The Promise (29 page)

Arjun could not deal with the blank slate her face had become. She was just a shell, with her dead heart inside her. She did not feel anything. She was almost as dead as Pari was. He could not bear to think that it was all because of him ... how easily he could have prevented that from happening ...

They would have been a family. If only he had trusted her. He would have gotten her father the best medical care possible, without her having to kill herself trying to earn. He would have taken good care of her, never let her do even the smallest of things. She would have spent all her time, resting, maybe doing what she was passionate about, what she was best atpainting. She would not have had a single care in the world. He would have taken all her worries upon himself.

Their baby would have been healthy. Shambhavi would have had a normal delivery. Pari would have been a healthy child. She would have stretched her tiny pink lips in a smile for more than just once ... she would not have been in that casket, surrounded with flowers. She would have been in a pram, surrounded by stuffed toys. She would not have had people crying all around her, she would have had people happy to see her ...

He stared at the sheet of paper in his hand. He crushed it and threw it away. It was the only thing in the empty room. Arjun stared at it. He wished he could go back in time and set everything right ... never having let the accident happen. No one would have died. Mr Sen, Pari, Shambhavi ...

Sometimes, we get so blinded by our grief that we do not see the pain others are going through. Sometimes, we get so blinded by the grief others are feeling that we do not see our own pain.

The latter is something only someone who loves truly and completely is capable of. That is the purest form of love.

There is so much more happening right in front of our eyes, if only we really try to see.

omething stirred inside her. As Shambhavi saw Arjun leave her bedroom, she struggled with a question-was he crying? Was that really a tear that rolled out of his eye?

She stared at the door he had closed behind him. For the first time in what seemed like ages, she felt like getting up. She wanted to follow him to wherever he went. But she felt drained inside. She did not have any energy to get up and move. She wondered why that was. She had been eating and taking her medicines on time, but she still never felt alive anymore. She was always dull, always tired.

It was not like she needed energy anyway. She had nothing to live for. She did not even need to get out of bed in the morning. If left up to her, she would just turn over and die.

She heard the things people around her said, but she just mentally blocked all of that out. It was tiring to listen to what everyone kept saying and making sense out of it. Emptiness was better. There was nothing to worry about, nothing worth caring.

She liked being alone, doing nothing. It was relaxing. And it kept her away from feeling. Feelings hurt. Feelings wreck your world and turn it upside down. They hurt you beyond the amount you can endure. It becomes a blood bath in your head. So many emotions, so many sentiments -all of them storming your head, trying to drown you in grief.

She needed blankness to keep away from all of that ... thinking, remembering. That was what kept her alivekeeping an empty head. It was easy when she was conscious; she could control her thoughts, block the feelings and the associated torture out and just exist.

It was the nights that were really painful. Every time she drifted into sleep, the memories crowded back. Grotesque images of the night of the accident ... of seeing her father fall off the stairs, his voice as he shouted out her name, again and again, to make her get up and call for help ... He knew he was not going to make it. He had been worried about her, and her unborn baby ... He had shouted and shouted and shouted, till he had nothing left in him ... he had died there. Her father ... her only family.

When she had regained consciousness, he was no more. And she could feel warmth seeping out of her womb ... That was the most horrific scene she had ever seen. Her child ...

She did not remember much of what happened after that. She was mostly unconscious, drifting in and out. But she remembered feeling pain. Everything ached. She did not know whether it was the physical agony or the mental that hurt her more. It just hurt.

When Dr Mishra had told Shambhavi the next morning that she had given birth to a baby girl, she had instantly named her Pari. She was her angel. After the terrifying night, it was her baby's birth that had brought her relief. She had not expected the baby to be alive; she had seen the blood that had drained out of her. It was by a miracle that her baby was living.

The happiness did not last long.

Dr Mishra fed her with information. She told her about the complications, Paris condition, what needed to be done, what kind of hope they had ... Shambhavi had stopped listening after a while. She just knew that there was not much time left ... she wanted to be with her daughter. But no one let her be close to Pari. They said Shambhavi needed to rest. What they did not know was that she did not care about herself. Just her baby.

Finally, what she feared happened. Pari was no more. The first time she got to touch her child, to hold her was after she was dead. She had stopped caring after that. She had felt the sting of feeling things, and she had realized she was not strong enough to handle it. So she had created a shell around herself and retreated inside it.

She had felt people trying to get to her, to make her respond, but she did not want to. So she just blocked everything out for her mental peace. The only time she felt pain was during the nights. Whenever the memories, the nightmares haunted her, she found Arjun there. He would shake her and wake her up to push the nightmares away. Every time she woke up, she found Arjun sitting at the exact same place - on the settee near her bed. She did not tell him that, but she was grateful to him for helping her chase the nightmares away.

Whenever she started shaking in her dreams, Arjun would wake her up and hold her close to him. He would rub her back and whisper things in her ear. She never listened to what he said; she just mentally thanked his warmth in the cold centre of the nights.

He was the only one who was succeeding in breaking the walls around her and entering. She had been trying to block him out, but he had been persuasive.

As she stared at the door he had closed behind him, she wondered why he was doing what he was doing. She could understand that he wanted to pay for their medical expenses out of guilt of abandoning them, she could also understand that he was trying to help her through all this because he felt pity for her condition, but what she didn't understand was his tears.

She had not expected him to stick around for so long and continue trying to help her. Guilt could have brought him back, pity could have made him buy back all her paintings, but they won't make a man cry, will they?

Did that mean that he really cared?

The thought made her pause. She had to find out. She got up from her bed and slowly walked towards the dining roomthe one place of her house from where she could see the entrance of all the rooms. She knew that the guest room was empty, except for her paintings hanging on the wall. She peeked into the living room and the kitchen-he was not there. She went on to check the washrooms-same result. That left her father's bedroom and the basement.

The basement was locked from the outside, which spared her the need to go in and check. She knew she could never enter the basement again without the horrific images from that night attacking her.

She went to check for Arjun in her father's room. That was where he must be sleeping at nights, she realized. To think of it, she had never once since they brought her back home, thought where Arjun slept. Every time she woke up during the nights, she found him in her room, sitting in the corner. She entered her father's room-it was empty. It seemed like no one had entered the room since that night about three weeks ago.

She went to the guest room-it was empty as expected. Where was he? Her heart started racing, as she wondered if he had gotten fed up of her and left for real. There was no reason for him to stay, anyway.

Just then, her eyes fell to the floor of the guest bedroom, where she saw a crumpled piece of paper lying. She went to it and knelt down carefully to pick it up. Her knee hurt, so did her arm. She uncurled the sheet of paper. It was a handwritten note. It had three words, 'TO RUN AWAY scribbled on it, several times. Below it, there was a long paragraph. She read the first few lines and realized that it was a poem.