Chapter 89

82. The Truth Behind Your Lies

PAST

'Why are you here?!' He shouted in rage. 'Why?'

Why was she back? Why now? When he had just begun to forget her? Just when her memories had stopped haunting her, just when people had begun to forget that his wife had made a fool out of him, she had to return!

'I am sorry, Keshav. I am really sorry.' She continued with her apologies, none of which he wanted to hear!

Like thirsty cotton, his eyes soaked up her presence and began to leak.

She was too much for him. She had always been. There was so much of her he wanted to absorb, and make a part of his being but always ended up sagging under her enormous weight and presence.

Did her lover leave her?

Or was it that she had finally realized that no one in the world could love her as he did?

'Keshav, I know I was wrong. Please forgive me. I wanted to make it better for us. For our children.'

Keshav turned away unable to see her melting eyes.

'Keshav, please let me return. I miss Kirti. Let me see her. My son, I swear I missed him every day. Let me see them.'

Children! She missed the children. What about me?

'Which son are you talking about? The one who was still a toddler when you left him? And you dare make mention of Kirti! The girl kept waiting by the door for months for you to return! Go away!  She hates you now. There is no place for you here.' Karuna was hyperventilating by the end of her speech.

'I am not talking to you. I am talking to my husband.'

'Husband?!' Karuna laughed bitterly. 'Who knows how many husbands you have? Did the latest one leave you that you've come back to take advantage of my naive son?'

'I am talking to my husband! So you better stay out of it. Keshav,' She came to touch his hand. He jerked away from her in disgust.  'Keshav, I know what I did was wrong.’

‘Wrong?’ Karuna was incredulous. ‘What you committed was a sin!’

‘Keshav, I was not in the right frame of mind. Your mother was always taunting me. You were indifferent. There was no one to help me, Keshav. I felt lonely. I was stressed and  depressed!'

'So you decided to find solace in someone else's arms?' Karuna's harsh words sliced through his heart. He wished his mother would stop being so cruel. Didn't she see he was bleeding? He had been bleeding forever since.

'Keshav, her words don't matter to me. But you, do you believe the same?'

He did not know what he believed in any longer.

'Will you stand here mute today as well? Was I a fool to expect that you would've changed? Fine! Just let me see my children. Kirti, Kirti...Biplab...Son...your mother is here!'

She moved frantically from one room to another.

'You've lost right over them,' Karuna pulled her away from their house to throw her out.

The peeping neighbors were all out lapping at the entertainment the scene offered.

Keshav stormed to his room and bolted the door where he stood waiting for her to confess that she missed him. That she loved HIM. He waited for her to plead that she couldn’t live without him. But none came.

'They are my children! I am their mother! Nobody can take them away from me. Keshav! I will go to the courts if I have to!' She screamed.

'Mrs. Singh, allow me to enlighten you about the laws,' Mr.Ojha took charge thereafter. ‘You were away for what? Seven to eight years? You lived separately from your husband. You abandoned your kids. You have no claim over them now. You want to go to court, let’s do that.’

‘Leave me,’ she yanked her hand off from his. ‘Stay away. This is my house!’

‘It was,’ Karuna reminded. ‘It ceased to be the moment you decided to leave all of it behind. Now, go, get lost. There is no place for you here. Go, Keshav does not need you. Neither the children. Just go.’

‘You cannot send me out? Keshav! KESHAV! You cannot do this to me! Where will I go?’

So she had come to me because she had nowhere else to go? If tomorrow, she wakes up to find other doors open to her, would she leave me again?

‘Keshav...Keshav, are you listening, you wuss?! Are you even a man letting others drag your wife out like this?’

Sliding down the door, he covered his ears. She had not changed at all!

‘Stop creating a scene, will you? Others are watching. At least have some shame!’ Karuna wanted her out of sight as soon as possible. She cursed the moment she had chosen this woman for her son. She had been blinded by the girl’s beauty and the dowry.

It was going to be quarter to one. Biplab would be returning from school anytime, she thought as she stared at Mrs.Ojha dragging Urmi outside.

‘Don’t come back here. You are dead to us!’ Karuna yelled, closing the door in her face. She had been returning inside her house ignoring the loud thumps at the door and curses Urmila hurled at them when her heart skipped hearing the familiar rumbling of the engine. Biplab was home! Urmila had gone quiet, too.

She looked at the Ojhas, who reflected her fears. Rushing to the gate, she flung it open to reveal the lunatic woman clinging to her dear grandson.

Biplab alighted the diesel auto and after waving to his friends, had turned to his house where he found an unfamiliar woman surveying him. Before he could take a step ahead, she had run to him.

‘Biplab, you are Biplab, right?’ Urmila was asking the boy. ‘I am your mother.’

‘Mother?’ He had been stunned into speechlessness.

‘Yes, Biplab. This is your mother. I am your mother’ She held his hands and her hands were cold and he had wanted to step away from him. She had embraced him, and he began to fidget. ‘Dadi,’ he wanted to shout.  But even before he had called for his grandmother, she was there. Even the Ojhas were present. It was then he noticed that a few people watched them from their terrace.

His grandmother had peeled the strange woman away from him and had hidden him behind herself.

‘How dare you!’ She shouted. He could feel his grandmother shake. If it was in anger or fear, he had no idea of it.

A huge argument ensued thereafter and even though Biplab could not grasp everything, he clearly understood that his mother had not been dead. She had left them and now that she was back, they were not taking her in.

His father had come out too. He was saying hurtful things like, ‘Yes, I believe everything. A woman like you has no place in my household. Go away, you’ll get the divorce papers.’

‘My children too!’ The woman who called herself their mother was yelling. ‘Biplab! I will not go anywhere until Kirti returns.’

‘Children? Let me break your bubble,’ his grandmother said, then turning to him, she asked, ‘Biplab, do you want her in your life? Do you want this woman as your mother?’

His hands fisted, Biplab remained mute. The strange woman’s eyes beckoned her, but they were just that. Eyes of a stranger.

‘Do you want to stay with her? Do you want to go with her? Away from us? Away from your sister?’

Afraid that they would send him away with this woman, he quickly shook his head. ‘No!’ He ran to his father. Why was his sister not here? She could guide him on what to do. Will they send him away even when he didn’t want to?

The woman had loped out to them, facing his father. ‘Keshav, why are you being like this? Why do you always disappoint me?’

Then she was made to leave.

‘What if she’s hiding somewhere waiting to catch Kirti alone?’ His grandmother had asked Mr.Ojha.

‘She won’t Maaji. I have taken care of that.’

How? He had wanted to ask for so many years but never had, pretending before others that it was a childhood memory repressed.

When she had left, his grandmother had explained to him how bad a woman she was. She had made him promise to not mention it to his sister. His sister had cried a lot at their mother’s abandonment and mentioning the bad woman will make her sick and die.

Biplab had seen a few movies. He knew how people went mad and violent because of their past, so he had become an accomplice, but it didn’t feel right in his heart.

When his sister had returned home, she had been very angry.

‘I cannot believe this! Look at the time! It's three in the afternoon! You people forgot to pick me up from school!'

'Thank God! I had some money. Papa forgot me!’

The house had been gloomily silent.

‘Dadi, where is Papa? What happened, Biplab? Why are you so quiet?’

‘Dadi, did something happen?’ She had whispered. ‘People were gawking at me? I thought I had stained my skirt or something!’

‘Someone got into an accident, so your father had to be there,’ Biplab watched his grandmother lie through her teeth and his sister buy it.

‘Oh. Biplab, how was your day? Tomorrow is your elocution, no? Let me wash and eat and then we can practice.’

In the evening, when Kirti had wanted to go out, she hadn’t been allowed.

‘Why?’

‘We are going someplace.’

‘Where?’

‘My friend’s. You both will come with me. Pack your bags.’ Karuna had ordered.

‘What? But what about our schools? How long are we staying there?’

‘Don’t ask questions,’ Karuna had lashed. ‘Just do what I am saying.’

‘This is so suspicious. What’s up with her?’ Kirti had mumbled to her brother. He hadn’t replied. He couldn’t. He wished he had not been privy to the secret and tried to forget the woman. But she haunted his dreams night after night.

Even after years, when he forgot how she looked, he could hear her asking, ‘Biplab, do you want me?’ She could hear her pleading, ‘Biplab, don’t leave me.’  He thought he was going mad and violent a little by little in his heart.

Loving his grandmother, and her duplicity, required great determination and it sapped all of his energy.

If only he could share it with someone.

When they had returned, Kirti had not been immune to rumors.

‘Papa, the other day, an aunty was asking, if my mother had come again? Did she come back? Is that why Dadi had taken us away.’

Biplab waited for the answer too. If the woman was good, his father wouldn’t lie.

‘No, she did not. People who leave, do so with the intention of never coming back. If she had come, would I not tell you?’

 Perhaps, she must be truly detestable, Biplab surmised.

‘But aunty was acting so sure?’ Kirti persevered.

‘They are all fools, Kirti. If there had been anything to tell, would I keep it away from you? They like to pick on people’s weaknesses. You go to such a good school. They know you are a performer. My child is pretty too. How should they hurt you now, they think and this is the way they come up with.’

Her father never lied to her, Kirti thought. Her grandmother might but her father never. 

She had been able to sleep peacefully that night but not before wondering what if her mother were to turn up one day. Would she be able to accept her?

XxxX

A YEAR LATER

‘Why are you awake at this hour of the night, Keshav?’ Karuna shuffled to where he sat out in the backyard.

‘Maa, I am going to bring her back.’ He said determinedly.

She did not have to prod anymore to know who ‘her’ was.  ‘We’ve gone through this so many times!’ She hurled.

‘I know Maa what you think about her. I don’t care. I don’t care if she’s after money. If she’s slept with others. I want her back. I cannot live like this. Her eyes, her voice, every gesture of hers haunt me. Her words that I disappointed her, never leave me. And it is not just me, the children need her too. They need a mother! Kirti is growing up. She will begin to feel the need for a mother figure more than before. And, Biplab, he looks at me sometimes as if asking why I let his mother go when she was willing to return.’

‘Talk about yourself. Don’t drag the children in this! I am enough for them.’

‘It was all my fault. I could not keep her happy that’s why she left. She had married a service-man and suddenly, I decided to drive an auto. Any girl at her place would have been angered. Then, I couldn’t be with her during our second pregnancy.  I have wronged her in more ways than one. I have decided, Maa. I have applied in a Chemical Company where I am most likely to get selected. Once I save some money, I will go find her.’

‘Exactly, you’ll have to go find her. Where is she? Where did she disappear after that day? Why did she not return? Maybe because she had found another rich man?’

‘Maa! Please, don’t you see my feelings for her? Then why do you say such things!? I am going to find her and bring her back home. I don’t care if it’s money she’s after. If I have enough money, she’ll be with me no?’

‘I don’t know what voodoo she has done! But remember I will not stay in the same house as hers! If you bring that characterless woman home, I will have to leave the house.’

‘Maa..’ He had watched her leave. He will convince her. She was his mother after all. He would. Then, they will move away from this house to a better place, where they could be away from wagging tongues. He and Urmila would rebuild their home, and bring up Kirti and Biplab together.

XxxX

GAS LEAKAGE AT PESTICIDE FACTORY IN GURGAON - 10 killed after a massive gas leakage while 700 hospitalized….Two men from Maharashtra. Keshav Singh, a resident of Borivali, survived by his two children and a widowed mother...Awwal Kundu from Kurla... Chief Minister expresses grief, announces ex-gratia.

Urmila stared at the newspaper blankly. No..this wasn’t true. This couldn’t be! This wasn’t Keshav...There must be some printing mistake...But the picture...it was his...She could recognize her Keshav anywhere...And why did it feel like her heart had stopped and someone had stepped on her lungs snapping her air support...The vision before her eyes blackened, and she thought she was fainting…

‘Are you okay?’ Someone asked, before stepping up to catch her falling form.

END OF PART TWO

 [NOCOPY]

[MEMBERSONLY]