The Gift

She sat in the café in the airport staring out of the window- but actually seeing nothing. Her heart was still throbbing fast and she could not hold the coffee mug steadily.  She took a look at the watch-hidden beneath her long sleeve; in another 3 hours, she would be flying off to Kolkata and from there to Bagdogra in the North Bengal and from there to a secret destination towards the hills in the North. She still relived every moment of yesterday night and an internal shuddering dazed her. But the extreme fear emboldened her also. She has no other option left. She will have to find out – the root of a brutal, ghastly secret furtively nurtured in some remote corner up there.

She wished sincerely if she had a sibling or a cousin to support her in this moment of crisis and a shoulder to lean on. After her parent’s death , Priti had fought this big world on her own. Any success or failure in her academics, career or life  – she had never known the joy of sharing it with near and dear ones and that had made her resilient ,more than she was supposed to be. Her parents , the small hometown near Dhanbad,Bihar – all had become  distant memories to her -vague like a dream. And then one day Arun came to her life. Arun -the philosophical type student of Delhi University brought the freshness of rain and cloud in her dry Delhi life. She clung to him like a thirsty soul does to a pitch of water. They started living together in a small Connaught place apartment and nothing seemed to be missing in their small world.

But family ties seemed not to be meant for Priti. She could never imagine that Arun would accept the post of bio-technologist in a Sikkim based Pharmaceutical company and plan to leave Delhi. She had moved forward in her life from to a small town  to the capital city to urbanize her life and there was Arun  ;trying to drag her back to those gloomy days of her childhood -clouded by the smoke of dung-cakes burning on the mud-oven.

When she argued and persuaded Arun to take some other bio-technologist job in the any metro city, Arun seemed to be astonished at her irrational reluctance in leaving Delhi.

He said ‘ Priti, being brought up in a city where I could never see the milky way in the night sky ,I have always dreamed to live in place far away from this madding crowd , noise and dust. Now that I have got a chance to live a better life in a hill town- a  small cottage, a balcony looking at the white peaks , fresh air, easy, simple life style .I can’t let it go’ .

Priti had violently retorted ‘ You have no idea how easy life is there. Your fantasies about small hill town will be swept away by cruel reality. You know-my father and mother had died without a proper treatment in that rural home of ours because they were too reluctant to leave behind their small town mentalities and thus leaving me alone to fight this big dirty dingy world on my own. Sorry, I can never fall back into those loops again.’

Arun tried many other reasons and logic with Priti but she seemed to be standing beyond an impenetrable wall of obstinacy and also to Priti’s astonishment, the soft nature guy Arun stood his ground and Priti could not win with her sneers and tears. The parted with a note to meet with each other every two months- but that did never happen.

AfterArun went there, he had called her up but did not disclose the whereabouts of his new incumbent. He said that he would be part of a scientific R&D project team that was working to bring a groundbreaking new genre of bio-chemical drug to reality and it was being conducted under the cover of super secrecy. In the future calls, Priti sensed a change in Arun’s tone and attitude towards her and she learnt that she was no more the first priority of Arun’s life. She was losing her sway over Arun ; she could feel. The dwindling frequency of phone calls would put a stamp on her belief and she accepted that she was losing him. Then the phone calls stopped altogether and forever.

After her parent’s death, she had lost the essence of being in a family and on Arun’s fugitive exclusion from her life, she lost it forever. However, selling their small cozy flat, she moved into a spacious apartment in CR park; the big empty rooms, hall accentuating the void in her life. But life moved on. Her quiescent love and thirst for life kept her going and that was paid in terms of promotion in job and all sorts of materialistic pleasures accumulated around her. She dissolved herself completely into the pleasure of having a big flat, a car, a high paying job, glamourous friend circle, parties, parlors, spa etc. Then it happened one day.

One lazy Sunday morning, Priti sat sipping coffee in her balcony as the doorbell rang. She opened the door to find a courier service boy standing to deliver a parcel. She thought for a while. She was not expecting anything to arrive from any online shopping marts; neither she had anyone to send her a surprise gift. She could not fathom what could be inside that medium sized light weight carton. There was an envelope attached to the box with her name on it. Little credulous , she accepted the delivery and took out the white envelope from the box and torn it open. It was a typed official letter and at the bottom of which the date mentioned was of 2 months back.

Suddenly her eyes became glued to one word at the bottom of the letter and her heart skipped a beat. This letter was from some Zensedong Pharma Pvt. Ltd, North Sikkim. For the next 30 minutes she read the letter for many times as if to alter the truth what was written there in the brownish white A4 paper. It was to inform that  Mr Arun K Prsasad had died of some critical disease during his tenure as a senior bio-chemist in the R&D lab of Zensedong Pharma Pvt. Ltd 2 months ago. It was his dying wish to deliver the subjected package to his only kin Priti Sharma of Delhi on his death, along with the information of his death. It did not sink in. Priti held the letter between her fingertips and stared at it as if her gaze would turn it into ashes.

How long she was there like that she could not remember but the sound of calling bell ,woke her up. She went up and opened the door to let in her maid and again came back to the sofa where she was sitting. She tried to understand her present state of mind . No tears ran down her cheek , it was burning in an overwhelming anger. So it happened again. Her parents, Arun –all cheated her. Unlike her parents, Arun was never removed to an obscurity in her mind but something had changed in the 3 long years of estrangement. The chord of emotion had snapped in and the feeling of love and fondness was replaced by a sense of betrayal and decadence. Arun was selfish and so he had left her for the perusal of his own pleasures and never looked back at her and burnt the bridge he had gone through . And now that he is dead- she could never languish her anger, take the revenge on the man who had dumped her into a painful self-banishment.

After a day or two , finally Priti gathered herself . She was somber but composed. She took out a knife to tear open the parcel to see Arun’s dying gift to her. After removing the three layers of packing, finally an opaque plastic box came out with strange nodules protruding out of its surface. There was a metal lid on its surface which instantly clicked open on Priti’s touch. A small leafy shrub popped out its head. It was planted in an enclosed cube shaped container and an unknown smell wafted into the room as she opened it.

‘How did this plant survived green after being packed for two months??’ Priti wondered and then she speculated about the possibility of some medicinal property of this strange container that carried the plant. ‘So this was the gift Arun took pains to send to me! What does this signify? The missing green in my life trapped in this concrete world? Or does this plant has some bio-chemical extraordinary medicinal property that Arun expected to me to discover?’

Priti fumed and for an instant Priti thought of throwing it away but as the soft leafy branches of the shrub brushed off her fingers, a sudden surge of emotion took over her. After all these years , those happy feathery days with Arun rushed back to her. She remembered how Arun would hold her hands inside his soft palm while crossing the roads, how he waited outside her college gates everyday with a smiling face, how he would mess up with experimental dishes on  his Sunday cooking stints and then would innocently smile. How could Arun leave her behind after all these gamut of memories they had created together? The hard lines in Priti’s face softened; she placed the tub of the plant in her balcony.

After few hectic office days, next Sunday Priti remembered that she had not watered the plant till its arrival. But the root of the plant was tightly packed inside the plastic tub and it was not visible from outside. She had never been into gardening and all these stuffs so Priti felt a little confused about how to put the manure or water the root of this plant. There must be some intrinsic mechanism of the content inside the tub which had kept the plant alive for so many days without external water, oxygen or light. Some path breaking invention of Arun & Co. in the field of Genetics?  Priti touched the small velvety leaves of the plant and thousands of questions buoyed up in her mind. She never had any interest in plants,gardening etc – ‘Why would Arun send me a plant which even does not bear any flower ? Why didn’t himself write any note explaining his disappearance or may be apologizing ?’

The plant had some tentacle like creepers -some of which had already attached themselves to the grills of the balcony. Suddenly Priti jolted up to realize that one such creeper had wrapped itself around her wrist as if holding her hand in some request. She drew back her hand in an instantaneous repulsive sweep. An unknown chill went down her spine. ‘Is this some kind of carnivorous plant found in the jungle of Africa or Brazil?’ She thought to herself – an uneasiness about something spread across her mind- but she could not immediately identify what it was. It might have been some prank by Arun to scare her- might be he was not dead at all. Playing all these games behind the hem to surprise Priti or might be he had got some ulterior motive?

Later that day, she went to a friend’s house party and sat quietly in one corner recapping the incident in her mind. She had touched the plant and it responded back by holding her hand and  tying it with its tentacles.  And then she realized to her horror the cause of her revulsion at the plant’s grip. It had a touch of human flesh! Priti could not share this incident with any of her friend. People would think that she had gone crazy out of the frustration of living alone even at this age. Often many would hint at such things. No! She would not let anyone pass sarcastic remarks about her life . All her life she had handled her troubles alone – and would do so in that coming days too. That night she came back drunk- could not clearly think, her mind fogged by the effect of some very good wine and immediately fell down to sleep in her cozy bed.

She was evidently dreaming. Standing in the balcony of a small white cottage, she was looking at the white peaks in front of her. In spite of the chilled mountain air, she was sweating profusely. Below the balcony was a bottomless pit. Then Arun came out into the balcony from a door behind her. He pressed his hand in her forehead – ‘Why are you sweating so much, honey?’ – he said.

Priti felt  a cold touch in her head and looked into his eyes; the lifeless eyes of a dead fish. Suddenly Arun grimaced his face and it contorted into a demoniac visage. Arun now put his hand around her neck and increased the pressure. Priti tried to yell  –‘ What are you doing Arun? Why??’. But her voice was choking as her lungs were sucked out of air.

Priti jumped up on her bed . She was out of the nightmare but the breathlessness was still choking her. She extended her hand to find the switch of the bed side lamp. She tried to look for a glass of water in the vapory light of the lamp. As she sat up on the bed her feet touched something. She stretched her eyes to clear the vision and then her blood curdled in horror. The plant gifted by Arun, was on her bed . Who put it there? Not her- the maid? The plant was there stretching its two sturdy tentacles towards her like two stretch arms of a human being. It has grown double overnight.

Priti would have thought it to be the continuation of her bad dream unless she had felt the pressure again around her throat and neck.  That fleshy cold touch! An involuntary gasp came out of her mouth ‘ Awk… Arun!’ The same soft yet firm grip on her throat! The plant had by that time inched closer to her and its tentacles were around her neck. The enclosed tub it contained must have wheels beneath. Then the  plant tried to bind her with all its creepers into a breathless hug. Plant or what it was?

She was living a nightmare; as if by some black magic , the life force of Arun had entered  into this creature and its now aiming at Priti and she sat like a hypnotized deer in front of an Anaconda .She was  slowly losing her sense and her eyes saw an endless darkness. Amidst the stiffing numbness, suddenly Priti’s mind cleared and she lunged for the knife she always kept for self-defense in the drawer of the bed-side table. The plant could sense the aggression in Priti’s gesture, it forwarded another tentacle to grip her wrist. She shook it off with a slicing motion of her hand and took out the knife. With a quick drive , she held one tentacle in her hand and cut off its fleshy stem .

Then stranger thing happened. A dark dense liquid trickled down the stem and along with came a pining sharp noise deafening Priti’s ear. ‘Of-course! Blood .’ Priti did not lose another second to untie her from the tentacles and in the weakened moment of the creature, gathering speed she jumped to the other corner of the room where a metal rod had been kept for her self–defense.  The plant had bent down as if in an effort to minimize the pain from the cut.

Priti waited for its next move with the rod held steady in her hand. Infinite time seemed to have passed. The plant remained transfixed in a doubled up posture. Slowly it started again spreading its branches ; as if unfolding its aggression posture. Priti was not sure if she heard a howl or it was in her mind only but the suddenly it pounced towards her. She hit the tub now with all her strength. Again and again and again – nonstop. ‘No, No, No! Arun, you can’t do this to me. You can not !’.

She went on hitting the cuboid until it became twisted into a clump. Apparently all ended then. The lifeless mound of dead branches and leaves laid knocked out on the floor. Dark blood smeared the floor. The force of attack had separated the plant from the tub which had creaked open.  Something red and dark was there inside it. Priti hit it once again to break the tub completely and the thing inside came out .

Aghast with extreme shock and tiredness, Priti took the stuff in her hand. In spite of never having any interest in biology, Priti recognized what it was and leapt up in shock. The curvy shape of a human heart stood out clearly on her palm, it was pulsating faintly and then after 2-3 beats, it stopped –completely.

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