for a vague satisfaction of doing the right thing.”

I was unprepared for this. “You are asking me to…”

“Marry me, Sarah. Together we could do wonders.”

I stayed silent for a long minute. Then I picked up the jug and glass from the coffee table and gulped down some water before speaking.

“Amol. This is… I admire your work and I would happily join you.”

“Should I take that as a yes…”

“But it doesn’t have to depend on us marrying. I don’t mind hard work, mud roads or whatever else social work brings in one’s way. I’d happily be your companion and learn from you and give your cause my all. But I can’t marry you.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Sarah. Without marriage, a young woman and a man would always be viewed suspiciously by the common people among whom we have to work. We need to gain their trust and it can’t come without a legitimate relationship.”

“You are my brother’s friend. We are as good as brother and sister.”

“You are not my sister.”

“I can be and that’s how you can introduce me to the people.”

“That would be a deception. And a brother and sister cannot sleep together under the open sky, or in a one-room hut, which is the best we’d often have.”

“Surely people other than husband and wife work together on such causes…”

“Not a young woman and a man.”

“We can’t get married, Amol. We barely know each other. We don’t love each other.”

“Love is more than the teenage romance, Sarah. Love need not, in fact should not, be for a single person. It is for the mankind.”

“I will marry myself to the cause of mankind, then, Amol.”

“You can’t be a part of this cause with me in any other way. You wish to stay away from it, then?”

“I have told you. I would happily work for the cause, but I won’t give you my heart that you don’t care for.”

“The conditional offering won’t do, Sarah. You must offer all, if you want to tread this path.”

I admired him, I really did. But the way he had framed the entire issue left a bad taste in my mouth. Did he really believe in what he said, or did he want to gain something personal without making a personal commitment, using the shield of this bigger cause?

I didn’t want to feel bitter about him. So, I decided not to dwell on this question. I chose to believe that he was being true to himself, and I chose to disagree with him without doubting his intentions. Because my heart would not allow me to submit to him.

But he spoke before I could.

“Who are you holding back for, Sarah? The man who deceived you with a promise of marriage while he was already married?”

I was aghast. Who told him? Naman? How did he know? Did he ask his father? I hadn’t intended to be rude to him. I only wanted to refuse him politely. But this attack on Protim blew my fuse off.

“Don’t presume to know and understand everyone, Amol. You don’t know him.”

“What you need to know is that world is full of people who would take advantage of you. Probably your love has blinded you about him. But…”

I motioned him to stop talking. “Did you hear that?” I had heard someone screaming out my name in pain.

“Hear what?”

“My name?”

“Sarah! Nobody said anything…”

“It was him,” I declared  and ran outside screaming, ”I am coming!”  Could he have found me? Could he have come here?

—

To be continued

Sarah

Naman’s visit became regular. After a few days, he asked me to go out for lunch with him. I had to make a frantic trip to the market to buy something decent that I could wear to a fancy restaurant of his choosing. My bitterness for Rajesh Goenka and my determination to not be a part of his family hadn’t gone anywhere, but I was becoming fond of this brother of mine. He was clever, and worldly-wise, and yet there was a naïve humanism in him that could not fail to impress me. And he was as open a person as one could be. In a few days’ time, I knew all about his school days, his friends, his college pranks and what not. And he had managed to make me reciprocate too, although I didn’t have as many stories worth telling as he did. There were parts of my experiences in orphanage that I would never ever discuss with him, or anybody  – except probably Protim. Protim! Oh, I hadn’t been able to shake his memories off. The more I grew used to my brother’s company, the more I pined for his. Naman’s company was not a substitute for his, rather he turned out to be an appetizer that increased my hunger for Protim even more. The friendship I found in my brother made me want Protim’s love even more. I must be the epitome of human greed!

Meanwhile, I was growing curious about Naman’s continued presence in Pune. “Don’t you have to go back to Bangalore?” I finally asked him.

He fell silent.

“What is it?” I prodded.

“Sarah. I have a house here in Pune.”

“Okay?”

“I want you to have it.”

“Must you make me regret letting you into my life?”

“It’s not charity or pity. It is yours. All I have is as much yours as it is mine.”

“It is all your father’s. You aren’t at liberty to offer it to me, even if I were to accept it.”

“He regrets it, Sarah. He does. His health and mine, he thinks it is the punishment for what he did to you,” he noticed my pursed lips and hastily added, “I am not asking you to forgive him or anything. I am not asking you to accept the family…”

“Leave, Naman.”

“Please don’t, Sarah. I am sorry. Look…”

“Leave!” I screamed.

He looked exasperated, but left.

I don’t know why, but I hugged a pillow that night, imagined it to be Protim and cried out loud.

Naman came back the next day though and I was happy that he did. He did not mention the house and I did not bring up the last day’s conversation either. Our time passed pleasantly enough.

“I am leaving tonight. I will keep coming though. And I will call you, if that is fine by you,” he informed when the time to leave came.

“I’d like that.”

He kept an envelope on the chair he had just vacated. “Don’t overreact, Sarah. In fact, don’t react at all. This envelope has the address and the key to the house. Meera, the housekeeper there, knows about you. You are free to go anytime. You don’t have to. You can bury the envelope somewhere, if you hate the idea so much. But it would make me really happy if you changed your mind.”

I stiffened, but took his advice and did not react. He strode over, hugged me, planted a kiss on my cheek and then left.

My brother liked to have his way. And unlike Protim, he knew how to do it without enraging the other person. I don’t know how it came to be, but over next couple of weeks I had shifted to his house, then signed a gift deed through which he transferred its ownership to me and when I refused to tell him my bank account details, he got me to open a new account in which he transferred a monthly allowance for my use. The allowance, that I never touched, was several times my salary. But I have to admit that it was strangely empowering to know that I had all that money at my disposal.

He came back to Pune after a month and this time he was accompanied by a friend of his. Both of them stayed in the same house, but it wasn’t an inconvenience by any means. The house was big enough to accommodate a large wedding party. Even at Hojukeri, I was used to much less. And before that was no comparison at all.

I got introduced to the friend during the breakfast on the morning after they arrived. His name was Amol Kulkarni and he was a social worker. It was strange to see him with Naman, because from his appearance and dress, Amol didn’t seem to belong to the class Goenkas would frequent.  Although his manners and presentation were impeccable. Since I had to leave in time for school, I didn’t get to know him much on our first meeting, but the inconsistency I had observed was explained away on our subsequent meetings.

He belonged to a wealthy enough family, but had left his home soon after finishing college. He could not get himself absorbed in one of those high-flying careers that would have suited someone from his background and which would have pleased his family. He wanted to work at the grass-root level. “And it was not possible to genuinely connect with common people, if I continued my extravagant lifestyle,” he explained, “I had to be like them to really empathize with their problems. I don’t want to bring an outsider’s solution to people’s problems. I don’t want to bring them mere charity. Sustainable solutions can only come from within. If you want to improve the economic condition of the people, for instance, it won’t do to give them money. They have to see for themselves that education, let’s say, is the means of economic upliftment and they have to work towards it. If they have unsurmountable difficulties there, a little outside help can be of use. But if that drive is not there, nothing can help.”

“But by giving up on your wealth, you have lost a way of providing that little outside help, haven’t you?” I argued.

“True. But there are enough well-intentioned people like your brother who come forward with monetary help. The NGO I work for manages to pay me a salary so that I don’t starve. What I have gained by losing all that money is more important. I have gained the understanding of the circumstances which push people into the poverty sinkhole further and further, which makes education of the right kind inaccessible, the circumstances where the outside preaching sounds hollow, although the preaching makes complete sense to the preachers and their intentions are good.”

—

To be continued

“Look…” I struggled to recall his name. I had always referred to him as the patient and even though he had introduced himself earlier, it took me a while to recall that, “Naman, right? Naman. There is nothing you need to do for me. Treat me as a stranger who helped you because she could, and move on. You didn’t know anything about me like you yourself told me. So, just let go and let me be. I am Sarah Jacob. I never was and I never can be Niharika Goenka.”

“I am not trying to change who you are. In your place, I myself would have no interest in being a Goenka,” he gave a sad smile that managed to tug at my heart. “You have treated me like a stranger whom you helped because you could. But would it be so out of place to keep in touch with the stranger whose life you saved? Or to let him express his gratitude once in a while.”

“Don’t lie to yourself, Naman. You didn’t come here to befriend a stranger. You came here to know a sister. But that sister doesn’t exist. Just leave and let everyone be at peace.”

“Guilty as charged. I got carried away in trying to win an argument. I did come to know a sister. And I can’t shake this feeling away that the only reason I fell ill was so that I could find you again. Believe me Sarah, I had never known about you. If I had…”

He stopped talking suddenly and in a moment I knew the reason. Tears had betrayed him. He got up from the chair and went to the window. He stood there for a long while, facing away from me. The window looked over a noisy, crowded, narrow street. It wasn’t the view that kept him there, but the tears.  At last he wiped them off, rubbed his face with his hands and turned to face me.

“I’m sorry. I should leave…”

“Sit down.”

He was startled and looked at me uncertainly.

“Would you like to have some tea?” I asked ignoring his looks.

“That… that would be great.”

A corner of the same room served as my tiny kitchen, which I used to make tea. He also took two spoonful of sugar in his tea like me and we sipped it in silence for a while.

“You stay in Bangalore, don’t you?” I broke the silence.

“Yes. But I used to travel a lot for business. And I expect to start doing that again now that I am better.”

“Already handling business?”

“Dad doesn’t keep well. So, I had to start while I was still in college. You are working as a teacher, right?”

“Is your detective still following me?” I frowned.

“He won’t. Not any longer,” he assured me hastily, “I’m sorry about all this. I wish circumstances were different. ”

I let out a sigh and then resumed conversation. “Yes. I teach at a school nearby.”

He was good at making conversations. Soon, we had discovered that we shared an interest in painting. Unlike me, however, he had trained in his student days and so I assumed he would be much more accomplished than me. He had done most of his schooling outside India. But came back to Bangalore for college when his father’s health deteriorated and he needed a helping hand. He liked golfing, skiing and playing guitar, all the things I had no exposure or experience of.

Despite reminding me repeatedly of what all I had lost in life, the conversation made me feel good. I hadn’t talked much in last six months I realized and the friendly tete-a-tete had uplifted my spirits.

“Can I come again?” he asked hesitatingly while taking his leave.

“Yeah,” I replied briefly trying not to sound too eager.

“I plan to stay in Pune for a while. Can I come tomorrow afternoon, after you are back from school?”

I smiled this time, “You know my schedule.”

He looked contrite though. “Nobody will follow you any longer, I really mean it.”

“I believe you. Come tomorrow.”

—

Protim

It was the six-month anniversary of Sarah leaving me. What had my life come to that the anniversaries I remembered were of incidents like those, incidents of loss and desperate measures? How had I been in all these months? Terrible. And I would be like this forever now.

Sarah was an adult who had left of her own accord. I wasn’t a relative or anything. So, police was not going to be of any help. I drove down to Bangalore and first tried my luck at her orphanage. Nobody was of any help. An old nun mumbled something to the effect that she never expected anything good to happen to that girl. She must have gone to the devil. Then I swallowed all my pride and drove down to meet Rajesh Goekna. That man went into a fit of rage on hearing that Sarah had disappeared. What did I do to his daughter to make her run away like that? Now he would lost both his children because his son won’t get the marrow donation he so badly needed. The galls  that man showed threatening to take me to police for misleading Sarah with promises of marriage when I was already married.  I reminded him that he should be taken to police first for leaving his daughter out to die as a day-old baby and took off without waiting for more drama. She was too proud to have come to this father of hers. As much as I loved that about her, I was devastated at losing the last thread that could have led me to her. I also went ahead and hired a detective, but he didn’t have much to go by.

So, there I was. Forlorn, dead from within. Even Annie’s responsibilities did not arouse me enough. I continued with my job in Mysore, just to keep myself from going insane, leaving my daughter to Kaveri and Chanda. It wasn’t as reassuring as leaving her in Sarah’s care. But it was the best I could do. I had started wondering if she won’t do better in a boarding school, but kept postponing the decision.

Nothing changed in all those months after I had given up on looking for her. Until that day, when it was the six-month anniversary of the date that made me a friendless, scorned man again.

Chanda came running to me sometime after lunch, whatever sorry excuse for it I was having in those days. “It’s her!”

“Sarah?”

“Sunita!”

—

To be continued