Bade Acche Lagte Hain | MaNan

Contrasting Childhoods.

With sleep eluding her senses, Nandini felt to be kept on tenterhooks after hearing a puzzled story that demanded several assorted pieces to complete the picture. Her heart sank into trepidation as she extrapolated different scenarios that muddled her mind.

"But how can you forget a day of your life? You remember nothing about it?" She enquired incredulously, her concerned eyes wide in panic.

Himself in a trance of solving the old mystery enshrouded by his own brain, he divulged, "When I tried pressurizing myself, grandpa had to disclose that it was my brain's reaction to my grief. Fury was overpowering every emotion inside me. I was filled with irrational restlessness, hurling things here and there as I couldn't sit at one place. I didn't like talking to anyone. Then grandpa introduced me to stars. Lying in his lap, I used to gaze at them all night because I couldn't sleep. After months of treatment and their patience with me, I felt calmer than before, the realisation of losing my mother was sinking inside me. I was finally mourning her death but more or less, I'd lost the day of her cremation so I stopped stressing myself about it. Taking those medicines and that feeling was suffocating in itself and it wasn't that I forgot anything before or after that. I remembered being taken forcefully from the crematorium and locked into a room by father. At the least I wasn't dead so I just --- moved on with whatever I could retain. I couldn't go and pester my grandparents when they were dealing with their own grief and loss, alongside bearing me without any complains. My aunt, Chitra's mother, had also passed away in a brutal accident along with her son. My grandparents were in Banaras dealing with the loss when they got to know about mother's death. They came running back. They had lost both their daughters in a span of a week. We were coping with each day as it came. When grandpa used to be at work and Anil uncle at school, grandma would spend all her time with me. I didn't have much of active participation. Next year I joined school and decided to start afresh. Life was giving me a chance and I took it. There was no looking back. However, when I started living with father again after years, I often wondered how did he allow me to live with grandpa? None of us were ever comfortable to initiate that conversation, until today where Madhu brought that memory back. I wanted father to tell me what happened that moved him to the extent that he let me go but he dreads to talk about it as if I would kill myself."

Manik was perplexed and agitated. He didn't know why did he leave behind his siblings in distress and that exacerbated his guilt. His remorse didn't let him bond back with his sister who was a complete stranger to him. Manas was ten, about to turn eleven, when Manik met him again on their grandpa's last rites. All he could see in Manas was his almost four year old kid brother running behind him and copying his every action. Some old habits die hard. If not for Manas taking a first step towards Manik, he would have lost his brother too.

"Does didi know that you forgot what happened?" She asked carefully.

"I don't know. Though grandpa told father about it." He mumbled regretfully. He could have reconciled with Madhu.

Nandini regarded his ashen face antsily and tears lined her eyes. His indifferent words and the edge in his strained voice, clued in two contrasting stories to Nandini. He was surprised that he didn't die. She broke out into a cold sweat as her mind weaved spine-chilling stories of the missing link of his past that would have led to his death. It must have been something heinously excruciating, for his brain to completely wipe out that memory that is still blank for him after twenty years. His brain is protecting him and it should stay like that only.

Reaching to his cheek, she cupped his face to get his attention and said, "Your grandpa said you were severely ill. Maybe you fainted in that room and father got scared so he let you live where you could be happy and healthy. But at the same time he didn't want to part with all three of his children. You said, bhaiya was close to him and didi stayed back for bhaiya. It's not your fault that father was unfair to didi and somewhere she also wanted to stay back for bhaiya."