Twenty Seventh Day !!

Another day. She watched herself in the small bathroom mirror. Hair scattered, mouth dry, small purple pouches under eyes. Ugly. This was her morning face she thought. She thought of all those who, all those years, had lied to her saying she was beautiful, lies, which were true in what now seems like her past life. Lack of sleep and more of crying had made her the person standing on the other side of mirror.

Sakshi was getting old. But then everyone gets old. Some with time. Some with burden of expectations. Some with lack of money and some like her gets old with events, uncontrollable, life changing continuous devastating events. “Another day” she took handful of water and splashed on her face.   

She opened the front door. A cool breeze of November brushed her face. Her night gown flickered like a sail in wild ocean winds. She took packet of milk and came back to the kitchen.    

“When will I get the tea?” she keeps hearing it, again and again. It has been years but she still misses him, she misses preparing tea for her husband, for father of his son. He was gone, long back. She always thought how different her life would have been if he was here waiting for tea. She woke up to reality with boiling tea spilled all over the gas burner.

Sakshi Dayal was head of chemistry department in Vivekananda College. She had started as assistant professor of chemistry in the same college and had been teaching since last fourteen years. At the age of forty five, she was now one of the youngest to head chemistry department. At a young age of thirty one her husband died of an accident leaving their three year old son to her, who was now seventeen. She lives with her son in Santacruz, a Mumbai suburb area. With an average height, slim physique, bright twinkling eyes perfectly matching her spotless fair rounded face, she looked like a person with a purpose. She possessed an excellent expertise in subject of chemistry and a brilliant understanding of human behavior. Another expertise was her motherhood. She was confidant and equally proud of the fact that her son never felt absence of his father.

Sakshi took out her red saaree and kept at the corner of her bed. She unlocked all the drawers of the cupboard. She checked her dressing table, powder, eyeliner, kaajal, bindi, all were there. Her face muscles flinched but gave no expression of what she was thinking. She was ready to leave for the college. She checked the sticky notes ones again. “Stay home till I am back and DO NOT LEAVE HOUSE” on the front door knob where only a person going out could see. “Lunch is in fridge” stuck on the fridge door, in the center, large and clear. She entered his room. He was sleeping like a baby, knees folded into his stomach and both hands clasped under his head. She looked at calm face of her son with affection and slowly closed the door of his room and walked out of the house. Note on the table near his bed said, “I Love you”.  

***

It was all blur. Like a thin sheet of cloth had covered entire sky. Grey had turned more towards darker shade. It felt like an hour after sunset or an hour before of sunrise, none could be sure. Place was familiar. Half constructed building made a perfect silhouette on the nature’s canvas. And then like a gardener’s water jet it started, sudden burst of rain made dry soil fly like smoke. Smell of damp leaves filled the air. She was standing in open, trembling, with both hands trying to cover her naked body. With her uncontrolled sobbing and pleading of her eyes, she looked familiar, a face which has always been known. Her body bore scratches all over, as if dragged on the concrete. Skin stripped off of the muscles of left arm and left thigh, leaving trail of blood droplets slowly moving towards floor. There was no one else in the sight but she kept looking as if someone was approaching her. She moved back, still trying to hide herself, her naked arms holding across her shoulders. Another step back and it all skipped, already on the edge, she had kept her step on air, it was a second of free fall, no more worried of her body her hands stretched in the wind like feathers of a new born seagull. She was flying, flying like an angle. She flew upward, towards heaven, her body still falling.      

With a huge thud, like something heavy falling on the heap of sand, Chirag woke up to find sunlight dancing all over his room. What a dreadful dream he thought. He could still see her familiar face. But that was not real. Reality was the note on a bright yellow square paper saying “I Love you”. He smiled and threw the blanket aside. “I am late” he looked at the clock and dragged his smooth hair from his forehead towards back of his ears, a habit he had picked from his mother. It was nothing new for him to be late. He never liked going to college. He never understood why girls kept looking at him and laughing. Why boys teased him. He was good in studies. He played table tennis like other students. He was going to be part of collage drama team. He did everything what a boy of his age should do. He used to go to the parties when he first joined college. But now no one invites him and he never understood the reason. “He was not gay” he had explained to so many of his friends. Not one believed. Now he hardly had any friends. College was slowly becoming a hard place to be. He was happy that he was late. He is going to skip college today and will directly go to the rehearsals in the evening.

“Like father like son” He shouted holding the script in one hand a cup of tea in another, as if he was standing in a balcony and looking down at Duryodhana the king of Indraprastha, who had slipped and fell on the palace floor. Then he laughed. “You truly are son of Blind King” uttered and turned at his place. He put the cup on the table and started pacing the room, reading from the paper, “You know why I agreed to marry all five? Not one alone can bring down complete Kuru clan. I will need all five to fulfill my purpose” He looked across his room, could see Draupadi’s father Drupad standing in the corner, worried.

‘I am born from fire and the same fire is going to burn you all down to ashes’ He read as intensely as Draupadi would have said in front of whole sabha looking each one of them in eye, difference was that he was sitting on the table holding his head by both of his hands.

‘My Love, why nakedness is cursed and despised? Don't we love our body?’ he read lying on bed, hands dangling from the edge holding script. He could see lord Krishna smiling.

Chirag always wanted to be part of college drama group and got his chance now. It doesn’t matter if no girl or boy wants to play this role. They laughed when he volunteered. “Yes bro, you need five of them” someone had shouted. He ignored them all. This was his chance and there was no way he was going to screw this up and for that he needs to start practicing right away.

***

By afternoon Chirag had already memorized all his dialogs. For a final practice before leaving for rehearsals he wanted to do a dress rehearsal at home.

His mother walked into the room just as he was about to apply her new lipstick. She was startled. He was startled. "What are you doing with my lipstick? It's new...I haven't used it so far. Couldn't you have waited?" He smiled and handed it back to her. "I forgot to tell you...I am playing Draupadi in our college production... rehearsals start this evening."

She couldn’t say anything apart from a toneless and emotionless “Ok”. It doesn’t matter now. She was not going to use the lipstick anyway. She left him at her dressing table and came out of the room. She glanced at the calendar. It said November 12. She took the marker from side table and made another cross.

She was watching tv when the door of her room opened. He stood there. Smiling. “How do I look?” he asked his right hand on his left shoulder and left hand on his waist, imitating some fairy tale daughter of a king. She looked at him. Mesmerized. This must be how her daughter might have looked if she had one. She couldn’t take her eyes off her son. “Mom, how do I look?” he asked again. He was wearing the same red saaree she kept on her bed. Controlling her heart which was now filling up with emotions, she had only one word for him, “beautiful”.

He went on turning left and right as if advertizing the saaree he was wearing. “I woke up late and didn’t feel like going to college” he said sitting beside her mother. Sakshi noticed that the note on the door knob was untouched.

“I will change back to my cloths now. Vikas must be coming to pick me up”

“Oh yes, about that. They have cancelled the rehearsals for today and will start from tomorrow. Vikas told me to let you know”

“Oh” He stood up and walked back to his room.

***

Dinner table was not very large but it had plenty of space left once both mother and son sat there eating. “Why do you walk like a girl?” she asked him without looking up from her plate. He laughed, “What? No I don’t walk like a girl” said, chewing a piece of chapatti.

“You did when you were dressed up in Saareee.” She looked at him now, pleading for an answer.

“Oh that! I was just copying you” he said as naturally as breathing. She almost chocked. Eyes filled with tears, she was looking back to her food, not showing her emotions. “It’s me” she thought. She had never let any man near him. It was always her mother, a woman who molded him. She passed two pills to him and without any question he took it. “Mom?” He spoke after gulping the pills with water. She looked up. “Did I have any sister?” “No” she said, “why do you ask?” he waited for few more moments. “I see her in my dreams”

***

Shakshi checked the lock of the door, satisfied, she switched off the lights. She had already switched off the gas knob in the kitchen. There was no light coming from his room. She mentally made a note of pills she gave to him. One of those was a sleeping pill to make him sleep longer. She came to her room, locked the door and cried, cried till her heart felt lighter. She walked to the bed and took out an envelope from under the bed. They were Chirag’s medical reports. She found herself back in the hospital and could hear the doctor “Complex system in brain are badly injured. He is suffering from anterior grade amnesia. Fall has damaged significance portion of his frontal and temporal lobes including his left hippocampus.” She had not understood any of it then. But now she does. A drop of tear fell on the paper and a paper fell on the ground from the bundle. “First Information Report”. She picked it up and read the last paragraph…

“Apparently few students stayed late for a drama rehearsals in which he was playing Draupadi. Later the boy was found near the under construction site of the new proposed medical college, which was abandoned due to lack of legal permissions for construction on forest land. He was found in an unconscious state on a heap of sand under a half constructed building…”

“It’s not your sister my son. It’s Draupadi. It’s you in the dream”

She stuffed the paper back into the envelope and lay straight. Watching white ceiling of her room. How she had pleaded to the doctor to tell her if her son was raped. How she had cried to them to see the bleeding between his thighs. How she was told not to accuse a reputed college. How she was told medical report says nothing of such event. “It was a case of rave party gone wrong, which unfortunately turned into a disaster, the boy slipped from the terrace. Yes, compensation would be provided to the family. Of course other boys are suspended. We do not allow such grave indiscipline in our college” Dean and teachers had given statements more or less on the same lines. No one mentioned her son was found naked. No one mumbled that he was bleeding between his thighs. No one empathized that his head injury was so grave the he would never…

She left the sentence incomplete. She could not even tell that to herself. College had paid for the surgeries he went through. A check of Two hundred thousand rupees was sent to her after he was discharged from hospital and it was all done. She closed her eyes. A drop of tear traced from corner of her eye to the petal of her ear. Today she wanted to sleep with lights on, if she can sleep at all.      

***

Another Day. She splashed hand full of water on her face, looking straight in mirror, into her own eyes. “I am getting old” she thought. Tea was prepared. She kept her red saaree at the corner of her bed. Glanced at the makeup kit on the dressing table. Hid her new lipstick. Stuck all the notes like she did a day before and the day before that, for almost a month now and left for the college.

He was pacing the room reading the script, dressed in the red saareee when his mother walked into the room. She was startled. He was startled. "What are you doing wearing a saaree?” He smiled "I forgot to tell you. I am playing Draupadi in our college production. Rehearsals start this evening."

She didn’t say anything but cursed her gut for being shocked even after knowing that it was not his fault, that his memory was stuck to the day of incident, that he would never be able to make new memories, that every day, his whole life, he would want to be Draupadi. “But then why they have invented the words like ‘hope’ and ‘miracle’?” she thought.

Hoping for a miracle she left him at her dressing table and came out of the room. She glanced at the calendar, it said November 13. She took the marker from side table and made another cross. She counted number of crosses, Twenty eight.

***