No one is Sorry

He cried not out of pain but out of feeling of estrangement. He was hit hard, thrice across his face, for keeping the cooler on while it did not have water. The burning smell of the pump had woken her ailing mother to anger. Her mother could not take another loss to her credit, her operation had already broken the back bone of her husband. Rage of a middle class house wife mingled with illness over powered the mother of a innocent child. Her fingers and the marriage ring left a mark on Pranav's face. The insult of irresponsibility added to the injury of slaps. After a while he was silent, busy with his drawing copy, wax colors and torn out papers. This wasn’t the first time when he felt that nobody loves him.At 11, Pranav was too young to differentiate between anger and hatred.

His mother, Gayatri lay in the other room on a bed in front of a table fan, chanting her dead mother’s name. Her ovaries and uterus had been operated out with the 1 and a half kg tumor. She had been avoiding the operation since last 2 years, believing on her homeopathic medicine though she never took them regularly. An aspiring doctor, she had read her brothers BMS books to become a respected medical consultant in the family and colony. But certainly Homeopathy was not going to help her disease this time, she probably knew it too but kept avoiding the inevitable until the time she could no longer bleed, nor could she put up with the sexual frustration of her husband. The pain kept stabbing her belly and tumor kept swelling while her thighs went through the blood baths day after day, night after night. Finally money was no more a consideration, she nodded yes for the operation when doctor strongly recommended it. Her husband Sunil, was more than willing this time.

Gayatri, staring at the spider web on the dead ceiling fan, kept thinking about her mother's suffering who gave birth to 8 children. She died in the same hospital last year where Gayatri was operated two weeks back. Gayatri hadn’t recovered yet, her wrinkled face, white hairs and a pain filled angry temperament did not correspond to her age of 35. She was going back into sleep when a paper aero plane struck her nose. She opened her eyes and expected Pranav to come for it. He didn’t. she could feel his presence from across the table fan. Tears of remorse filled her eyes. Picking it up she saw on its wings a part of a drawing. On unfolding it a bit she saw a picture of a gun painted by wax colors with all possible meticulous details kept in mind. "He paints well", she thought."Pranav, come take it", she said softly, trying to compensate for the slaps and in an effort to be more friendly she sent the plane flying towards the table fan. While picking up the plane, he looked at his mother’s reflection on the rotating circular steel ball in the centre of the fan. Gayatri kept thinking, how could she undo it. Not just the slap, but all that was to be undone, the tumor, the operationa and the burnt pump. Then looking over she saw Pranav putting his fingers into the fan, touching the steel ball. She shouted uncontrollably "So many times I have told you not to play with fan when it’s on, But you never ever listen tome. That’s why you get beaten up!!". Pranav took his finger out and thought "That’s why, beaten up." He silently took the plane and resumed playing as if he heard nothing.

He had been hearing Gayatri’s moans while he was painting the gun but he chose not to bother about it, out of spite or may be out of revenge. That is perhaps the foetus of a growing up criminal at the age of 11. Today he peed on the bloodstains in the toilet, trying to wash them away. While peeing, an unconscious flash of thought crossed his mind. "She bleeds, but from where? Definitely God is making her pay for what she does to me." He then shrugged on the thought. A chill went through his spine on realising what had just crossed his mind. Realisation of self demise had begin to fill him with contempt for himself when he felt the drops of urine falling on his legs. He went to the bathroom to wash his legs when he heared the sound of a scooter approaching their house. "No this is not his. But he should have come by now. May be he has met an accident, that saves me from him for the the burnt pump."The scooter passed by the house before Pranav could strangle his hatred ridden thoughts to death.

Pranav always heard his dad's approaching Priya scooter long before her mother but today he was extremely conscious about it. He knew all the possible consequences, but he wanted to figure out today’s by looking at Sunil’s face. Sunil came today, not with his usual sound of scooter and horn but with the ring of the bell. He had left his scooter at the repair shop. Gayatri didn’t ask him the expenditure on the repair. she usually used to dig out things before her operation, but now she felt too guilty to ask such questions. Sunil asked, "what happened to the cooler?" Pranav heared it in the other room. He felt like a victim of a conspiracy. A conspiracy, where conspirators are themselves the police, the lawyers and the judge. But he didn’t think of preparing for his excuses. He knew it wont be of help, besides it doesn’t matter. Shamelessness had crept into his character sometime back. He then heard her mother say, "I forgot to switch it off and went to sleep. It didnt have water, the pump burnt". "Good, very good. I will earn and people in this house will spill", said Sunil. Pranav thought, "Why is she doing this to me now, is she trying to prove that she loves me or has she silently signalled to him that I am the culprit and she is playing a good mother to me?" He had developed this habit of referring to his parents as HE and SHE in his mind. That was a child’s silent revenge. Once or twice he gathered the courage to think of them as "Saala", without feeling guilty.

Sunil didn't try to wash away the blood stains by peeing at them. He just stared at them in disgust while peeing. It had been months since he had sex with his wife. "It would take another month for her to get ready, for her stitches to be firmer", he thought. Image of Kiran wearing sleave less blouse caught his imagination, "I could have given her lift today, had it not been for my motherfucking scooter." But then, expenditure on the scooter crossed his mind and Kiran's arms could not hold her thought. Drops of urine fell on his legs. While washing his legs in the bathroom, he could hear his wife cooking in the kitchen. It reminded him of the operation day, the tension, the uncertainity and the loan he had taken. "Lost my bloody fixed deposit, just to keep a ailing cook alive ." Before he could think further, Gayatri called him for dinner.

Power cut happened just when Sunil had put the first bite of roti and daal in his mouth. "Motherfuckers, it’s an every day drama", he complained in anger. Realizing that Gayatri’s frail body was too tired after cooking , he signaled her to rest and went to the other room searching for the candle and matchbox. Pranav had already found them and was about to light the candle when he heared Sunil's order, "You leave it, otherwise you will put the whole house on fire." Pranav now knew that he guessed it right, SHE had silently told HIM that he burnt the cooler. He ignored the command, and lighted the candle. This time it was the ego of a hungry middle class man with a broken down scooter which over powered the father of a child. A hard hit across the face and Pranav had the courage to say "saala" loudly in his mind, before he burst into tears. Candle fell on the torn papers of the drawing copy, with half finished paintings of comic characters, mostly villains. Without caring for the slap and the cry he picked up the candle. "You all dont care for the amount of blood I burn. All these pages could have been steppled to make your rough notebooks. You all keep sucking my blood", he accused without considering the age of the accused. Gayatri called Pranav to the room where she lay infront of the table fan, knowing that its nobody’s fault. If at all it was, it was her's. Pranav moved to the other room, not to seek comfort from her mother but to avoid the chance of blurting out what he had always said only in his mind.

Sunil had been avoiding the sight of those loose papers ever since he entered the room. But now disgust had taken over hunger. He lighted the candle again, put it on the table, picked all the papers, stacked them together according to the size, took out the stapler from where he always kept it, stapled the papers and then neatly placed them on the table. He cared for the meticulous details at work and so did his son while painting. He now observed the paintings and thought how much money must have been wasted in the comics which gayatri allows Pranav to buy every month. He then realized that Pranav had just cried and was qiet now. "Bring the candle here and have your dinner", Gayatri called up from inside the dark room. He picked up the candle and just then power came in. He blew the flame off but before he could put it in the right place, he heared Pranav’s terrifying scream. Then Gayatri’ too. He rushed to that room, to see blood spilled on the wall. Pranav’s finger got stuck in the steel frame of the table fan; he had been moving its wings with his fingers during the power cut. The finger was now chopped off. Sunil switched the fan off, and snatched Pranav’s hand off the fan. Gayatri moved as fast as she could for the bandage, murmuring her mother's name. Sunil picked up his helmet to rush to the doctor, but no, how could he? Bang! Went the helmet on to the table fan. And in all the violence, Pranav kept screaming with flooded eyes as if accusing his parents for his lost finger. The words "Thats why, beaten up" kept hammering on his mind continously.

The Parting words-Part3

Now the pain I was talking about which hit me some 3 years back, was not out of my life in a refugee camp or because of my dad's death in Naxalite movemnet. As it happens, I have never been a part of a great misery. The implicit pesimism has by now made it clear that I am a lover. A loser-lover to be precise. A friend of mine says,"Loving someone is about recognising your own virtues". I think it's true. At least for men. When a man feels man enough for a woman only then he is in a position to love her. Winning the lady adds to the 'enough'part and losing her brings in the scarcity. Unfortunately I fell in love even though I recognised my inadequacy to win, to be enough. The hope was there. Hope of growing and rising up to her beauty. But I had to find out the eligibility criteria, the criteria of being judged as enough. The only way to know whats enough was to become a confession box, to play the confidant. To hear like a student what the aching heart of lady-love has to pour out. I said like a sudent, because that was how I learnt my lessons about what is enough and what is not. I could never be a symapthiser, I never felt what a confidant is supposed to feel or at least what he is assumed to be feeling. I just learned what was being taught to me unknowingly. And the first thing which I learnt was, that being a confidant will never be ENOUGH.Her sadness gave me the role of confidant and she had no other roles to offer. Though being a confidant was not enough but that was the only thing I was good enough for. So I had to wait and hope. Hope for her sadness to come back to her. I say this without any remorse and gulit. Her sadness was my appointment letter to be the gatekeeper of her heart. I waited for her sadness,hoped that soon her heart would cry out and still claimed to myself that I was a lover. Thats a paradox but thats the truth. Love is blind, I had heared. But its merciless, this is something I learnt. Infact I don't believe its blind, it has more senses than the human body, more capacity to see, explore, grow and rise.

PS: Part 4 on it's way..

The mystery

They weren’t cooking that day. I asked mom, if they ran out of gas. She told me that on the day of a family member’s death the stove is not lit. Almost every month I witnessed my parent’s quarrelling because one of them had forgotten to book the gas cylinder. I neither could figure out the defaulter and nor could understand the reason why this happened mostly during the days of unit tests. That day was my last quarterly exam, when I came home and found that Tickoo uncle, our next door neighbor was no more. I was in class 5th then.

Mom had been cooking for them that day. She sent me with the tea kettle to their house while she was cooking Tehri to be sent later. Beena Tickoo, roll number 12 of class 5-A was sitting next to her sobbing mother and looking at tickoo uncle's dead body cluelessly. Even I didnt have any clue about what was happening but I expected her reaction to be different from that of mine. I gave the kettle to Beena's aunt who was taking care of everything. Some 8 to 10 people, mostly ladies were sitting around where Tickoo uncle lay. I wanted to talk to Beena about today’s' paper, she couldn’t take the exam, so I thought she would like to know what was there in it. Besides she was good in English, so she would have helped me estimate my marks in the paper.

I could never feel comfortable with her when Tickoo uncle was around, not even now. I just kept looking at her, sitting amidst all the sobbing ladies, so quietly as if she had been punished for not doing her homework. It regretfully reminded me of one time when she didn't do it but the teacher didn't punish her because tickoo uncle was in hospital. She cried in class that day because the teacher wrote INCOMPLETE in red ink on her notebook. Though I had tried to comfort her then but couldn't, partly because I didn't know how to comfort her and partly because I didn't want to. Now, today with everyone mourning around her, and besides that she probably had a reason to cry, I was expecting her to roll down tears which might again create the opportunity. But she was just silent. Even the silence didn't appear to be a sad one; it was rather a silence out of disinterest.

My mom came in with a Tiffin of Tehri, and the moment she entered,Tickoo aunty started crying uncontrollably. Mom asked me to take Beena to our home and gave me the keys while she held tickoo aunty by the shoulders to pacify her. Beena was very quiet but as I expected, she wasn't reluctant to come along. I was extremely conscious now in her presence as it was one of those rare times when only we two were together. Besides, I was scared she might start crying like her mother did right now and I would be scolded as I was twice by tickoo uncle for making her cry. I thought I should tell her, what I think of death and life after it. But then the consequence of such a conversation was not conceivable in such a vulnerable condition, so I rejected the idea. Then, I took out the English examination paper and showed it to her. I was about to ask her for the answere to the first question when she suddenly burst into tears. I didnt know what to do. Tried consoling her but she won’t stop. Her nostrils flooding and eyes streaming. I was scared like hell, more so because Tickoo uncle was no more and I was scared that his ghost would hold me responsible for this. That was how I thought of death and dead men. I wiped her tears with my hands and then in a moment of anxiety I did what I had attempted so many times. I kissed her at her cheek, out of fear or out of something else which I didn’t understand then. I still remember her wet and warm cheeks on my lips. She stopped crying soon after I kissed her. We both remained silent for some time with the question paper lying there with my answers marked on it. Now she already having cried, I thought telling her about my idea of death and dead men would be a innocuous way of breaking up the awkwardness of the silence and the kiss. I don't know whether only I felt that awkwardness or we both did. I started with what god thinks about us and how I am able to talk to him when I am in bathroom, but before I could say enough she stopped me to reveal that she was sad for not being able to take her English exam. I was stunned, and for a moment ashamed of my insincerity.

After Tickoo uncle's dead body was taken away for cremation, she went to her house telling me how many marks should I expect. I couldn’t remember that figure after she was gone. What I remembered was the wet, warm cheek with a sense of achievement and puzzlement mixed with the fear of Tickoo uncle’s ghost knowing it all. I kept pondering but I could never understand her sadness and her reaction to the kiss. That was my first encounter with the mystery of a women's heart.