RECAP

Nihar gets a phone call from the police about a woman they have found, possibly his missing wife. It is indeed Ila and Nihar is shocked to see her state. She doesn’t talk to him but he does manage to figure that their child is no more. He leaves her at her mother’s home and comes home a broken man. A few days back, Ila comes back to him on her own. A tacit understanding to stay together, in the silent world.

CHAPTER 23

She knew he was pretending to be asleep, just as she was. The games they played, she thought, with a half-smile. She never smiled fully any more; once she had smiled at herself in the mirror and been shocked by the distorted, hideous, memory of a smile that she had managed to recreate. Maybe she should not have given up; she knew Nihar would be so happy to see her smile, but how could she smile at him when she had caused him so much pain.

He had never ceased caring though, not while she mourned for the lover she didn’t know was dead or alive, not through months of psychiatric help that she didn’t respond to. Sometimes the anguish in his eyes would want to make her leave, disappear forever; but the same anguish made her stay.

She didn’t remember how she negotiated the route through the jungle, or how she took a train back to Calcutta. She didn’t remember the journey at all, but did remember being prodded to wakefulness by a policeman’s ‘lathi’. There she was, back again amidst the sea of humanity sweeping across Howrah station. A little while later, in a police station, she tried to speak, to answer the endless questions being directed at her... the words refuse to come forth, the sounds died inside her throat. The man she had married came and took her home, ever the gentle soul. She didn’t find any words for him either for she knew what she had done to him was beyond forgiveness. Nihar dropped her off at her mother’s place but she came back to Nirala. She wanted to tell him that this was her home and though she had left it once, she wouldn’t ever leave again. She wanted to tell him that if he loved her enough, he could perhaps forgive her and they could build their life anew. From a million broken pieces... She told him nothing though, as she never found the words.

Nihar took her to Dr.Mukherjee, a prominent Calcutta psychiatrist, also the Head of the Psychiatry Department at Calcutta National Medical College. He was a busy man but also a kind doctor and he gave Ila a lot of time. Every Wednesday and Friday at his clinic, Ila would listen to him patiently but never speak. The medication didn’t help either. Perhaps she didn’t speak because she never found words that could explain what she had done, and especially the horror that she had lived through. Twenty years later, Dr. Mukherjee had become an affectionate father figure whom she met once in a month, when he would review her progress and occasionally make some changes in medication. They continued with the treatment at Nihar’s insistence. Dr. Mukherjee didn’t believe in miracles.

He was asleep now, Ila could sense it as she heard the rhythmic breathing which was different from the rhythm of the pretended sleep. She slowly turned to look at him and in the light that stole into their room from the street lamp outside, she saw the face of Professor Nihar Dasgupta. The face wore a peaceful expression even though he was a man who had not got much happiness in life, but had rather learnt to be at peace with his world. She wondered how life would have been had Dipta never come back. They would have had a child, perhaps two, and she would have gone berserk trying to balance her job and the children. Nihar would have been a lovely father, she knew, just as he had always been a lovely husband. Why had she wanted more, why had she embarked on that insane journey?

His hairline had receded over the years and she noticed that he was almost bald apart from the hair at the sides which he used to comb in a way that aspired to cover the baldness. She wondered when they had grown middle-aged, where all the time had flown away... Perhaps in the madness of all those moments when she was not quite herself, when she still heard the screams – Dipta’s, the baby’s and her own. She knew she sometimes felt wretched enough to die, that she used to get aggressive enough to require sedative injections.

Strains of flute music drifted in. It was the neighbourhood watchman, who would be sitting near the winter fire, playing plaintive tunes of never-forgotten Hindi movie songs from a long time ago. Tum agar saath dene ka wada karo, main yuhi mast nagme lutata rahun…

Nihar looked so wonderfully middle aged that she couldn’t resist her hand stretching out and touching a bit of his hair. Very gently, like a ghost. It felt strange to touch him, she realized that this was the first time in years that she had done this. Of course they touched when he did so many things for her, but she had not touched him since years. She let her fingers linger on awhile, feeling the gentle sadness of a man who had been deprived of so much.

Gradually her touch became bolder and she ran her fingers caressingly over his face. And she knew that in spite of whatever that had happened, in spite of her madness having taken away so much from their lives, she still felt so much love for Nihar. Hesitantly, she lowered her head onto his chest and wept. Once the tears began to flow, they just wouldn’t stop. It was so comforting to feel his body next to hers and as his arm went around her, she felt grateful that she had known such great love. Nihar wept too. They didn’t wipe each other’s tears or their own but lay nestled in each other’s arms and thoughts. Soon the sky began to get lighter and it was a new dawn when they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

                                       To be continued....