She stood there, looking closely,as the darkness unfolded. She was so so overwhelmed with joy of a future she yearned so long for. No fear of a vapid future, running in a boulevard of dreams and hopes on a pavement paved with transient desires. The angels, yes the ones with halo and white wings of a swan, were flying above her, one for each wish she made, she had yearned for.
A land of a billion lights , a lake gleaming mercilessly under the not–pock-marked moon such that it could as well be the silver wheel of Arianrhod (the stupid girl liked mythologies). Oh, but how could she think of all this before thinking of the cause, the cause of her wonderland. Yes the cause had legs, it was running away from her, just out of her reach, tempting her to chase, and never reach. The cause had close-cropped hair, yet appreciably thick, jet black,she liked to run her fingers in them, just like they used to show in movies and novels. The cause had a smile, a smile so dangerous it was a constant threat to her rib-cage , she could feel her heart thumping and leaping and bursting like one seriously big popcorn in a not-so-proportionally-big pressure cooker. The eyes, oh my god ( Aphrodite specifically ), were so, so,….
And he stopped abruptly. She put her heel-brakes down too, waiting for him to now run back to her and embrace her in his well-toned arms. Instead he started waving his left hand, she interpreted as a goodbye, he didn’t turn back, didn’t faced her, head tilted to his left, almost mocking her. She kept staring at him, too bewildered to understand what is he doing, what she has to make of this? An angel, the bulkiest and apparently the leader, charged down the air and slammed the side of his celtic harp against the back of her head. She was too dazed, too confused to even try to cook some meaning of the incident, she just fell on the lush-green grass, blood dripping and trickling down the side of her neck, she didn’t cared to struggle to remain conscious, she eased into blackout, hoping to be transferred to wonderland-2.
Next she knew, she stood there, looking closely, as the darkness unfolded.
And she woke up..
Her pupils ached and constrained as they were exposed to a sudden bright light after pitch-black darkness.She started to analyse the ambience. Several wires and tubes were connected to her, the one proximal to her supine wrist was called an I.V. she knew. An effort to rotate her neck sent a lightning jolt of pain down her skull and spine.Next she started registering the voices, a distorted chaos of sound waves initially , it was after a few minutes that she could interpret the words out of voices. One of the voice was calling her, and she concentrated all her dwindling consciousness to listen and to respond.
“… listen me? Can you hear me? Blink twice if you can please.”
She did.
“ Inspector , You can now talk to her, try not to strain her”
Inspector Kishore Chaubey,a small man only by the physique, was as much arrogant as his paan doses per day, and one look at his small yet overly-ripe–potato-face with permanent flexed bushy eyebrows giving luxury level shade to his small cunning eyes was a substantial measure of both his arrogance and Paan doses. His teeth could as well be the dental substitute of StoneHenge, stones tiled with glossy plaques courtesy of exposure to tobacco since time immemorial.
“ So, young lady, you know where you are?”
“Um, a hospital I think”
“Do you know where you will be?”
Home. It came to her, although she faced immense difficulty to try to picture her home and her parents, home is where she should be,with her parents.But she had the instinct feeling that home is not the answer. Neither it is the answer to where she would be nor to where she wanted. But she decided to go with it.
“I should be at my home. The hospital will treat me and then I will be sent home, my mom and my dad will come and take me home. No! why would they come,they must be already here, maybe on the other side of the door, they..”
“ Your parents are not here, young lady. You gave half the correct answer, the hospital will treat you, that is what they are paid for. Now, the other half, you will not be at your home, you should have been, but it’s too late now.Let me inform you that you have been arrested for attempting to murder Suveen Bhadoria by adulterating his sandwich with kaner.
Suveen Bhadoria. The name rattled in her mind, she knows that she knows the name, her brain trying to fit the jigsaw puzzle unsuccessfully.
“But I don’t remem.. Can you please let me talk to my parents, I have no idea about all this. Plus how did I landed up here?”
“You better talk of this with your parents. My job was to keep an eye on you till you gained consciousness and inform you of the charges on you and arrest. It would be wise of you if you don’t try any sort of escape. You failed once , I hope you wouldn’t dare to risk that again.”
Murder.Poisoning.Escape.Suveen. It all made no sense to her. Did she tried to poison this Suveen and escaped? Was this injury due to an escape trial?She avoided anymore questions with inspector, getting anymore from him was as much probable as water on mars. She toyed with the idea of bashing her injured skull against something hard to help solve this mystery, but her injury forbid her to do that too.
The door opened and closed and opened again.A tall man of about 6 feet , skinny with a 99% bald scalp, large yet sad eyes, a small pointed nose and a bushy moustache entered.Dressed in a creamy white but unironed shirt, brown pants and black shoes, he radiated sadness yet kept up a stern face .He took the same chair the inspector had taken.
“ How are you feeling?”
She almost had uttered’ Who are you?’Father! He is your father, stupid girl!It took her seconds to recognise but she did.
“ I am hurt, Father. My head aches a lot and I can’t move my neck without that sharp pain stabbing in the back of my head that.Father tell me why am I here.Who attacked me? Why did the inspector said I am under arrest? Who is Suveen? Why would I poison someone? You know as well as I do that I would never commit such a crime.Where is Mom?Why did…”
“ Hushh child.” He was facing a hard battle keeping his face a stern, dead mask, yet he continued” Don’t burden my senescent brain with a volley of questions. Firstly, you have made an error. I am no longer your father, my wife is no longer your mother.After what you have committed..”
“WHY? I haven’t done anything! I would never do such a thing! You can’t just … father,FATHER! I can’t hear anything! I can’t hear anything!Why am not hearing anything? HELP ME! HELP!Help me, Help..Me..Please…Do…Something. ”
She began losing her consciousness after her ears, the only thing she felt was a sudden injection of fluid through a tube connecting just behind her wrist.She faded into a peaceful soothing abyss.
She dreamt of her wonderland again.Same dream, same ambience,same aura, same cause, same guy. This time she knew who was he.Suveen Bhadoria. She was her khaleesi,he was her sun and stars. The guy she escaped with, not from.The guy she loved, not poisoned. This revelation was supposed to ease her dream, her confusion. Instead it intensified it.She couldn’t bear his hand waving at her. She screamed “ Please NO! Don’t leave me!.” Unfortunately she forgot the demonic angel and got slammed again.However, this time she strived for her consciousness, crawling for him and gasping for breath. Nonetheless, She blacked out.
It was after two hours that she found herself back in her hospital bed, and her father at same seat.
“Listen child, I am here only to pay for the treatment and to resolve this matter. What is done cannot be undone. Either we can agree to clear the air or we both will die with this mystery as and when God wishes. So,for just once in your ungrateful life, stay calm and talk like a grown up and responsible woman .”
This time she was ready.She didn’t remember everything but now she knew Suveen.
“Yes.” Father.
“ So, do you remember Suveen?”
“ I loved him, he was my everything.”
You disappoint me child, He thought.” Good. Were your parents happy with this?”
“No”.
“Were his parents?”
“No”
“Why?”
Because you have never cared for what your daughter wants, only for what is good for your business , she wanted to scream.” ‘cause you and his dad were business rivals.”
And still you never thought of your father, your family, your daily bread source,he thought angrily.He couldn’t bear the fact that her daughter, through one disgusting love and marriage, was going to hand over my business and all my spondulicks, my hard work to that pitiful creature.You turned our family life into a pathetic indian tv serial.
“ And what did you do when this marriage was refused?”
I did what my heart wanted. I did what you can never understand ,Father.” I eloped with him”
“Nice.” He said,struggling hard not to let his rage surface.” So far, you are on track.Now the question which I fail to find an answer to, why did you poisoned Suveen?”
“ I didn’t do anything, I wouldn’t poison the one I love.”
“Well then, I guess this is farewell.We will die with this mystery and this mystery dies with us.”
NO Father. This is not going to end this way.“ Hey! Aren’t you going to get me out of jail? Would you let your daughter rot in the prison? You may have discarded me, but you love your business. Wouldn’t it be a harm to your business if the public knows about me?”
She was making it really hard for him to keep the mask. He took a few deep breaths, ingested two pills of enalaprilat, grabbed a stool from a corner and sat next to her.
“ You would have loved it. Tricking your father to fulfil your greeds. I hoped to avoid this but you won’t let me, so listen. The jail is where you belong, the poisoning is undeniable, you forgot, but you did it.Moreover the jail is the safest place for you.Your beloved’s father has a brother and he has guns working for him.He has promised that if you don’t pay for your crimes in jail, he will take care of justice his way.Even if I could somehow get you out ,How long will your old man be able to protect you, huh? One misstep and you would be reported dead out in the streets.As for your beloved himself, he may have loved you, he may have willfully eloped with you, but do you know what he loves more than you? His life.”
With this, He raised from the stool, coughed a little, turned around and walked away. He never looked back at her.If he had, he would have found that her daughter wasn’t expecting him to do so.She was staring at the empty stool, searching her answers in that piece of plastic.
She had another question, ‘ who hit her’? But now that she knew what happened, she didn’t cared for he assaulter.She was smiling. A creepy smirk ran on her face. She found one joy, the joy of knowing more than everyone else.
Father, you think you know everything , is it? Well, you do not know one thing. The sandwich was poisoned,I poisoned it, I did it,but you failed to know the targets. Suveen was not the only target of the poison. I was too. We were going to share the sandwich, and with it,the poison. You think only you knew of the gunmen? I knew it too. I knew that if they had found us, they would have killed us, and our love.We couldn’t hide from them for long, but we could make our love immortal. The praises of our infinite love would be sung for thousand of years.The poison was our ticket to the wonderland minus that demonic angel. But that blow to the back of my head, that changed everything. That blow took some of my memory, all of my dreams, some of my freedom and all of my love.
Dreams are beautiful, they are a source of infinite joy. But dreams have a cost, a big one. I, paid it with iron and gold, I paid it with everything I could. And now , when I gave everything, I am left with nothing but my dreams.And I will never regret for it.
She grabbed her MP3 player( thanks father for the last time), she liked 30 seconds to Mars and she knew the song to play.
“Bright Lights,Big Cities,
She dreams of Love
Bright Lights , Big Cities,
He lives, to run.”
Then she turned around,lie sideways, taking care of her neck and slept the most peaceful sleep of her lifetime.
–END–
