Family Short Story – The death of the roots…
Photo credit: AcrylicArtist from morguefile.com
“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?”
“Yes” I gently replied.
“Think twice Rukmini. A few years down the line you might just want to come back home but there might be no home for you to return” , Raheef- with concern beaming in his bespectacled eyes- said.
“No Raheef I do not want to think over it again. I’ve thought about it enough……spent sleepless nights pondering over this very idea….scrutinizing endless possibilities….but not anymore. This needs to be inked and done for ever after. Hand me the papers. I do not want any more delays.”
Raheef simply sighed, handed me the papers and there I inked my impression as an eerie silence filled the room and the faint candlelight flickered away in the corner. It was done…..after a vendetta that ruined my entire ancestry, scarred my family, I had finally put the reason to rest. The clock struck twelve. How ironical! The day it started was heralded by this very wall clock and today it ticks away…..unmindful of an epoch of my memory which I forcefully tried to erase. As I walked out I blew out the candle.
“Fire” I thought to myself. I just killed my roots. I am a murderer…
April 1998.
A bright spring day. The scent of the “kopou phool” lent its sweet fragrance to the spring air as the distant drumming of the “dhul” and the song of the migrating “kuli” (cuckoo) reverberated in the Rongali Bihu atmosphere, serenading the very senses of the young and the old of Kopahtuli Tea Estate. The year was even special as I was getting married within a fortnight and the preparations for the impending wedding was on in full swing. It was all perfect. Dhruba was the Deputy Commissioner of Hailakandi and I was then working as the Additional SP of Rongia. We had met during our training period in Dehradun and our families decided we can best tie the knot. It was like a fairytale. But little did I know that in a shroud of fairytale comes to my life a period where blood shall stain my soul never to be completely erased ever.
It was the day of my wedding. There was a gleeful cacophony enveloping the Baruah household as their firstborn was getting married on this very day. The venue selected was my ancestral house in Kopahtuli. Suddenly amidst the cheerful sound of chattering womenfolk there was a loud blood curdling scream from just outside the house. Somebody screamed…..”he’s killing them….he’s killing them….”
I could hear panicky cries from the “mandap”-the area where I would have taken the vows during the latter half of the day…and then the door of my room suddenly banged open…I stared at him in blatant dismay and there he was- my uncle- wielding his licensed gun at me. He pulled the trigger and painted my white bridal trousseau in a bright hue of red. He shot me.
The next thing I remember was staring at the moss green ceiling of a local nursing home. A dozen heads peering over me. I was dazed. I was confused. I wanted to sit up but a shearing pain shot up my back and I whimpered and lay back again. Somebody said I was lucky enough to have being shot in the guts alone. Though my father was not that lucky. My father was dead…..his brother killed him. They are trying him in the court. May be he’ll get capital punishment. I passed out again.
The Kopahtuli Tea Estate was owned by our family for around 200 years. After the death of my grandfather the shares had gone into the hands of my father and his two brothers. Everything worked fine with them but after the death of my grandmother the beast of rivalry started creeping among the Baruah brothers. Our ancestral house was one thing in my grandmother’s will which began the very vendetta that was set to destroy the family. It stated that the house shall go to the eldest grandchild of the family on the day of her wedding as a wedding present and so shall the Einstein’s pendulum-a rare artefact which would fetch millions in the international market. But as tricky as my grandmother was she wanted to surprise me on my wedding day as well! The will was not to be disclosed earlier than this. But little did she know her harmless intention would one day destroy everything I thought was mine.
Somehow my elder uncle got to know about the will before it was to be officially disclosed. Always a precarious man he was always eyeing the ancestral property with an intention not very noble. The bungalow and the clock would have been sold to fetch millions in the international market. Once he came to know about the will’s condition all hell broke loose. He set out to finish the very source which might come in his way of earning what he thought was rightfully his. And not satisfied with just shedding the blood f his kin he set out to ruin the daily bread of our family. The part of the factory which belonged to my father was burnt…..we were broke….fire destroyed us…..fire destroyed the lives many who worked for us….life was not the same again.
A year later I went up to my lawyer Raheef and asked him if I could donate the house to the local old age home as it is. I did not want to take back any memorabilia. The ghosts of the past need not hunt me. I never married Dhruba….I did not want another episode of blood letting….I let my soul writhe within me….my roots were murdered…..I killed them…….
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