Bondita : Anirudh's Sunshine

12. The storms within

25th April, 1921.

Dear Diary Babu,

Hope everything is fine with you. Well me, I am good. Recovering from the unusual bleeding.

You know Diary Babu, I read somewhere that life is a loop. It is full of surprises, twists and turns. You go to surprise someone and you receive one instead. Perhaps, the good pleasant surprises are all over for me, what's left is betrayal and distasteful truth. Every face is masked with so many layers, they shed one layer and I convince myself that this is it, no more layers only to be disappointed at my lack of ability to understand the cunning nature of the people and the truth.

My experiences with sisters have always been bad, no worse. Buri didi was masked as Pari didi, yet I understand her reasons. She felt I snatched her love from her and so all that she did was justified. "Prem me kuch sahi ya galat nahi hota, Prem bus Prem hota hai". Her definition of love was attainment of the monetary benefits it had to offer. While Sampoorna didi turned wicked under the training of her crooked mother. She was equal to my soul sister, had Saurav Jamai Babu been alive, I wouldn't have lost my beloved sister. Again, the cunning truth, he died saving me.

The past history with my sisters refrained me from making Manoramaji. Manorama didi. We could have been at least friends if Pati Babu had not stuck around her on our anniversary or at least not created that scene when the vase fell. She married my husband, yet when she saved me from Sampoorna Maa's ploy with the aarti ki thaal my heart softened for her. I tried helping her with getting adjusted as choti patni, but what could I have done when I felt my Baba-like Kaka Sasurji's inclination towards her, so much that he was ready to hand over the keys to her. I had many, many reasons to hate her, but I was under the impression that Pati Babu married her disguising himself as a daku, how was she responsible for his deeds?

I am so angry at myself to have misunderstood her after I received her letter. She could have been my friend or a sister. But I was wrong again, like every other time, I was so so wrong.

Being a Krantikari, the country's liberation is their one and only motive. Agreed. But is the country made of the soils and the long stretches of the land it covers or countrymen? What good would be an independent country liberated on the pyres of its people, on the pyres of families, on the pyre of my family, my relationships?

Manoramaji is a Krantikari. Isn't she a woman too? How did she not understand that she was building her liberation plans on the burnt ashes of my heart? How did she not see what she insisted on putting me through? How dare she use a married man for her benefits? How dare she ask a married man standing at the verge of giving up on his teenager wife to marry her, let alone the reason be nation's freedom? Who gives them the rights to play around with people's lives? Who gives them the rights to break the hearts of people for their benefits under the pretext of the nation's well being? Do they even realise the terror it creates in the hearts of people? Martyrdom is their ultimate goal and in the process they snatch the right to live from those who want to breathe, who want to live. It feels like hell to know such women exist who are ready to do anything under the pretext of sacrifice for the country. If it was only the Roy Chowdhury name that she needed, there were many other ways. Why did she break my heart? Why did she make me hate every other person like her? Their cause is big, but their hearts, are they so small?

Her letter, like his diary note for 'Azaadi express',  is full of admiration for the way her fake husband dreams a life for me. Blinded by emotions, I couldn't understand the true meaning of those sentences. Can she say never ever she wanted to be his wife in real? I read it a thousand times replacing Bondita for Manorama and you know what Diary Babu, they both make a great match. Probably they should turn the facade, real. If I get a chance to do that I would definitely do that for them, for their Azaadi. At least I would be true to my conscience.