Periods, Pyaar And Patriarchy

Chapter Five

Shweta had pushed the image of her father so very back inside her head that the next morning, for a good hour and a half, she even forgot about it. But then the image came back to her, the same kind of shock waves passing through her body. She had assumed that her father was dead; the possibility of him being alive was what shocked her the most. She had assumed that if he had been alive, he would've found his way back to their family. The fact that he could be alive and healthy but not wanting to return was something that had never occurred to her.

Reason spoke to Shweta. There could be a fifty per cent chance that she had imagined it. She had been fairly tired after going through all the websites and drowsy enough to have misread the name on Dr. History's website. Sleepy enough to mistake somebody's green eyes for the same Shruti got hers from. But whatever it was, Shweta knew one thing, the standing water of the past was best left as it was. You never knew the kind of monsters that dwelled beneath the surface, and once you disturbed it there was no saying what was coming to haunt you.

She wonders if she should tell Shruti about it. Strong, dependable and sassy Shruti. Shruti, who took every problem on her chin and faced it with all her strength. Shruti, whose moods unlike Shweta wasn't ever affected by pimples on her chin.

What would Shruti say? There was no point in telling Seema, she knew. Was there any point in letting Shruti know? After all this while- that their father had been alive? Shruti was so happy, bubbling over the surface with her engagement and her job abroad, Shweta couldn't bear to disturb it.

"Beta, not waking up today?" Shweta can hear Seema's voice trailing up to her room. It had been so long since she and her mother had managed to get along. This was too precious for her to disrupt with such irrelevant news.

"I'm coming, maa." She yells back, throwing her covers over her bed and the thoughts.

The Sunshine Centre for the Differently Abled and Elderly had been recently been moved to a new location because of a pipe leak that had caused the entire lower floor to be flooded. This had posed a great many questions on the proper use of the trust fund and raised many a questioning glance at the Hospital's board of trustees. Following the flooding, the centre had been shifted to a place quite far from the main town, almost at the outskirts.

There were four doctors at the centre who were available at all hours while any others could be summoned from the hospital that was now a mile and a half away. The new location did justice to the name of the centre, for it was an old-school bungalow that was spread over an open area. The lawn itself extended for a half a kilometre all around, and the large bungalow in the middle had been re-modelled to suit the new demands.

The immediate area surrounding the bungalow wasn't very much shrouded in trees like the driveway was. It received an abundance of sunshine; you could practically see the sunbeams glittering on the golden dried grass on the lawn. During the evening, most of the residents would be out for walks and games; enjoying the serenity and the seclusion that seemed more and more difficult to get in the suffocating city noise.

As Shweta sat in the front seat of the car next to her mother; Seema explained all of these things to her daughter. Seema, dressed in a pink and mustard yellow tussar silk sari, kajal rimmed eyes and a large bindi sitting on the middle of her forehead looked beautiful. Shweta had never really taken much time to appreciate how well put-together her mother looked, the dignity she radiated. The white coat sat slung on the backseat of the car, her large spectacles sitting on top of it inside their maroon cover. As Seema spoke on, giving Shweta an idea about the centre she was supposed to volunteer at, her thoughts begin to drift.

Was her father really happy now? And what would her mother think if she were to find out that her estranged husband had not only remarried but had a son as well? Shweta wondered if the news would affect Seema as harshly as it might have affected her some years ago. Her mother seemed so content, so blissfully comfortable in the life she had built for herself and her girls that would be downright cruel to break it.