There comes a time when a single incident changes everything in life. Anand’s departure from our lives had shrouded my family with gloom, something which never changed ever in my living memory. The silence which had lulled over the dead remains of my dear brother had now carried on in our lives…Maa never spoke to us again. We heard her voice sometimes, in those moments in her sleep when she kept talking to the abstract son who was now no more. Her voice never spoke to us, it was lost in transition between the ladders of life and death…a place where it had lost itself searching for her first born child. Many a times I dreamt of Maa scathing an alien land calling out for her son…a nightmare which reflected my helplessness in pulling my mother out of the sea of sorrow that she had immersed herself in. When doctors, quacks, saints , advice, prayers and all that we ever tried didn’t work, we began accepting the fact that Maa’s mourning may never be over. She dwelled in an abstract world, completely ignorant of the passing time with memories of her lost son.
Baba continued working for sometime, and slowly his days were spent outside the home than with any of us. In grief of his dead son and ailing wife seemed to be taking a toll on him. Life went on for me and Payal, as we struggled to keep the house running. Her part time job at a school and my meager salary of a news reader supported our lives when Baba’s income stopped aiding us. Silence now inhabited the house which was once teaming with life and happiness. We never knew what happened to Baba when suddenly he came home and announced he quit his job. A week later someone from his college came with a cheque saying it was our fathers savings when he quit work. We tried talking to the man who was once our dear father but never received any proper answer. He would leave the house at dawn and would return late at night, sometimes gone for days together. No one knew where he went or where he returned from. In a single turn of time we had almost lost both our parents along with our brother.
In our times of grief Arjun became our biggest support. They say in life when you have lost everything there will always be a true friend to stand by you, he was that strength in my life. He lent his personal as well as financial support without asking. Many a times he stayed up nights with the police or searching the streets of Madras when Baba went missing for days. Orphaned at childhood, he seemed to understand the pain we went through now. He filled the gap which Baba’s anonymity and Anands absence made in our lives.
I never asked Payal where she was the night Anand left us. I never questioned Arjun how he found her. Somehow with the responsibilities doubling on with time, the question lost its significance. It was a relief to see everyone home somehow alive after a day back from work.
In days that progressed, pain kept dragging on and nothing in life seemed to change. Relatives and friends pleaded with Baba to return to normalcy for the sake of two young unwed daughters at home. Nevertheless, me and Payal had realized long back that it wouldn’t work. In our prayers, a complaint was silently registered wherein our parents had walked away from us, and lulled away with the memory of duties.
Then one rainy evening that year, Baba went out of the house with his umbrella, never to return. We searched for days and weeks, and then our father was found only in the police records of missing people. I still wonder where he went, a frail hope beating somewhere within that a day would come when he would return to us as our old Baba who doted on his children. However in depths of my heart, an empty feeling told me that life was to move on beyond, much beyond this pain. I had my ailing mother, little sister and a search for my father to aid. My weakness would mean the end for my family.
