Kennedy Airport!
My son and I got a very hearty welcome. Prasad and Shalini greeted us with wholehearted heap of happiness and love. I forgot my sorrows for a few moments.
Vinod hung on Prasad’s arm. While I was sharing the news with Prasad and Shalini in their Apartment, my heart spluttered.
I wondered whether it was Roy’s figure that I saw when I looked back while I was walking towards the aircraft. That thought had strained me all through my journey.
I wept when the talk came on Roy. Prasad and Shalini consoled me. Prasad said:
“Chechy, you do not worry. This should be a lesson to Roychayan. Should I allow that man to torture my sister all her life? As long as I live, I will not allow it to happen. If you had not come willingly, I would have come and brought you here by force. Can I be happy and comfortable when I know that Chechy is being tortured by a brute?”
Vinod was enthusiastically running up and down. He was curious about everything. As if he had reached heaven
Finally, I had come near those who love me! I felt solace.
But Roy’s memory remained in my heart like a painful sore.
The next day itself I posted a letter to Roy.
Will Roy send me a reply?
Had he come drunk that day too? Had he felt emptiness when he came back?
Did he feel lonely? Did our absence touch him? Did he feel miserable? A thousand questions tormented me.
How I used to feel lonely whenever Roy was away.
How many times had I waited alone…for Roy, not knowing when he would be coming? What a terrible sense of loneliness had enveloped me!
Roy never felt the pain I felt on those occasions.
I longed for freedom. But am I free? Still, I am in the prison of memories around Roy!
Don’t I still feel that mental bondage even now?
Was I wrong in doing this?
There was a tug-of-war going on in my mind. Though I had a thousand justifications on my side, still I could not help feeling a sense of guilt.
If I confess this matter to Prasad, he will chase it away as some nonsense. He does not want to remain a passive witness to the whole drama of my life. To him, his elder sister is more important. Whoever or whatever is against his sister, he will oppose him/it point blank.
“It is your sympathy that brought a whole lot of trouble. Our life is not to be given so simply as a puppet if somebody comes before us and pleads for it with sentimental pretension. If that happens, the person will throw it away and shatter it. Life happens only once. It has to be lived in dignity. Our life is not to be pawned for mean-minded puny little men.
I remembered Valsa’s words in her letter.
“Premi, my dear! Has not it been just like casting pearls before pigs!”
The “precious gem” in Prakash’s poems! What is the use of being Prakash’s precious gem or Valsa’s pearl?”
What is the use if I do not become the precious gem in the jewel box of Roy’s mind?
How come I cannot even think of a life without connecting it to Roy? I cannot prevent it from affecting all my other activities.
Whatever I gain, how can I feel happy in the memory of the disorder in my life with Roy?
I feel a kind of dullness as though I have come to the apex of the mountain and look far down below.
Life has suddenly become a riddle!
(Cont’d)
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