PROLOGUE
ARYA
May 10, 2007
“Go.” The word echoed repeatedly in
my ears as I dashed through the darkness. I swiped at the tears that were
tumbling out one after the other.
How could a mere two-letter word pierce my
heart and make it bleed? It hadn’t been the word. The person who had uttered it
had infused it with that much power. And I had allowed it to impale right
through.
His words used to colour my universe. Today, a
single word from him had rendered my world irredeemable.
“Enough,” I chided myself even as my naïve
heart urged me to look back.
This couldn’t be real. He wouldn’t
leave me. Not today. Not like this.
The visual of Naveen banging the car
door with a cold look on his face and uttering that final stinging word played
in my mind again.
“Go.”
I hadn’t waited for him to say
anything more. I’d heard enough.
As the envelope of sadness choked me,
I paused and hunkered down on the ground. I struggled to breathe.
I’d loved him with all the purity of
first love. He had been my first dose of addiction. My soul had surrendered to
him on the day we met.
Had it all been a game for him? My
heart shot down that train of thought instantly. He had loved me. No one could
convince me otherwise.
The person who had walked away from
me minutes earlier hadn’t been the one I had fallen in love with.
It made little sense. What we had
shared over the past year had been pure love. At least in my case. I couldn’t
believe those loving whispers, the tender caresses and stolen moments of
passion were all an illusion, a mirage. It couldn’t be. Yet, nothing explained
his strange coldness.
Hadn’t he told me a month ago that he
was rejecting the overseas job offer because he couldn’t bear to leave me?
And then he had gone missing for a
whole month. No calls or messages. No answer to my texts or calls.
And today, as he’d declared he was
leaving, his voice had been devoid of any emotion. His eyes had taken on a
vacant, distant look. There hadn’t been even a shred of love in those deep,
mesmerising brown eyes. If anyone had seen our interaction today, they would
have thought of us as two strangers who had accidentally met in an awkward
situation.
Tears stung my eyes as I heard the
receding sound of his car’s engine. He was really gone. I raised my eyes to the
heavens, seeking an explanation. A million stars twinkled above without a care about
what was happening in my world.
I dragged myself up, turned the bend
in the village road, and entered our compound. In front of me, my house lay
drenched in darkness. In all the years since we had moved here, I had never
seen it this way. It always sparkled brightly with light, laughter, and love. Today
it resembled me—abandoned.
I sat on the porch, trying to
understand what had transpired in the past half an hour.
Where had it gone wrong? With my
heart brimming with joy , I’d texted him my exam results right in the morning..
Then I’d patiently waited for his congratulatory call.
He would be proud, wouldn’t he? After
all, he was the reason I aced all my papers. Then he had messaged that he was
on his way to Sreepuram. I had rejoiced. I’d thought he was coming to
congratulate me in person. How wrong I had been!
We had met at our usual rendezvous
point.
After the bend in the road between Sreenilayam,
Naveen’s ancestral home, and my house lay a sarpa kavu, a conserved sacred
forest reserved for the worship of nagas or snakes. We loved the serene,
cool ambience inside the kavu. It was our little heaven. We used to there secretly
to avoid running into any acquaintances. The kavu was a place frequented by
none.
He’d been waiting at the entrance to
the kavu, leaning back on his car, his arms crossed, impatience writ large on
his face.
“I passed. I am so happy,” I’d
declared as I approached him with a huge grin on my face.
His face had remained blank.
“Congratulations. You deserved it,”
he’d said in a stilted voice.
I’d stared at him, taken aback by the
lack of warmth in his greeting. Usually, the moment we met he would pull me
into his arms and kiss me till my legs buckled underneath me.
“What happened, Naveen? Is something
wrong?” I’d asked, approaching him.
“This,” he said, waving his hand in
the space between us. “This is wrong. And I am putting an end to it.”
Wrong?
“What do you mean?” I asked, refusing
to believe what I’d just heard. “How can you say that about us?”
“There is no us and should
never be. It was a mistake from the beginning and I am determined to correct it.
That is the only reason I came to meet you today.”
“A mistake? I never considered what
we had as a mistake. How can you say that?” I said, my heart shattering with
each passing second.
“You might think differently now. But
trust me, you’ll forget me. You might even laugh at the silly dreams we
shared,” he said, his eyes refusing to meet mine.
Forget him? I couldn’t even contemplate that.
Not a second passed by without me remembering him. And he was asking me to
forget him?
“I can’t.”
“You can, and you will,” he said. After
giving me one last look, which was still devoid of any warmth, he got into his
car.
“Naveen, don’t leave me like this. At
least tell me what is wrong. What did I do to make you angry?” I asked, holding
on to the car handle, trying to prevent him from leaving.
He looked straight ahead and refused
to face me.
“Nothing you say or do is going to
change anything. There cannot be an ‘us’. Ever. Do you understand?”
“Naveen…”
“Go,” he’d said and closed the car
door with a bang. Then, without a second glance, he’d driven away.
Go. The word resonated inside me again
and I sobbed.
“Let it all out. Crying is good,” my
mother would have said.
I couldn’t wait to cry on her shoulders.
She was my cheerleader, the one who taught me to believe in the messages of my
heart. She had imbued in me the courage to follow the path of love.
My parents should have returned by
now. I stepped onto the veranda and retrieved the key hidden under the flowerpot
near the steps. The temple was at a distance of just thirty minutes. An unease
crept up my heart. What was delaying them?
I pulled out my phone and called my
mother. I waited nervously as it rang.
“Amma, where are you? Why are you
late?” I asked as soon as the call connected.
There were a few seconds of silence
before a strange male voice answered.
“Are you related to the owner of this
phone?”
Taken aback, I asked, “Yes, I am. Who
is this and where is my mother?”
Silence. I heard the person at the
other end of the line take a deep breath, as if he was composing himself. Then
he spoke in halting words, “Don’t panic, okay? There has been an accident. Your
parent’s car was hit by a truck that had jumped the signal. Both the occupants
of the car are critical. Please come to the city hospital as soon as possible.”
As a silent scream escaped me, I
asked the man to repeat what he had just said, all the while hoping I’d heard
him wrong. Seconds later, I cut the call with trembling fingers.
For a long minute, I stood frozen, my
mind blank. An owl hooted from somewhere near, snapping me out of my trance.
Shaking my head, I tried to think. I
had to get to the town as soon as possible. Emotional stress was blocking out
all logical thoughts. The last bus to the town had left a long ago and there
wasn’t any taxi service available in our tiny village. What should I do?
As if answering my question, the
light at the gate of our neighbour’s house turned on and I could see their
ambassador parked right in front of the house. I dashed across the darkness
that was slowly engulfing me and rang their bell repeatedly.
My whole body trembled as I repeated
to Arundhati Ammamma what the stranger had told me. She grabbed my hands in
hers and shouted to her driver, Gopu, to take the car out.
“They will be alright. Don’t worry. I
will come with you right now,” she reassured me.
Arundhati Ammamma wasn’t my grandmother.
We weren’t even related. All the kids in the neighbourhood called her Ammamma,
which meant grandmother, on her insistence. She showered love on all of us
equally.
And that night she became my pillar
of strength. Throughout that wretched night, she remained by my side while my
parents struggled for their lives inside the closed walls of the operation
theatre.
Near midnight, my mother stopped
fighting and surrendered.
An hour later, my father, too,
followed her. Terrified, I raised my tear-filled eyes towards the heavens and pleaded
with the creator.
Please,
God, turn back the clock and take me back to this morning.
Please
restart the day differently.
In a
single toss and turn, you have upended my universe. You have to reverse everything.
Please
don’t take them from me.
This was a nightmare, wasn’t it? At
any moment, my mother would wake me up with a lovely smile on her face.
As the morning came, realization
struck that I was now an orphan. I was all alone in this world.
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