“Why are you doing this to us?” Aai wailed banging her palms on her templates. “How do we answer her parents?!... There is not a single happiness that you can give us without causing us some pain...”
Subodh tried to stay unaffected by her histrionics, yet they did catch his nerve. He held on to the sofa, his fingers sunk deep into the cushion. Aai’s words were corroding his mind. They were piercing his thoughts and filling them with remorse.
That was exactly why Subodh hated being at his parents’ place. Over the years, they hadn’t ceased being judgemental about him. Their words still bore the impressions of his early failures. His efforts to wipe them off had been futile. They tainted all his accomplishments in their darkening grease. A bout colossal exasperation simmered through him each time he came to terms with the fact that the dark silhouette of his failure still defined his identity before them.
“Tell us! How will we answer her parents?” Aai yelled once again.
Subodh opened his laptop and hid himself inside the project report. It was the safest place to hide. It isolated him instantly from the world and himself. It severed all the ties that bound him to his surroundings and hid him deep within the multitude of impassive responsibilities. He had developed a liking for this enclosure. He had found comfort in its deliberation. He found peace in its intrusion into his life. He longed for in its absence. He pulled it over himself as a quilt whenever discomfort in living augmented unbearably.
Aai’s words now struggled to reach him with a fading intensity. But he was moving away swiftly from their grasp into the black hole he had created for himself.
Stated Risk
Few critics fear that the experiments may produce doomsday phenomena. The stated fusions, might generate a series of explosions due to the triggering on an uncontrolled chain reaction. These explosions can be powerful enough to disintegrate Earth’s structure into an undefined number of fragments or sections. However, this risk persists in every fusion experiment undertaken, if performed in an uncontrolled environment. To address these concerns, NRPF (Nuclear Risk Prevention Forum) undertook six safety reviews. The outcome of these reviews stated that the environment created for fusion experiment was devoid of any flaws and posed no threat to its surroundings or the planet on a whole. This conclusion was also endorsed by several other regulatory organisations like CINS (Committee for International Nuclear Safety), ENRI (European Nuclear Research Institute) and APROA (Atomic Power Regulatory Organisation of America).
The detailed outcome of the reviews is as given below:
“Talk to us if we are talking to you” The sharp voice penetrated the cocoon of indifference that his work was weaving around him.
He tried to avoid its invasion. Yet the voice shattered all the blockades and hit his mind.
“Answer us!” Baba’s voice rumbled through the aging walls of the living room.
“What?!” Subodh snapped back.
“What should we tell her father?” Baba asked in a voice louder than Subodh’s.
“Whatever you want...” Subodh spat out words as if they were leaving a bad taste in his mouth.
“What kind of answer is this?” His reply had enraged Baba further.
“What kind of question was that then?” Subodh couldn’t hold it back anymore. He barked out the reply on his parents’ faces.
“What kind of question?... Her father calls us up and asks what is wrong between you and Sonal?... He said you two had a fight in some hotel...”
“Coffee shop...” Subodh corrected him before he could finish what he had to say.
“Don’t interrupt me!” Baba violently kicked the correction aside and continued with his bluster “He told me that you said dirty words to her...”
Even in that state of conflict, the phrase ‘dirty words’ uttered by Baba pumped up a spurt of laughter within Subodh. He helplessly giggled at it. He wondered which dirty words was Baba or her father was referring to. If he sat down to calculate, there would be more than 87,634 dirty words he must’ve said to her in bed or at times when they wanted to be in bed but they weren’t. At times, she didn’t quite appreciate it. But he never expected her to go to her father and complain about it. For a moment, he imagined her sobbing telling her father “Daddy, he said ‘I want to ride you, slut’ and when I said ‘Yes boy, give it to me’ he said ‘Take my hot rod in you whore’ (sob sob)...”. The smile on his face broadened to cross the edges of his face and almost touched his ears.
“Look... he’s laughing... shameless!...” His giggle didn’t go unnoticed. Baba then turned to Aai. “You know... he called her ‘beach’”, he explicitly mentioned the forbidden word. For an instant Subodh couldn’t connect it with Sonal. Eventually, he did. But he didn’t feel like correcting Baba over that one, especially at such a delicate moment. Yet in his mind he did say “Baba, it’s ‘bitch’ and not ‘beach’. In the mean time, Aai had entered a state of shock at this revelation.
“What?!” She gasped.
“Yes!... He called her beach... Not just that, he called her psycho also... And was about to hit her...” Baba counted his crimes before Aai as if he was reading it out from a charge-sheet. Aai was melodramatically reacting to each word that Baba uttered. She covered her ears with open palms and kept nodding at various velocities depending on the seriousness of the offence.
Subodh couldn’t believe his ears. “When did all this happen?” He asked in disbelief.
“Why? You don’t remember when it happened?” Baba growled at him.
“No...” Subodh wasn’t out of his bewilderment yet.
“See... Now he wants to say that we are lying!.. Good!” Baba said looking at Aai.
“I am not saying that... I just want to say that I don’t quite remember when it happened...” Subodh clarified in a distress-filled tone.
“Why would you?... Who remembers their own wrong doings?...” Baba pounced on his declaration.
“Of course... you won’t even remember that you broke a table at the hotel... coffee house... when you were fighting with her...”, sarcasm tainted every word Baba spoke.
Realisation struck Subodh like a thunderbolt. What he thought was enclosed within the constraints of his mind, was what he had unknowingly he had let out on that evening. His thoughts had translated themselves into his actions before he could be in charge of them. And they kept him uninformed about it all this while. He was made to believe that it was just a passing thought who didn’t take the course of action. A thought that engrossed him so much into itself, that he lost track of his wakefulness and detached himself from reality. The thought then replaced him with itself in the reality. It conned him. It impersonated itself as him and had entered the reality, keeping him away from it. He had fallen prey to the conspiracy that fate had plotted with the help of his ailing vulnerable mind.
The realisation spread a shattering wave of regret through him. It numbed his senses for a while. His carefree self was suppressed under the burden of its inexorable guilt. An urge began to take shape inside his conscience to apologise to Sonal for whatever happened that evening. It wasn’t that this realisation had generated feelings for her inside him again. They weren’t ever there. But he felt ashamed of his behaviour towards her. If things had been well, they would’ve married each other in recent future. He would’ve dissolved himself in the facade of a completely involved, totally in love, caring and affectionate boyfriend, and would’ve carried it further to play the role of a completely involved, totally in love, caring and affectionate husband. Everything was smooth like it, till he started experiencing those rigours of epiphany. He was still in search of their source. But the clarity that they had imparted him with, was worth beholding. They threw a light on his real self. And hence, though they were disrupting, he held them close to his heart. Lately, he also believed that it was something close to his heart which had triggered them.
“You don’t na?... You won’t for sure... Because you will have to accept them if you remember them.” Baba continued with his rant.
“I am not afraid of accepting my mistakes... I just don’t remember when it happened...I am not like you...” words flowed out of Subodh’s mouth before his mind could consider them for a review.
Their sudden articulation impaired Baba’s assaultive spirit. A defeated silence leaked out of those words and filled the house. Baba stood speechless looking at Subodh with dismal eyes. Subodh’s words had stirred something lying still at the bottom of his heart. He walked away silently. Aai collapsed on the sofa hiding her face in an end of her saree with her palm.
Subodh furiously clapped his laptop, picked it up and walked out of the house.
***
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