Chapter 1Then
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
His father never came back home.
When Shravan wakes up a week after, his eyes are dry, even though the proof of his silent mourning lays under his head and he feels it on the back of his neck - his pillow cold with treacherous tears. To wipe the remnants of them, he puts his arm across his eyes, when a decade old memory collides with his heart.
"Shravan, ladke rulate nahin hain, lekin ladke ro sakte hain." ( "Shravan, boys don't make others cry, but boys are allowed to cry." ) Whispered Ramnath Malhotra, caressing the nape of his son, urging him to look upwards and not stare at the floor in shame while he tried desperately to reign in his tears and forced a smile on his face, because 'boys don't cry'.
It's only seven days after that Shravan gets to mourn properly, only when he closes his door on everything and everyone that the grief makes a grand appearance and surges with every expelled breath, always reaching higher peaks. Then, all pretense of quiet and strong copping are lost and he sinks down to his knees, crying to his heart's content.
In survival mode, the body leads a war on its own, it doesn't bother about the number of opponents or obstacles blocking its way, the only thing worth stopping for is the finish line. No injury is important enough to end the confrontation between time and itself.
In order to withstand the trauma and grief hammering it down like a hail of bullets, it feeds off the good memories, it clings upon the happiness that could be bought with mere coins, it wears layers and layers of cloth to hide the imperfections, till it all dissolve into thin air.
"I love you, son. Always remember that."Until there is light, until the moment our armors shine under the scrutiny of prying eyes, we stand tall and survive.
And then, when we are finally isolated in the comfort of our dark rooms, we let go and shatter to pieces.
The few hours of respite he gets are not enough to sustain the exhaustion in his bones. His whole body hangs limp like each limb weights twice as much as it had before and he is left staring at the crack in the ceiling.
How did he never notice that before?
He feels the need to experience the misery and swallow it whole, he feels the need to scream but he doesn't have the strength to whisper, he feels the need to wipe the non-existent tears that he wants to form but can't.
Mustering courage, he gets up from his bed and almost stumbles, but he is quick to get hold of the wall and steadies himself. With a movement of his hand, he opens the window and the morning breeze fills up the room, taking all the space and causing him to wrap an arm around himself, feeling too cold all of a sudden.
Twilight melts away and a majestic sunrise, red orange glow seeps over the horizon as if the light itself was being poured from a molten sun. It's beautiful, but not for him. His mind and heart are still, in the big, blank nothing.
For him, there is no beauty left in the world.
With the exhaustion fading away, his state of mind is now clearer. If his stomach's gurgling is an indication to go by, he is starving and his immediate thought goes to his mother.
So is she.
Determined, he strides towards the kitchen to make something to eat and opens the fridge but to his disappointment, realizes that there were no groceries left to make anything nourishing.
Another custom that was beyond his comprehension, a desi family could go through anything but hospitality was required to be top notch, no matter the circumstances.
As if the world snatching everything away from them was not enough, they had to empty their fridge too.
In the refrigerator, he finds a container filled with deep-freeze halwa, his father had hidden a portion of his favorite dessert for them to share as a midnight snack.
"Shravan, the key is to stir, not too fast, not too gentle," Ramnath told him as he frantically moved his spatula to keep the halwa from burning the khadai, the smell of ghee and sugar causing a seven year old Shravan's mouth to water. "And you should always garnish to your heart's content." Ramnath winked as he let Shravan garnish with variants of dry fruits. Laughing loudly, when he emptied the entire container of almonds in the dessert, smiling sheepishly.It all began when uncle Sham didn't smile at him.
The thought plagues him the entire ride up to the elevator to his floor. Uncle Sham is a man with smiling eyes and a thunderous laugh. The kind of man who believes it to be a bad day and not a bad life.
Among all his father's friends, he is his favorite uncle since as long as he remembers. He never takes him for granted and always listens with rapt attention everything he has to say which made Shravan feel like a grownup throughout his childhood.
But today, he simply holds the door and urges him to pass the building's threshold, devastation marring his features as tears well up in his eyes, but he hides them well behind his glasses.
Something happened.
Shravan feels it in his bones and the pit of his stomach, he senses it in the silence that surrounds him, he hears it in the whispers of men and women crowding in front of the front door of the place they named home. He sees it in the the looks of pity and compassion they bestow him with.
Shravan can hardly move, as though cement has solidified in every of his joints. It hurts to breathe.
He takes a step forward and the crowd dissipates to make way for him. Then a deep hush. A deep hush falls over everything.
Someone stands behind him and two large palms remove his bag from his shoulders, as if to relieve him from that burden and he almost collaps to the ground, the weight of those heavy, lingering stares crushing his spine.
Shravan can't hear anything but the ringing.
The unexpected happened and it undid him completely.
He spends about forty-five seconds in that first stage of grief, in denial, unwilling to acknowledge the truth and admit it into consciousness. He remembers returning home to find that death took his father under its wings.
The only man he looks up to, the man he hopes to be an extension of, his best friend, his mother's once in a lifetime, his mainstay, his safest home in the worldwas gone, consumed by death's empty darkness.
His spirit drowned in the ocean of injustice and the waves of sorrow washed away his footprints on the pallid sand.
He remembers struggling to keep his tears at bay and holding his mother to the best of his capabilities - his hands find hers and he covers them as though he's becoming her shield, her armor from the grief and the devastation that slowly forge a glacier around her heart, finding home in her chest, where his father resides now in peace.
"Your mother, your responsibility."
And he lets her shade the sea her eyes hold, swearing to himself that one day, those tears falling will only be because of the happiness that seems too far-fetched in this moment.
"It's okay Maa, it's okay," He repeats it again and again - like a chant - until whispers of false assurances for a better tomorrow starts to sound like wrecked sobs of desolation, tears slipping from his eyes and shoulders trembling with sorrow.
In that moment, Shravan Malhotra becomes a man, his childhood left long behind him, the corner of that page folded in uncertainty. He is a man now.
A man, hounded by difficulty, surrounded by worries and trapped in a box with no solutions, no remedy to the pain.
"There is no wound deep enough that time can't fill. Give it time, son, give it some time. "Memories are burden and now he is left to ponder over them. "You taught me so many things Papa, why didn't you teach me how to survive without you?" Shravan looks up to the sky that is slowly turning into shades of light blue.
He stands in front of his parents' room, but he doesn't how to get himself in, how to muster the courage to knock when only few days ago, he was reprimanded for barging in every room, like he owned the house. Exhaling roughly, hands slightly shaking and afraid of what he might find inside, he knocks at the same time as he opens the door, his legs feel impossible to be moved as if anchored to the floor.
He looks around the room as if trying to remember something, trying to commit to his memory what it looked like before it all turned to nothing but a room.
Rays of sunshine peek through the gap in the curtains before it finds its way to her face. His mother lays on one side of the bed, curled up like a child with her knees drawn to her chest, she looks so small and he is so intimated, so broken by the sight of this empty hollow shell of a woman, his father left behind, that his gaze lowers to the floor.
"Shravan..." His name drips from her lips in the silence and it's the only assurance he needs to approach her, but he feels too conscious of his own breathing, too wary of the sound of his feet on the cold marble, too careful of his own presence that disrupts the silence reigning everywhere.
He shifts awkwardly on his feet and it reminds him of the time, he had to show her a bad school report and he was scared of the her wrath and yet is seems so different, it's like tall towers of grief are hailed between them and they stand on each side of them. Every word he has ever known seems to disappear at that moment, flying out of grasp and he now knows what it is to suffocate in fresh air and trying to explain why you are choking.
She gestures him to sit as she braces herself against the headrest of the bed and folds her legs to the side to make room for the tray he places between them and sits on the edge, the bed creaks loudly under his weight and when it does, he steals a glance at his mother to see a close-lipped, companionable smile lingering around her lower lip but the sparkle his father loved so much is inexistant and it's only now that it is gone that he realizes how happy and content his mother used to be.
"Your father never fixed that," she says, her voice only a bit louder than the rustle of her shawl against the sheets.
"Something has to be as loud as him, isn't it?" He says thickly, trying to laugh a little but the sound is strangled with emotion and his eyes find the floor, yet again.
The walls of his mother's room are covered with pictures of the three of them. Everywhere Shravan looks, strangers smile back at him and he sees it among the chaos, the glimpse of the tenderness, the love that has once bound his parents and now he yearns for his home to be crowded with the sound of his father's hearty laugh. No one stood a chance against it. Healing hearts was his speciality.
"I loved him so much..." Nirmala nearly whispers and she has to will herself not too cry, clear her throat and collect herself, too many tears were already shed. "...and he left us."
"Do you think he would have really..." The question looms over them like a menace.
"No!" Shravan says more sharply than he'd intended. His hand reaches out to take his mother's.
"He loved you, he would never leave you." Shravan says patiently, like a parent to a well-meaning but misguided child.
Nirmala's eyes fill up with tears and she nods, sighing deeply. "I miss him," she whispers.
"I miss him too, but you have me and I have you." His hold tightens on her hand and Nirmala is awed by the way his palm envelops hers.
When did he become a man?
"Will you...?" Shravan tries to ask the next without wavering. "Will you let me braid your hair?"
Nirmala's neck tilts in astonishment before she nods wordlessly.
Shravan stands behind her and starts untying her hair. There are grey strands in his mother's hair now. And it startles Shravan how once stunning black ringlets now resembles a bird nest. He swallows the lump in his throat and begins to brush her hair and with every brush against her nape, Shravan winces even before she shows any sign of discomfort.
Slowly, he entangles the knots in her hair and he pauses to exhale a small breath when his hands are filled with long strands of black hair - a sign of poor health and it makes him want to sob, but he stills his heart, his mind.
"All done."
"Thank you." She presses a kiss against the back of his hand.
"You need to eat something," he tells her, opening the lid of the container and revealing a plate of halwa.
"Shravan, I - "
"Please," he adds as an afterthought.
Shravan gives her a spoon and takes one himself, waiting for her to take the first bite. When she doesn't, he raises his head to see her watching it with an expression she would only don around his father. One of extreme happiness. One of excruciating sadness. One of utmost love.
"I might have add too much almonds," he says, biting in his lip as he looks down and scratches the back of his head, like he always does when he is embarrassed or guilty of something.
His mother comes forward and feeds him the first morsel. And he mirrors her gesture. "You should always garnish to your heart's content." She gives him a wan smile.
He doesn't cry even though he feels the sadness resting at the hollow of his throat and stinging at his eyes. In his chest, his heart is just a shear of nothingness but now there's hope. The kind that makes it difficult to breathe. We will be okay.
That night, as he prepares himself to sleep, Shravan's mind is a riot of memories, every person he has ever loved is now etched in the gardens of his mind and on the pages of his heart.
His stomach twists strangely as he thinks back to the last time he saw her, how he became intensely aware of his heart thumping, the last time he looked in her brown chocolate eyes shadows of resolution dancing over her determined face. He'd never met someone like her in his entire life.
Shravan leans back with a long sigh and closes his eyes, wondering how long it will take until she stops being the last person he thinks about before he falls asleep.
"Where are you Sumo?"Thoughts? I am nervous.
Edited by KitkitMkb - 5 years ago
comment:
p_commentcount