What is the question? │✔

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"Then?"

The uninterested clouds seemed to be asking him, trying to mask their curiosity. And he? He was exhausted but the night was young. He had only a couple of hours to relieve himself of the burden. Another sip of his beauty and then he let out a lifeless chuckle.

"The four of us destroyed our own lives, didn't we?"

He had no one to reply to his question. Empty sky and weightless air.

The lady in the photo had accidentally come across her husband's wrongdoings. Day and night Paakhi pondered on the fact of what was she lacking. She had tried to be the perfection of their house. But that's where she left the real 'Paakhi' behind. She must've been a nice person too, mused Masterji.

Amrita had always spoken highly of her. And it was very rare that she would appreciate a person's goodness without knowing them thoroughly. The only difference between both of them was perhaps that Paakhi was older and more mature as compared to his wife.

In the end, impulsiveness took over her sensibility.

Three dead and one a living dead.

She had not even thought of her own son before she did that. Her three year old who had his whole life ahead. She was selfish. Very selfish. But was it right to expect a person to be selfless all the time? No, it was not.

He could remember the little boy about whom his wife used to gush about, she was his teacher after all. How his cute swollen cheeks would puff up while gracing everyone with a radiant smile. In Amrita's words, he was the bundle of cheerfulness on this miserable planet.

Eventually, he came to know how his wife was never wrong.

The boy had a name.

Veer.

The only son of the Mukherjee's.

Indroneel's meaning to life.

The three-year-old who was scared and locked up inside his room. Who did he have? No one. His father and mother both dead. And somewhere his wife was responsible for it. Forget her, his negligence after knowing of her affair made him equally responsible as well.

The four of them had not only ruined their own lives. But that of an innocent too.

And that is how he took the kid along with him. He had decided. This was not the childhood that the boy deserves. That rainy night, after waiting for hours he caught a rickshaw and pulled the boy along with him. And the rickshaw stopped only on reaching the other end of the city.

Slow and steady, he found himself a small, quiet job. He could've been a professor in the city college. But that would not have led the people to call him 'Masterji', would it? And the fondness each person puts behind that word, unintentionally made him smile each day.

One such person was Devi. She was very fond of him and the feelings were mutual for him as well. But that moment when he realized what could happen if she blurted out his past, he knew he couldn't take that risk. For it was not himself he was worried about.

Nor was it saving the dignity of his dead wife.

There existed a person in this world whom he had learned to love more than himself. The platonic, selfless love.

Veer.

And to say that he loved him more than Amrita could only mean one thing. For the sake of his kid's happiness, he could do anything. Let it be shushing down a person forever by means of death.

In fact, he had requested for those photographs from that old cook of Aashiyana Manor — Jawhara — so that he could show them to Veer and try to tell him the truth. Why he couldn't officially become his guardian as it was he himself who was responsible for him being an orphan. Alas! All plans fell down the drain.

Sometimes.

Sometimes, it's better to shape the truth into what you believe is true. At least for the sake of one's sanity.

He picked up those photographs, giving them a last glance. A hesitant tear at first and then his hands were in motion. Shredding it into pieces, he gathered it up and threw it inside the half-filled Old Monk. The paper pieces drenched in the rum, settled on the floor of the bottle, dead.

There goes the only evidence. There it goes.

Staring towards the sky, she let out a deep sigh. 'Let us hope at least the boy is happy'  pleaded the city, not wanting the sacrifices to go in vain.