aurore - an unusual love story √

part sixty six

Raghav Raichand lay on the rocking chair staring at the ceiling.
Rings of smoke reached upto the roof as he made patterns with the cigar pointing upwards from between his lips.

He closed his eyes.

London sometimes turned so dark in the day, that it felt there hadn't been sun for years now here.
12 in the noon.
And the blame was not to be put only on the sorrowful weather outside, but also on the heavy curtains, and his own heavy heart.

Sometimes, he did not feel good.
Not at all good.
He let no one know of that. But his wife could guess, hence suffered from anxiety herself.
Jai was a kid to know.
And Maya.....

One of his doctor friends once studied him well and said that he had some signs of clinical depression. He wondered what The Raghav Raichand lacked in life now, to have tinge of dark shades beneath the eyes, and series of sleepless nights in the meantime.

Raghav had only smiled. He never said a thing, because he had no words of choice.
Anything spoken, would be a big lie.
Like his life at present was.

Distancing himself from his family, specially his kids for almost a month now, was giving him some kind of an unexplained relief. He realised something.
One could never stay happy hurting their children. And he hardly had a choice.

Hence happiness through anything else was not what he wished for. He wasn't sure though, if he would really undo some things in life he had done, just for the sake of his child's joy.
But he knew one thing. He could not hurt them anymore.

Maybe, maybe he wouldn't too.... until they tried to test him....again...

Raghav pressed his temple. His life was so undecidedly messed up. He could never decide upon what he wanted. He couldn't realise what Siddhi wished for as well.
No one made him understand what a father should desire for his children, or what a husband should really do to look upto his wife's needs.

Raghav started rocking the chair, in a desperate attempt to calm his soul.

The truth was, he loved Maya to an extent no one knew. Everyone who would listen to the story, would hate him for being terribly heartless towards his own daughter.
But had he got a choice?
Could he undo his terrible, hurtful, pukeworthy past?
No, right?

The last thing he could do was, save his children from 'their' wrath, 'their' curse. That's all.

He had been trying to fulfil his duty as a father. Siddhi blamed him, but she loved him too. He knew that.
No one would understand his turmoil. Because no one might have been in a situation, he was in.

Today, and almost fifty years back.

Raghav gulped in an entire glass of water kept on the table beside. The cold freezed him to the core, hence he tightened the shawl.

The dark room felt like a dead space, that dragged him back to times he wanted to forget.

Memories, that haunted constantly since the time he was only ten. A baby. A fragile heart who couldn't bear intricacies of human brains. The darknesses. The bad parts.
Strangely, the feeling of horror still remained the same, in his mid fifties, though heavily aware of why humans could do what, and to what extent.

Salim Ahmed's innocent face was the first thing that flashed in his eyes. Usually people didn't remember faces of such young associations, that ended abruptly. Maybe he remembered only because it was too abrupt to be forgettable.

The last thing that flashed, was blood. Pools of blood around him. Touching his feet. And he screaming on top of his lungs, fainting in the process. He didn't know if it was on the blood he had dropped, and he felt nauseous everytime he thought about that, followed by incidents of pukes several times.