The Ward (Part 4)
The things that this girl made him do. He could care less about her strange, mysterious behavior. If only he hadn’t been so madly in love with her. As it happened, he loved her with a passion he could hardly give words to. And the very idea that something might be hurting or troubling her was enough to destroy his peace of mind. Apart from his daughter Sumedha, nobody else provoked this protective instinct in him. But with Sumedha he could act on it expressly. With Piyali he had to work day and night on hiding it.
And so here he was. Invading her room when she was not there. Invading her private space and intimate moments. To find a clue to the mystery. That morning he had declared himself unwell, called up at the university and cancelled all his classes and had decided to stay at home. Piyali had come to his room, looking wretched and close to tears.
“What is it, Mukundo Babu? What happened to you?”
“It’s perhaps just physical exhaustion. I have more classes than usual this semester. I should be fine by the evening.”
She had stayed silent for a moment and then had asked, halting at every word, “Is it because of me? Because of the conversation we had yesterday?”
He had taken a moment to regard her worried, shrunken face and then had answered, “No. You must not worry, Piyali.”
Wordlessly, she had left his room, leaving him a bit more miserable.
Presently he looked around the room, feeling exasperated with himself. What did he expect to find? What should he be looking for?
He sat down on her bed and pulled up a pillow to keep in his lap as was his habit. A piece of paper fell on the floor. He picked it up and jolted in surprise. It was a photograph of the two of them, eating pani-puri at a poojo pandal. They were laughing. It was from three years ago. He was wearing the blue kurta she had brought for him from her first salary. He had seen the photo earlier, several times. But he had never noticed earlier how she had been looking at him while trying to stuff another puri in her mouth. Every time he took the photo out of his office desk drawer, he had only wondered how transparent his own expressions were. At least to him.
As if suddenly jolted by an electric current, he bolted upright, letting the pillow in his lap fall on the floor. He picked up the pillow and tried to place the photo and the pillow back in their original position as far as he could recall. Next, he hesitated only for a moment before opening her drawer. Hidden beneath the bundle of assignments and tests she had to grade were a bunch of hand-drawings. Mukundo had never known that she drew. But she drew well enough for him to decipher what, rather who, the subject of most of her drawings was. He tried for a while to find a diary. But she either didn’t keep one, or kept it well-hidden.
—
Piyali recognized his car as soon as she came out of the school premises. Surprised and worried, she almost ran to it.
“Mukundo Babu!” she opened the passenger door and hissed breathlessly, “What are you doing here? You are unwell. You should be resting.”
“Please sit, Piyali. I am fine now.”
“You–” she grew confused now, “You came to pick me up?”
“Yes.”
She climbed in and pulled her seat-belt. Then asked again, “Why?”
“Because I wanted to go for a cup of coffee with you.”
She sighed and tapped the headrest with the back of her head, as if thinking. Then she asked, “And talk?”
“Are you scared of me?”
“What an absurd question that is, Mukundo Babu. Of course, not.”
“Then let’s talk. Talk honestly. What’s the harm?”
“Fine!” said Piyali, “If there is someone you think I should get married to, you let me know and I will get married.”
“We are talking, Piyali. Not getting you married. At least, not until…”
Piyali waited for him to finish, but he didn’t. She closed her eyes in exasperation. She had handled it all wrong. She had been unprepared for the conversation Mohima had sprang up on her from nowhere. She should have appeared more nonchalant, more frivolous. She should not have let her inner struggle show up. And now it was all a mess. She was afraid that if the truth of her heart was revealed she would forever lose them all. Kaki, Mukundo Babu, Sumi – the only people in the whole wide world she could think of as her own. As Mukundo drove silently, she tried to think how she was going to handle the impending conversation.
But all her preparations came to a naught. After picking up their coffee, Mukundo led her to a secluded corner and slipped a photograph across the table. THE photograph. All color drained out of her face.
“You know where I found it, don’t you?”
“It’s just a photograph,” she spoke, haltingly, “You were wearing the kurta I got for you. So…”
“That’s true enough. But I asked for honesty, Piyali. And half-truth is not honesty.”
“Let’s stop right here, Mukundo Babu. Everyone is allowed to be silly once in a while. I might have been silly. But please don’t expose me. Kaki will hate me and I can’t lose the only family I have. Please!”
“You stop right here and tell me something. Remember all those years ago, you had been with us for barely a year and I had done something which had almost wrecked this family. Do you remember?”
She nodded, keeping her eyes glued to the tabletop.
“You hadn’t forgiven me. You didn’t have to. You were never really angry with me, were you?”
She froze up.
“Talk, Piyali. And I promise to be honest with you too. And I promise that you will not lose anything because of this conversation. But I need to know.”
“I—I was shocked, surprised. I wasn’t angry,” she said finally, her head hanging so low that it was barely inches away from falling on the tabletop.
“And this photo is not from beneath your pillow. This is from my drawer,” he said.
Her head shot up, her moist eyes met his for the first time during the conversation, and they were clouded with incomprehension.
“You were not angry with me,” he continued, “On the contrary you felt so strongly for me that even before you had seen anything of life, you had decided you won’t get married to someone else. Even when you didn’t intend to ever tell me why. You were aware of your feelings, Piyali. But you have indeed been silly. Did you never think of what had driven me to that desperate, impulsive act in the first place?”
“It was a mistake, that’s what it was, Mukundo Babu,” she said flatly, “Let’s not talk anymore of this. We had left that incident behind us. We have to leave this conversation behind us too.”
“Why? Why, Piyali? Have I—Oh God! Have I understood you wrong? Tell me if that is the case and I–”
“Are you taking me home or should I get a taxi?”
“We haven’t finished talking.”
“Very well, then,” she stood up and strode out of the coffee-shop without glancing back at him.
Exasperated, Mukundo rushed after her, leaving behind two cups of coffee, untouched, on their table.
He caught up with her before she could hail a taxi and quietly asked her to come to his car. She obeyed and they drove home in uncomfortable silence.
—