It was a day of reckoning

By Biprajit Datta Choudhury

Shalini and her father sat beside each other without talking. The whistle of a train at rest went off loudly and the passengers strolling outside hurriedly jumped through the open doors of the train, waving at their loved ones until the train had pulled out of the station.

The 2:30 pm train to Guwahati for which they were waiting was running late by five hours and they had no choice but to sit out the time on a hard concrete bench at the railway station. It was a hot day in June and the sunlight falling on the far side of the railway platform where there was no roof was very bright. The brown earth near the railway tracks simmered in the hot brightness.

Shalini could vaguely remember the day she had arrived by train to this small town some five years ago with Kishore. She had just appeared for her matriculation exam and was madly in love with Kishore who lived in her neighborhood and was five years older than her. He was madly in love with her too and had asked Shalini's father for her hand in marriage. Her father had straightforwardly refused and threw him out of the house along with some threats and jibes. Kishore worked in an electronics store where he was a repair worker and her father did not want to marry off his daughter to a man who could not scrap together a square meal for himself three times a day. However, after a month of Shalini's house-arrest and her father having beaten up Kishore multiple times, they finally eloped together to start a new life away from the shadow of her father. And now five years, six months and twenty five days later she sat beside her father on a hard concrete bench in an obscure town reminiscing her past memories.

Her eyes were red from crying and the skin beneath her eyes had swollen up and she could still taste the saltiness of her tears on her lips. She had not wanted to call back home out of the blue. She had not been happy and wanted to go back home. However, she had not wanted to call her father and tell him that. If her mother had been alive she would have understood and Shalini realised that she could have called her mother and poured her heart out to her.

Kishore did not love her the same way as he had loved her before and they had been having fights almost every other fortnight until she was scared for her life (that he would do something terrible to her and her two year old son, Bijoy). Almost every night, he would come home drunk and each night ended with a terrible squabble about Shalini being a spoilt child and about how long she was going to live off his hard-earned money and call her rich father to help them out. Her neighbor Fatima had to intervene during these wild episodes, fearing for Shalini and her son's safety and on the most terrible nights, Shalini would spend the night at Fatima's house. Had Shalini's mother been alive, Fatima would have told the lady about the many scars on her daughter's body and urged her to tell her father that she wanted to come home.

However, eventually she did call her father and he did not say anything. He only asked for her address and said that he would come as soon as he could.

He had arrived at Shalini's home, the third day after his phone call with her. Kishore had just left with Bijoy to drop him off at his school and thereafter proceed to his workplace. Shalini's father did not put any effort to comfort her. He told her to pack her things and that they would be travelling on the 2:30 train to Guwahati. She packed her bags and left a note on a table addressed to Kishore. She met Fatima on her way out and hugged her and talked to her for some time. Her father was already out of the shabby building clutching a large suitcase in one hand. When Shalini came out, he was sitting in an auto rickshaw waiting for her.

Her father was as impassive as he had ever been. He was on the phone telling someone that he would reach Guwahati by morning and instructed the person at the other end to tell the clients that the meeting was not to be postponed.

'Father?!'Shalini exclaimed and prodded at once.

Her father moved slightly to face her. His face was akin to a face on a stone statue, expressionless eyes and lips poised downwards as if he was perennially upset with something.

'I am sorry, Father.'

Her father turned away from her looking straight ahead.

'Father, say something please?'

'What do you want to me say?' He said angrily, "You ended up in the same situation that I had warned you before. But who are you to listen to me?'

Shalini remained silent and looked away to hide the tears that had welled up in her eyes.

"Do you think a simple sorry will suffice for all these years that I have spent looking for you?" The father said trying not to raise his voice too high.

"What do I do father? I have made a terrible mistake," Shalini answered burying her face in the palms of her hands.

Shalini's father was quiet for a long time. He wetted his lips before he spoke, "Don't worry about it anymore. I will get in touch with a lawyer and all this nonsense shall be dealt with. You will complete your education and-

'Bijoy my boy, what will happen to my boy?' Shalini interrupted in a choked voice. Her cheeks were wet from tears.

Shalini's father scratched his forehead. 'All this will be taken care of. I will take care of the boy once the divorce is finalized and all this nonsense is out of the way. Don't worry about anything' he said, "Sit here for now. I'll go and enquire about the train.' He stood up on his weak legs and slowly strolled towards the railway enquiry office. It was four o' clock in the afternoon and the station was packed with passengers walking, sitting and even sleeping on the floor. Another train had arrived at this time and Shalini looked pensively at the crowd of passengers hurrying onto the moving train as it slowly screeched to a stop. She had forgotten to look at her phone all this while and there were a number of missed calls from Kishore. He would often call during the day when his anger had cooled off to apologize for the night before when he had treated her harshly or tore the house asunder with his violent rage.

She did not call him back and thought about how different her life would have been if she had not met Kishore. She was good at her studies, not the brilliant types but still good enough to sail easily through her school life. She would have been a freshman in a medical college if she had persisted with her studies. Her father had always wanted her to become a doctor like her cousin brother who was practicing medicine in the United States. She did not know how good she would have been if she had become a doctor but she would have tried very hard and gained admission into a reputed medical college. She would have left Guwahati for good and she realised that she would not have had to marry someone to do that. She would have lived her life on her own terms and not on the terms decided upon by the man in her life. She felt very little love for Kishore and did not give another thought of leaving him. Little by little he had become more like her father from whom she was trying to run away, years ago. She was too young; even Fatima had told her once and rebuked Kishore for having married a girl who had hardly come of age.

She vehemently defended her love and tried to be a good wife, the way Kishore wanted her to be. They made love every night and those first few nights were very disturbing for the neighbours because of the passionate moaning and screaming. Soon enough the vomiting and dizziness started and one day she observed how much her belly had swollen. Moreover, she could cup her hands around her breasts which were plain like her chest before. A boy was born, six months later but the doctors could not save the premature child who was born with an under developed air canal. They had stated that there was forty percent mortality rate anyway in case of pre-mature babies and most were born with birth defects. She had lied that she was eighteen years old. Nevertheless the doctors had told her that she was still too young to conceive a child. They even pointed a cautioning finger at Kishore.

She gave birth to Bijoy when she was nineteen years old and that cold morning in January was perhaps the best day of her life. She did not care what her life had been before this day because she had thought that the days that would follow would be the happiest for herself and her family. But that did not happen as the days of merriment soon passed and a pay cut made Kishore hit the bottle once again.

She spent the rest of that year in between bouts of depression and sleeplessness and only the sight of her son, draped in soiled clothing from the night before would make her reach for a fresh pair of sheets and not for the neatly coiled rope hanging from a nail on the wall. But she finally called her father and was very relieved that she could muster the courage to spurt out a few words unlike the countless times before when she had held onto the phone without talking until the line went dead on the other end.

To be continued next week…

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