Original Konkani Story:
Parjatam… Parjatam…
Author: Meena Kakodkar
Translator: Aditi Budkuley
Shashi knows what is wrong with him. He feels it in his mother’s touch…can see it in the eyes of his brother and father. Yet they all try to keep it from him; and because they do so, Shashi has to hide the fact that he knows it all. Such a game of hide-n-seek!
Everyone keeps telling him, “You’ll get well soon.”
Then, Shashi has to keep it up too and say, “Once I get well, I’ll get back to college. Play cricket. Act in plays. And then, no one but no one – should try and stop me. Hollow dreams for the future! But when there is no future how can there be dreams? Yet, Shashi has to paint them, just to lead his folks on…
Often people drop in to see him. They ask him, “How’re you feeling? Doing Fine?”
As they talk to him the smile they bring to their lips, fails to reach their eyes. It freezes on their lips. Of late, Shashi has got quite used to seeing such frozen smiles. Shashi wishes that this smile should just melt away into a deluge and gush forth from the eyes. But nobody lets this flood into his room. No one sheds so much as a tear in his presence. Not even his mother. And so, Shashi also does not weep in their presence. Only in the dark of the night, he cries…burying his face hard into the pillow. Actually, even at night he is not alone. His mummy, daddy or bhaiya – one or the other is always by his side. But worn out and exhausted, they eventually fall asleep…that’s when Shashi lets his tears flow freely. Drunk with those tears, the night grows even darker…
Many a times, he feels like nuzzling deep into his mummy’s embrace, mingling his tears into hers, flinging away that mask of a fake smile and actually crying his heart out. ‘But then Mummy would realize that I’ve known it all along and her grief would drive her mad. As it is, she is already so depressed…how can I add to her sorrows further?’ With these thoughts, Shashi suffers alone keeping mum – burying his sorrow deep into his heart…keeping the bloom of a smile intact on his lips…
Mummy, too, wears a smile when she’s around Shashi. Yet, Shashi can sense that the tear remains carefully tucked away behind her eyelids. That tear hangs heavy on his heart. And, while he smothers under this burden of grief, Shashi ensures that his tears do not weigh on his mother’s tender heart. Concealing his own pain, he smiles. The same frozen smile! A smile that refuses to reach up to his eyes. But even without being expressed, mummy understands his restlessness. Embracing him close, she caresses him. She forces a few words of courage from her lips…hollow courage…when the ground under her very feet has given way, Shashi becomes helpless as he is flung into a coastless whirlpool of confusing thoughts all alone. Shashi feels, even the pitch dark would feel a little less black if there be someone for company. A companion…while talking to whom, one wouldn’t need to force a smile. There would be no need to wear false masks and put up an act. Neither would there be any need to hold back the tears. A companion from whom… there’d be no need to hide a thing… And then, from these very thoughts appears Nisha…
Who Nisha?
Just a someone…
Someone who sets the darkness ablaze to make light. One who sows to sprout tiny stars… tends to them to grow them into trees and on seeing lamps of fireflies lighting up on them, blooming up in excitement herself, saying stars have blossomed… Nisha does not need particulars of time and occasion to come to Shashi. Whenever Shashi longs for her to come, she comes!
When Shashi experiences intolerable pain… when he tosses sleeplessly nights on end… when he is terrified by the thought of the dousing flame of his life… as also during some of those rare moments of joy that come his way, then too…
Then she comes. To make the pitch dark of the night a little less black, she comes. She doesn’t need to wear any mask like the others… for Nisha knows, that Shashi is aware of what is ailing him. But that is not the case with mummy, daddy and bhaiya… Seeing Shashi’s decline, they die a thousand deaths daily… but in Shashi’s presence they wear their masks. Moreover, Shashi knows only too well, it is their love for him that makes them do so…
On returning from the office, daddy comes straight to Shashi’s room. He chats with Shashi about the cricketing anecdotes of his time only because Shashi likes it… Who got a wicket and how, who took which catch, he narrates it all with a flair. But amidst it all, while looking at Shashi, daddy is lost to the world around him. And then, Eknath Solkar becomes Eknath Wadekar and Ajit Wadekar – Ajit Solkar. Shashi, however, does not bring it to daddy’s notice. He knows why this happens with daddy. Daddy is aware that my wicket can trounce any moment. And so he seems distracted… Yet Shashi can do nothing to lighten his father’s anguish… And mummy? How does she balance on this tight rope walk? How can she retain that smile? And just how does she hide away her tears…?
Nisha says,“It is drinking mummy’s tears that the clouds have grown so heavy. It is no wonder the rains come in heavy, shower after shower!”
Shashi’s bhaiya is a doctor. How Shashi wishes he could at least bare his heart to his brother. When Bhaiya comes, he quietly ruffles Shashi’s hair. Examines him. Then says, “There’s an improvement over yesterday.”
Pointlessly!
Shashi knows that with each passing day the flame of his life is growing feebler. But Bhaiya wants to keep up his hopes. Shashi understands what anguish Bhaiya must suffer to utter those words. It is not easy to smile even as one’s younger brother is dying slowly moment by moment, while he laments his helplessness despite being a doctor.
And so, even with Bhaiya, Shashi doesn’t open his heart.
There is a Parijat (coral jasmine) tree outside Shashi’s room. It blossoms with loads of Parijat flowers. The window in the room is always shut. Had it been open, there would’ve been flowers strewn on Shashi’s bed too, with the breeze. Mummy brings a handful of Parijat flowers to Shashi’s room. “Mummy, these Parijat flowers are so lovely… just like you…”
Mummy smiles…
“Lovely, beautiful, fragrant too…”
Mummy embraces him and gently plants a kiss on his forehead. As he rests his head on her bosom and shuts his eyes, Shashi thinks in his mind,…
‘Lovely, beautiful, fragrant… Yet one with an injured stalk, blood-soaked… blood red… just like mummy’s heart!…
But who looks at the stalk?
For everyone holds the stalk to look at the flower. So how will the stalk be seen…?
-Mummy is like the Parijat flower…
-Daddy too is like Parijat…
-And so is Bhaiya…
They all keep hiding this stalk from Shashi. But Shashi is not one to admire a Parijat by holding its stalk… he looks at them while placing them upside down on his palm… the palm seems bright red… Looking at those palms mummy laughs…
“You don’t look at flowers upside down, silly!”
“Why not?”
“What is in the stalk?”
In lieu of a reply, Shashi’s query gets a counter question from mummy. Of late, this keeps happening.
Shashi’s questions don’t get proper answers. Shashi repeats his question to Nisha
“What is in the stalk?”
( To be continued…)
