ff: ''a many splendoured thing', update pg. 102 - Page 8

gayatri juneja was not very surprised to get a call in the early morning from prem, asking if he could come over. prem was the only one of her sons who was as much of a morning person as she was. since she had moved out of the brownstone, this was one part of the day that she had missed deeply. back at home, he had been the one that she shared breakfast with, chatted over the early morning papers with.

but when she opened the door to him, her shrewd eyes noticed that the shutters were up in his eyes again. he was brooding again, and she knew that the morning papers were not what was troubling him.

she smiled at him, taking the woven basket of jasmine that he handed over to her. ''prem, you shouldn't have -- you must have been up really early to get these.'' she knew that the morning stock of jasmine at their favourite shop sold out within minutes because of the temple three blocks away. they always had three deliveries of jasmine because of that, with the time that you could always get the flowers being after the evening pooja, late at night.

what a marvellous city this was, she mused, as she walked with her son into the kitchen, and put the kettle on. prem laid out a plate with their favourite croissants in the center, and settled down with the papers at the table. but he made no move to open them up, to sort them, make two piles -- one that his mother would read, and one for himself. he seemed content to just sit there and watch her as she bustled at the stove.

they chatted instead, easily, about the trips he had made that week, about the funding for the cathedral project. she listened as he told her how it was not the money but the land permissions that was the real problem with the first phase of project cathedral. but as she listened to him, she knew that was not what was bothering him. she told him about the recent proposals that she had received to head various committees and donate to different charities; of what had happened that week to the various people they knew in the city. prem listened with an air of pre-occupation, his deepset eyes turned inwards.

she laid out his cup with his favourite darjeeling tea, and her own cup of masala tea, when suddenly she paused as if she remembered something. ''oh, i wonder whether heer will wake up soon -- should i lay out a cup for her?'' and watched as her supine son straighten as if electrified, most intrigued by the way those dark eyes grew alive as they blazed for a moment so brief that she wondered if she had imagined it.

''heer?'' she nearly smiled at his diffident voice.

''yes, she spent the night here. i don't know if you met her before she left the brownstone last night. but when she had come in last night, her clothes were all drenched. she was so troubled, prem.''

gayatri was breaking a piece of her croissant, and missed the way prem's face became shuttered then. ''i don't know what it was that was troubling her. but i think the poor thing had just reached the end of her tether being on her own.'' gayatri's eyes filled as she remembered the previous night, and how heer had trembled in her arms.

''when did you say the accident happened? 20 months ago?'' she didn't really see prem nod slowly.

''do you remember when you boys came to the old house just after your father died? when you lost your father, you lost yourselves for a moment. this little thing lost everything all in one go -- father, mother, sister. and she has just been bottling everything inside herself for so long. and last night... poor thing. poor little thing.''

prem reached across to take his mother's hand. gayatri looked at him and smiled through her tears. ''we are so lucky, aren't we, prem?'' she said, squeezing his hand.

they sat like that for a moment. ''i wonder why she didn't turn to her uncle's family at such a dark time. he is on her trust fund committee.'' gayatri mused. ''obviously the families were close?''

''i think there might have been some differences. apparently, the uncle had been advocating that they use part of heer's earnings in profit-making investments. which her father opposed strongly. personally, i think it was the better strategy if you had heer's welfare in mind. maybe the uncle was looking for greater income? heer's father was quite a successful trader. her uncle is a banker, and hasn't done badly for himself. but the wife is apparently quite ambitious. a daughter is marrying into high-society next year. perhaps his family was more expensive than his salary?'' prem chewed on his croissant. he had seen enough of such families in his life in finance, and had never quite understood the apparently limitless extent to which people desired money.

gayatri's face was mutinous. ''whatever the reason, i can't imagine leaving a young child like heer all on her own after she has gone through such trauma.'' prem's face was ambivalent.

''maybe she didn't want anyone around her. from what litle i've seen of heer, she can be quite independant.'' he remembered seeing her stand on the old oak branches, reaching up above to get a better view of the cathedral.

gayatri reprimanded him. ''children are children. independant or not, they can be managed. that is what an adult does. all that is needed is love.''

prem smiled at his fierce mother. ''ma, you know that not a lot of people can love like you do.''

''still...'' gayatri was not giving up readily, but she didn't want to spoil their morning. they both went into a companionable silence again, gayatri pulling the papers towards her to start the sorting, prem turning what he had found out about heer in his head.

''besides.'' prem said slowly. ''sometimes love is not that easy to deal with.'' gayatri's brow furrowed. where did that come from? what was going on in that complicated head of her son's? she heard him sigh.

''ma, there is one thing i haven't told you guys about heer.'' gayatri raised a brow at him.

''preet's meher was heer's sister.''

prem had said it baldly and gayatri thought her heart had stopped beating, the world coming to a standstill for a second. she stared at him. he continued, as if following her thought process, answering what she was asking. ''heer didn't live in the city, remember? she just went to school here. she and her family lived in w. that night, they were driving to our home, ma. to meet us. i have no idea why heer wasn't with them. she should have been. she wasn't. and now she is the only one left.''

gayatri's hand rose to cover her mouth. how strange were the workings of fate -- this could not be happening to her!

when preet had first mentioned that he had found the girl who he wanted to live the rest of his life with, she had been so sceptical. her happy-go-lucky son -- in love? ready to settle down? in a house in the suburbs? have children?? her mind rejected all these as the most absurd joke. but after seeing the way his eyes lit up when he talked about her, hearing the wealth of love in his voice that she had never ever heard before, she knew that sometimes even the impossible could be possible.

preet had been away from home for three months, working on a project that he had conceived, pitched, found clients for, won a contract for. it was the first project that he had totally owned, from start to finish, and he had wanted to make sure that he supervised it when it went on the ground. it was in the nearby town, not more than 150 miles away, and he had decided to move there rather than commute every day. she remembered how pride at his independence had warred with a mother's worry that her son would come back starved and worn. but preet had dealt with it remarkably well. at first, he would come back over the weekends. but by the third week, it had come down to phone calls. the project was progressing well, and she had first thought that was the reason for the thrill in his voice everytime he called to chat with her.

but then, one day, unexpectedly her son had driven home and woken them all up in the middle of the night, just to tell them that he was ready to present his mother with the best gift he could ever think of -- his bride. he had been so happy, so smug. harman had been dating nandita for the longest time -- and everyone knew that lawyers took forever to settle down, forget the babies. and no-one could figure out what the mathematical precision in prem's head made of love and marriage. preet, as always, was alight with love. and it had touched everyone around them. whenever he was home, he would bore them with elaborate tales of how wonderful she was, how gentle, how kind, how perfect.

from the pictures he drew with his words, gayatri marvelled at how her flighty, spirited son had fallen in love with a girl who had a traditional almost conservative background, reminiscent of the way girls used to behave back home. she had always assumed from the differences and altercations that they had always gone through, that preet would chose a girl for himself who was the exact opposite of his mother. and it had made her swell with happiness when he had told her shyly during one of his meher-tale-sessions that what he liked most about her was how much meher was like her. his brothers had immediately hooted with derision that there could never be anyone like their mother. but preet had laid his head in her lap at the sofa, grinned like a young lord at them all, telling them to just wait and watch.

they had fixed a day for the families to meet with much excitement.

preet had come down a week in advance to make sure that everything was just perfect to receive his bride and her family. he had been so funny, gayatri remembered with tears in her eyes. flighty preet had become tyrannical preet that week. the last straw was when he had handed his father with a list of what he could and could not say. lj had roared and threatened to chase him out of the house, and keep him out during the maan's visit. and preet had calmed down, chosing to bother only the rest of the family after that.

gayatri didn't think that any of them could forget the day itself. sometimes it played in her dreams like the nightmare that it had been, forcing her to remember all the awful details.

he had been like sunshine that day, despite the rain clouds that were collecting on the horizon. nothing could touch his happiness. he was not troubled not even when the maans did not arrive on time. he smiled all through his brothers teasing him about his bride abandoning him for another man, sunshine through the falling rain.

it had taken just a phone call to obliterate that sun.

when preet had taken the call from meher's phone, his face had been turned towards his brothers -- full of blissful triumph. gayatri could not remember anything so heart-breaking as the sight of that triumph twisting into incomprehension. preet had just fallen silent. that was so very uncharacteristic that prem had immediately taken the phone from his hand. it was the paramedic team from the accident site on the road, calling the most recent numbers dialled to tell them of the accident. when they heard his words, dumbly repeating what the paramedics said, the entire family had gone silent, sitting in a circle around preet, who was standing still in the center of the room. he had not reacted. it was as if there was nothing there that could react, as if he had lost all his senses, as if he were made of the stone that he loved to build with.

lj had asked prem to find out the details of the hospital where they were taking the victims. harman had gone to his mother. and when they had turned back, preet was missing. he was not in the house, nor the garden off the side of the brownstone. he had simply vanished.

when they had finally found him, nearly 15 hours later, he was walking/running/crawling on the road towards her house, 150 miles away. they had no idea how they had missed seeing him on the way to the highway. his jeans were in tatters, his nails torn and bleeding, his eyes were blind to the rain water that had been pouring ever since that fateful afternoon. they could not make him stop -- prem had to call in a friend to give him a sedative before he would. and even after that, they could not pry the chain that he had in a death-grip in his hand. it remained through the whole week that he spent in bed, sedated. the first time he had come out of his sleep, he had started back on the road. after that, both lj and gayatri had taken to spending most of their time by their son's bedside, talking to him, even though he was unconscious. about how they loved him, how they needed him.

it had been even worse when he came out of this drug-induced sleep, and they were able to persuade him that she was not there anymore. they had none of them been able to find out about the funeral ceremonies -- between preet and the projects that he was in charge of at the firm, they all had been stretched to the limit. and then they had a new problem to deal with -- how to deal with the stranger who lived in their house. a stranger who looked like preet, walked like preet. but was as different from who they knew that preet had been.

it had taken him a long time to start talking again. and an even longer time for him to start walking out of the house and dealing with the world again.

those had been dark times. and it seemed that they had not ended for the junejas when lj collapsed one day at his desk, his heart having decided that it had had enough. strangely, it was the sight of his father, shrunken and small in the hospital bed, under the control of machines, that pulled preet back out of the hell of losing meher. he walked back into the protective circle his brothers made around their mother, stepping in to reassure his father that the firm that he had worked so hard to create would not be an orphan, that he would be there to carry his father's dream on.

they didn't know whether it helped lj or not. but when he finally had his second, and fatal coronary attack, lj had spend more than two months of relaxed time with his family; his employees who treated him as a mentor, as a father figure; the rest of his staff, who treated him like a demi-god. he died having made his peace with his adversaries, being sure that he had made the world a better place for having been in it. lj died with a smile on his face.

and the sun set on preet's world once again. just like the last time, this time too all his family were there. but they were all cast adrift. and if hadn't been for the strength of their mother. gayatri knew that prem refused to dwell on the might-have-beens. he said that he knew that sooner or later, he and harman would have come back on track. but she knew that he sometimes woke up in a sweat deep in the middle of the night, his gut twisted just because he wasn't sure that preet would have reached a point of no-return while they were taking their time getting there. yes, those days had left all her children scarred -- in different ways, but scarred nevertheless.

today, sitting in that cozy kitchen, those seemed like days that had happened to someone else. gayatri had learnt how to cope with not having her husband, someone who she had shared every bit of her life with since she was 21. she had gathered her children together and together they had learnt to adjust to that new world, crafting new versions of their old relationships. they had found a new equilibrium.

that equilibrium put together with precious effort. that now looked it was poised to be redrawn with the brushes of a girl who fate had decreed to be her neighbour.

she felt rather than saw prem going still, his eyes going to the door behind her. in the middle of all this, she had forgotten who had spent the night at her home -- heer.