PARIJAT-23

It was that undefined moment of the creation when Rosa received that message. Too late into the night and too early to the morning. In the silence hour of that undefined moment the telephone had woofed like a crying and dying dog. The sound had come from a distane.Hardly audible. But it was apparent .It was burgeoning. Soon, it appeared looming on Rosa. Realization has not completely arrived yet, it is still cloudy and dazed. Her state of mind was also like that undefined moment of creation. The mind is blank. Brain is yet to grasp. Everything is half explained, half experienced, half defined, half grown, half alive and half awake. She does not know how she has reached that phone. Hurriedly or leisurely? Floating or falling? Thumping heart, trembling legs and sleeping mind had dragged her involuntarily to that blunt, boorish, brusque and churlish scream of the telephone. She lifted the receiver and tried to understand. She does not know what she responded and how she responded. The brain has not registered and the mind has not remembered. It was mechanical respond from her side. The voice from other side was known and gloom. The mist in the mind was vanishing fast. The fog was fading fast. From the dark smoke of half dazed mind she could only grasp that she needs to act urgently. She only remembers she was stepping down in the staircase in a bemused rhythm when her mother handed over the key of the car.

The cool air of the isolated night is playing hide and seek. It is there and next moment it is not there like the vacillating thoughts of a weird mind. Nerves are settling down fast. The past in conjunction with memory is forming a flashing hieroglyph. It was not at all a dazed and undefined moment when she had heard Abhilash shrieking and squawking in most brusque and sonorous way like an uncivilized rouge. He was fuming and foaming in anger. Fist clinched and raised, he was grasping for breathe. Small matter. Tiny matter. But sometimes logic does not see that. Blinded, totally blinded. Possessiveness? Obsession? Emotion? Aggression? Superiority complex? Feeling of insecurity? May be mixture of all. Rosa had kept a definite deafening silence then. From the corner of her eye she could she her mother-in-law standing back to the wall of the room, head down in shame and plight, pleading to her in silence to maintain silence as she emits a heavy breathe. That heavy breathe speaks about her helplessness. That heavy breathe also conveys her feeling and sympathy in the most melancholy moments of Rosa. After all she is a woman. Who will understand the plight of a woman better than a woman? But she is mother first then mother-in-law. Strange logic? Rosa too drops her eyes. Her grasping emotion wakes up her baby from the womb. It agitates from inside. Tears drop. Few drops fall directly on that thirsty earth. Few rolls into half open mouth and rests, she wipes out in arm of her right hand as her left hand moves over her womb to console her unborn baby. She consoles to herself, to her plaintive mind and to her unborn baby. Wait. Things will change. It will change soon.

Baby was born. A chubby girl with curly hair and bubbling dimple. But things did not change. Small matters became always irritating matters. No longer, it looked like possessiveness. A nasty habit was getting reinforced by lack of protest. Submissiveness was taken as weakness. Peace can no longer be purchased by silence. But she had never broken her silence. She tried and tried. Every conceivable way she could think of. But ultimately in one sunny afternoon when the world had dozed off, she left for her parents’ house with one year baby in her arm. The known hands of her mother-in-law again hold her hands tightly. But the grip loosened when the drops of tears from Rosa’s eyes washed the feet of her mother-in-law instead of that thirsty earth.

Rosa has tried to forget her forgettable past. But it comes and dances along with her baby daughter Rekhu when she tries to blow up those candles at one go with song of “Happy Birth day”. The memory rises up from that churned up past. A memory with promise of living together, forever. Will it come back? Can it come back? Should it come back? Who knows what is written in the sand of that future? Next moment the reality hunts and bites. It is over. It is past. It is bitter.

But that bitterness had evaporated by call of her mother-in-law few hours back. The same heavy breathe. But it was not followed by silence. Rosa could hear a choked voice, an incoherent, disjointed voice, breaking into a stammer. Ro—s—a, he is sinking, AAA—bhil-aaaaaaaaash. Stannely hospitaaaaaaaaal. B----ed no-14,medicine w---ar----d.

Rosa could not recognize the face at the first sight but his eyes she did. They were pale, opaque and gave her an appearance of morbidity as though he had not seen the days for long. He smiles as though he recognizes everything; as though he understands everything. The whip and bite of deadly encephalitis has taken its toll. The inflamed brain has reduced him to a living corpse. He travels in an unknown land where he does not recognize anybody. He only rolls his eyes and looks to the roof and smile endlessly. All bitterness gone. It is only smile. Smile of an innocent. Smile of an ignorant. Eyes roll and roll and get tired and drop. Again he wakes up suddenly and tries to mutter something. No sound. Voice gone. Encephalitis has held it tight, to that vocal cord. Nothing comes out. Not even grunt. Rosa remains stranded there waiting for Abhilash to shriek and shout.

Suddenly the mobile in hand Rosa started ringing. She looked to the black and white screen of the mobile. It flashes the name of the caller:-Rajesh calling------. She did not answer the phone call nor did she disconnect it. She allowed it to die down on its own. She has already decided. There is no need to answer that call. She looked to Abhilash. To those innocent eyes. To that innocent smile. She smiled back and muttered let him shout I will shout back. There is nothing wrong to have a re-look to that past however stony it may look and sound. World changes. Mind changes. Future is not always reflection of past. You can always see the newness and change if you wish to see it. What it requires perhaps a little understanding. Two hands can always join if we stand side by side. Will you? -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was Rekhu’s marriage. She was about to leave. She came to Rosa and Abhilash. They were standing, holding each other hands. That is life. That is the reality. Smiling together, shouting together and living together. John could see thousands smiling parijats in that togetherness.