A Mess of Silence

2

It was after seven in the evening, the sun long past gone, when Akshar's unsteady hormones gave him the controversial permission to come out of his room. Damini was cooking rajma-roti, something she knew Akshar liked with all his heart. She heard his footfalls as they neared the kitchen. She took a deep breath, be a mother she told herself and turned around.

What she saw shattered all that was left of the emotional poise of her heart. Akshar's cheek bones were wet, puffed up and scarlet. His nose popped up in the middle of his face all red and stained around the nostrils with mucus. Tears had heft slithering tracks on both sides of his face. He had been crying all the while.

Gasping, Damini said,"What happened beta...hay Bhagwan...what happened!"

Snuggling his face in the hollows of her shoulders, and wrapping his hands around her, his sobs began again. Deep and snotty. It was with extreme effort she fought the urge to break down herself. Her hand went up to his messed up hair and ruffled them. She knew how much he liked getting that done to him.

In the middle of a sob, Akshar managed, "Can—" a hiccup invaded his forced speech, "can we—" hiccup, "can...we...sit?"

Damini sighed. Of relief? Of panic? She did not know.

Together in an awkward walk, they went to the dining room and sat on the chairs around the big textured glass-top dining table.

"Is it about grades son?" Damini had her voice calm and placid.

Akshar nodded, his gaze fixed on the glass of the dining-table.

"What is it Akshar? What happened? I'm your mother. Tell me."

Akshar thought think over it. It was after long moments he spoke.

***

It was what seemed like fifteen minutes of going nowhere and reaching nowhere when Deepak decided to raise his question again:

"Are, are you sure we are on the right path?" Roads of identical descent, camouflaged too well in darkness went past and past the window like a train too fast to be clearly seen and too long to end.

The cabbie was looking straight ahead, on his face a strained concentration. His temples still wrinkled and hands wrapped around the steering wheel all too tight. The cabbie did not reply.

After moments of confused consideration, little balloons of concern began to pop one after another in his mind. It was with one of these balloons of disrupted thoughts, a dreadful question spread its huge blanket wings: What if they were lost?

"Excuse me...please...are you really sure we are on—" Deepak stopped in mid-sentence. The car was slowing down. With a grim feeling, he looked up. It was there, the end of the road. The rest of the road as if snatched apart from the other part of itself. Before Deepak could make a rational thought out of the happening events; the cabbie gave out what seemed like a wheezing gasp. His hands found the gear, put it into reverse and pushed the gas. The car rushed backwards.

Deepak might not have believed it earlier, but the death of his son was actually at the back of his mind right now. He was stuck in a moment...which might as well turn out to be a situation too confusing and...well, direful to think about anything else. His breaths were getting shallow and his heart was quickening it's beat.

After few moments lost in haste, the cabbie's practiced eye found another turn, on the right this time and took it without second thought. He sped up on this road now.

Deepak lost his patience, "WILL YOU BOTHER TO TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!" he yelled. It was fear behind the anger. Fear was exactly what it was. But it would be shameful for a man to show up his...fears. To show up he was getting scared of darkness like a pitiful little toddler crying after a nightmare.