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.