Short Story: A retreat to the self: Chapter 3

Chapter 3

A stormy night

Do you know the storm and the waves that spin in violent whirls, when you come to know that the person who left in full health and bloom comes back mute and lifeless? A fire is lit in the hearth of your soul. A ceaseless fire. A fire that withers your being bit by bit, leaf by leaf. Time will help in diminishing its flames to a few embers. But the slightest wind will suffice to rekindle the dormant cinders and all you gathered with your weak arms is licked away in its flames.

Do you know the ripping pain that settles in your heart when you realise you can never hold them in your embrace anymore. We don't mourn the dead. We mourn the fact that henceforth, life will not be the same. We don't bury the dead in mud. We bury them within ourselves.

Devan realized he had opened a forbidden chamber.

‘Maya….. I didn’t mean to hurt you…I'm sorry..’

My eyes were welling with tears…I couldn’t hold them back..I had shut it all away..a flood gate of memories now lie battered..

As if on cue, the clouds let a thunderous roar and it began to rain profusely.

‘oh…God……Maya let’s go….it’s a heavy downpour..we'll be stranded.. ‘

I followed his instructions. My arms and limbs seem to have forsaken me, they don't wait for my commands.

We reached the clinic in a few minutes. We were both fully drenched. I sat there wrapped in my wet clothes, water dripping from every strand of my hair.

‘I’ll call your mother and let her know we are stranded here and I’ll drop you safely back home once rain subsides ok ?' and he did as he said, without waiting for my reply.

He went away to get towels to dry us. In one thunderous bolt, the dust clad bulb hanging from ceiling breathes its last. Devan came back with towels and a lighted candle.

‘Here…dry yourself…Maya…Maya…’

‘Prasad was not a bad person. He just had been through a lot. He had had a rough childhood, with divorced parents and a lonely boarding school life. He never knew what love was.

First few years of our life, I never loved him. I repent that I didn’t give him a chance. Now he is gone. And an ocean of love remains inside me, that I never gave him. I grudged him the only thing he ever wanted. He knew it well that I never loved him. He lived all his life without the warmth of love and affection, do you know what it does to a man ? He forgets that he is lovable.’

‘I am sorry…Maya…just let past be where it belongs..please…calm down…’

'I had only begun to love him.. I had just begun to give him what he always wanted and he was gone..an accident they said…I don’t know the details..I never asked..I didn’t want to know the deatils of how my life was wrecked.. How destiny decided to blow it all away…once again..’

I cried a lot that night. I wish I had cried like this, the day I heard the news of his death. That day, the winds were particularly lugubrious, the windows rattled and I had had a hunch, something is not right.

One and half years of mourning in the truest sense. I don’t remember anything that happened in that period. The only thing I remember is sleeplessly wandering the premises of my home, where now my father rests forever, good that he left before my world collapsed. He was too good a soul to face such trauma, such grief. Unlike me.

Srikanth had come with his wife, stayed for two days and left even before the embers of funeral pyre cooled down. Not that it mattered anymore. At that time, I barely knew who came and who went. My vision had permanently become hazy, with all the crying and wallowing.

The locks of hair I lost, during this time, knew no limits. My long dark curls that I gathered in my hand and slept many a thunderous night, how I hid my face in its lushness, as a child, now lies scattered all around. I knew this was a sign. I was losing myself, bit by bit. First sign is losing hair. Then the wrinkles show, ravages of a hard life, begins to show itself one by one and finally all vestiges of a once jovial little girl is stripped off.

I knew if I stayed here for one more day, I’ll go mad. So when a few relatives kept on pestering and vying for an ancestral land, I locked the house where my father sleeps, and came over to ma's ancestral home for a new life.