The Unventured Passions

Long Lost Battles

When you're born working class, especially with a paralysed bedridden mother, and a widow elder sister, you run expecting to save yourself and your family. Being chased is as potentially lethal as it gets. You escape at any cost, escape from the immediate starvation, immediate poverty that threatens the hapless family at every step. You learn to focus the hard way. You think, thoughts driven by need and not judgement. You deal with the trauma later, or don't. Survival comes at a cost... one you pay because you have to.
Sometimes because you don't have a choice.

Prabir, the young law graduate, the bright intern at the Alipur Judge Court practicing under the expert guidance of the prominent Barrister Anirudh Roy Chowdhury, was pouring liquor in a silver stem glass for the rich Raybahadur who had paid him a hefty amount to betray his mentor by stealing his licenced revolver among other things.
Prabir was reluctant, but then the deteriorating condition of his ailing mother forced him to sell his morality and later his dignity to the man who took pride in calling himself his saviour.

"Arey... Pour more... You aren't paying this from your own pocket, are you?"
A drunk, wasted Shashi Chandra grunted at the boy, shoving him aside, as he snatched the fancy glass jar from his hand to help himself.

"It's your aiburobhaat tomorrow sir, you'll have to wake up early and..."
Prabir tried to make a point, in the most gentle way possible, but Shashi Chandra clenched his teeth in the most vicious manner at him and mocked him cruelly.

"Ahare... Aiburobhaat!! As if I'll become a virgin groom once again...!"
He gulped the drink from his glass and poured some more into it, unsteadily.

"Is this why I'm feeding you boy? To tutor me? Where is the work that you're appointed for? Where is it you bloody bastard?" Shashi Chandra shouted and Prabir closed his eyes and swallowed the insults in silence, recalling the moment when Anirudh Roy Chowdhury had trusted him with his briefcase, and how slyly he had broken that trust, pushing the godlike man into the jaws of impending death.

Prabir had ran and seeked refuse under Shashi Chandra's roof after that night, like many others, and his only job was to convince another strong headed wealthy man living under the same roof, to consider subjugating his affluence to his patron, a man whose daughter he had once intended to marry.

Running away was running a way for Prabir, a way to survive, running a path both from and toward. It was all a matter of perspective in the beginning, but as days passed, the derogatory behaviour of Shashi Chandra accompanied by the uncouth verbal abuse made him question his judgement to a great extent.

"Go... Go at once you bastard, go and do the job you've been appointed for... And... And for heaven's sake, leave me alone!"
He spat the words in a slurry tone and called out loud, and a young widow house help in early twenties came inside at once.

"Bhanu... Come closer Bhanu..."
Shashi Chandra made chucking sounds, showering pouty kisses to the widow, slapping his thighs. The girl gulped and stole a helpless glance at the young man standing near, and next she sat right on the middle aged Raybahadur's lap as ordered.

Prabir flinched his face in disgust and walked out of the room.

"And you..."
Shashi Chandra had called.
"Get the job done before my marriage, or else two celebrations would happen together, my wedding and your funeral... Remember!"

Prabir left, and Shashi Chandra dragged the widow roughly to his bed.
Not all widows deserved love, not all received it!

Being chased brings a primal fear, the kind that brings out every ounce of you, that empties the reserve tank of the reserve tank. It is the kind of fear of the worst of nightmares, the kind that ignores physical and mental pain in the pursuit of safety.