Chapter
80 Ananthapallavi
"Achan ammavante koode chellu. Kurachu neram Narayaniammayide
aduthirunnittu avidunnu vannolu.
Enthayalum ammayikku ithra sukhamillatha sthitikku..." (Go with uncle, father. Spend some time with aunt Narayani and then
come with uncle and family to the reception.
Especially with aunt not feeling well...)
Her father looked up to the second floor balcony and she
followed his gaze. She looked back at
him. This was only the eighth time that
he had looked up in the last several minutes as if to reassure himself that one
of his girls had indeed gotten through the wedding ceremony with no calamity
striking them down.
She could feel the start of the tightening in her chest and
knew that it would not be long before her palms grew clammy and her airway
started to slowly close in. She needed
her father away from the house before that happened.
"Achan chellu. Njan ivied
undallo." (Go father. I am here, don't worry.)
She looked at her uncle and he came over to take her father's
hand. He was one of the many relatives
who kept their respectable distance from the house. Evidently in old age, and now ailing, his mother,
aunt Narayani, wanted to spend some time with their father... especially on this
day when the unthinkable had been accomplished.
And that too, in this very illam.
It had been at her father's insistence that they had held the wedding
ceremony at the illam. As if to show the
world that the Gods didn't think this a blasphemy.
Her father gave one more look upstairs before squeezing her
hand.
Then much to her relief, he left with her uncle.
It still took another ten minutes for the house to empty of
all guests. By the time the last one
left, it was all she could do to focus simply on breathing. She leaned back against the door and pounded
her chest. She didn't have any of her
old medication left, she knew. She hadn't
had a panic attack in a long while. In
almost a year and a half in fact. What
her psychiatrist had prescribed back then, even if there had been any left, had
long expired.
She should have been more careful. She should have realized the triggers before
it even reached this point. Starting the
day playing her veena certainly helped.
Soothing for the soul it had always been, but for the past two years, it
had also been preventive medicine. She
had learned to read the signs of her body well.
It sometimes told her that her
head was not in a good place before she even consciously felt the
distress.
She forced her legs to move and told her mind to retreat to
safer images...
Safer images...
Trees... he was behind one, waiting for her.
Pond... he was just outside, winking at her.
Lilypads... he was wading around their twining roots, reaching
for the perfect bloom.
Sunset... he had snuck up on her countless times...
Sunrise... he had had to force himself to leave her embrace then...
Her veena... he had written so many keertans for her to play...
She managed to make it into the downstairs music room and
close the door repeating the same mantra in her head.
Think
good thoughts... only good thoughts...
There were so many
good thoughts of him... any thought of him was good...
All except one...
She pleaded her mind to not give her that one...
She slid down to the floor and she held her head between
her hands.
Please...
not that one...
Before her mind heeded her plea, she heard the scream... her neck snapped up as her eyes opened.
She could hear it get louder...
It was
her sister.
She was out the door and running up the stairs the next
moment, her legs carrying her far faster than she thought possible.
The door was closed, she could see, but she ran at it at
full speed. She threw her entire weight
against it without stopping and felt only a slight give before it flung open,
both panels slamming against the sides. The broken lock hit the opposite wall from the
impact.
Her eyes fell on the bed.
They were both naked, she could see, but it barely
registered as she took in the blood that was on them and spreading through the
sheet under them.
For a moment, she simply stared, her eyes taking in the
image and superimposing it over the one that her mind had been fighting all
morning.
Then they blurred together and all she could see was the
corpse... the one covered in a white sheet that they had carried in to the house
next door... the house where she was going to be welcomed as a bride in two weeks...
It had looked nothing like her Ananthan.
It was a stranger... a stranger with massive white gauze
covering most of his head and with thick cotton balls stuffed inside his
nostrils. She had wanted to ask someone
where they had found this inhuman looking puppet from. But she had held her tongue and had shut
herself in his room for the rest of that whole day, drifting in and out of
sanity. She had thought that he was
hiding in that room and had searched for him in every corner, asking him
quietly to come out and to stop playing tricks on her.
But he hadn't come.
He had left her behind and she had had to painstakingly put
her broken heart and fragmented mind back together, day by tormenting day, night
by tortured night...
And here he was again...
Bleeding out on that bed, right in front of her eyes, dying
all over again...
"Ichechy!" she
thought she heard someone call out as everything shut off and she crumbled to
the floor.
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