[Ramesh_Rocky]

breville1:



Yes, divorce is certainly a way of redemption for her guilt. Being upfront about the divorce frees Ramesh from the difficulty of believing that she has learnt her lesson and won't be unfaithful again. Normally, divorcing her for her wanton actions (no other way to describe her actions) is the easy route. Ultimately people who do this sort of stuff end up destroying themselves and all around them. She proposes Preeti as an alternative partner, knowing that there is something brewing there.

But keeping the baby just doesn't make sense to me - obviously I'm not a woman so I can't appreciate what it means and I was looking for a happy ending.
However, it must be clear that keeping the baby is a reminder of what she did. Knowing this, Kajol knew that Ramesh would not agree (he wanted an abortion as a part way to remove the memory of the event) and would settle for the divorce more easily. Thus, Kajol has sentenced herself and freed Ramesh.....and perhaps Riz would make the perfect "surrogate father" for the illegitimate baby???. I ask, why did she have to tell Riz all about it?? She should have dealt with it with her own husband first. No wonder she was a PhD candidate!!

[Ramesh_Rocky]

bitchslayer:

May be you are right. She took the easy way out without sacrificing the baby but instead sacrificing her marriage. She definitely needs treatment with a psychologist

I now think she chose this way because she can't change her ways so she better leave him.
And as you said by considering Riz as a surrogate father also makes her current life style more easier. She can do whatever she wants doesn't want to change her ways of infidelity and Riz will be there for her.

But still I want to believe there is HOPE for the Ramesh Kajol family. Do a paternity test, make sure if Ramesh is the father or not, if not she sacrifice the baby or if it's his live a happy life together with the child.her current decision is pretty premature and needs rethinking.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

We are always right – aren’t we? Even when we are wrong, we think we are right – or else we couldn’t live with the contradiction. Even when life has given us enough lessons; we still cry ourselves hoarse about the unfairness or it – isn’t it?

I was getting drawn into the whirlpool of thoughts. For it had been five years – five long years since the incident at Kolkata – just before I had left for the US – totally leaving behind the memories that brought nothing but pain – and pursuing my mediocre American dream.

But first things first, I am getting ahead of myself.

I am now AVP, without a designated portfolio with HK Corp Inc. I look after strategic innovations. They call me ‘brains’ – to my face sometimes – I don’t give a damn. A month back, a mail had arrived in my inbox from Kajol.

“Glad to get your email address from Preeti, who had come over to invite us for her sister’s wedding. How are you doing! Rizu and I are now married. Our boy would be turning five in a couple of months time. Lots to tell. Can you drop in sometimes by month? Take care of yourself.”

I ground the cigarette in the nearby ashtray. I was in the smoking section of the transit lounge between layovers. I had landed straight from London where I had gone for a meeting and now there were a couple of hours to kill before my flight.

What did she want? I had a very hectic schedule. There was an acquisition process going on and that demanded all of my time. However, over the years, I had learnt to live with this constant pressure bordering on panic. Now it was all routine. It was a shock to get Kajol’s mail. We hadn’t spoken after the show down in Riz’s house. Goodness – it was so long back and yet felt like the day before.

At that time I had been mad with rage. Mad at Kajol of course, cross with Riz to some extent for siding with her. And then there was the professor and also my ex boss Rao. Funny, how the latter two came to grief. Much as I would have loved it for the professor to undergo a rigorous imprisonment for a long period, fate had cheated me out of that privilege. He never faced the trial; for in the wings of the jail reserved for the under-trials there exists a well entrenched hierarchy system where the murderers come at the top and rapist and child molesters occupy the bottom rung. Bharadwaj didn’t have a chance. Two days after his arraignment, he was sent to the prison hospital with several missing teeth, a couple of broken ribs and a punctured rectum. He barely lasted a week.

Mr. Rao’s case was tragicomic. I had imagined doing every kind of brutality to him – smashing up his smug face – throwing acid – praying to the devil to lift him up etc. However, what had happened was entirely funny and I would have enjoyed it if it didn’t relate to me. Somehow a newspaper reporter, who was on the crime beat, had approached him for clues and got rebuffed. He had seen the potential of a scandal and followed Rao up like a hound. Next thing, Rao’s profile had been splashed across tabloids – calling him the hero who had saved his employee’s wife from a mad rapist. Then the conjectures began – what was he doing with the wife – why he had gone out of station to meet her – why all the attention when he had already sacked the employee etc. Quickly that snowballed out of control and the tabloids had a field day with insinuations ranging from being some kind of Don Juan to being or a nefarious schemer – or maybe a secret lover etc etc. The name of the company he was heading was also prominently displayed. And that proved too embarrassing for a Mr. Bajajbhai whose hoardings and promotion materials invariably carried the company’s name. Promptly, he issued a quarter page advertisement in the dailies stating that their company no longer associated with either Mr. Rao or his company. Like dominos falling, other major clients followed suit, including HK Corp. Alarm bells had started ringing in the London HQ; who rushed in a team to handle the crisis. Their first decision had been to sack Mr. Rao. Funnily thereafter, despite his ample contacts, he couldn’t get a placement anywhere – for he had become the untouchable commodity. He had completely vanished from the professional circuit thereafter …

You see you never teach life anything …

Preeti had relayed me the above after she came over to New York; for I had shut myself off totally. The wounds were fresh and they were still bleeding. After the fight with Kajol; I had returned from Kolkata and stayed in our old flat for a week – the time I had at my disposal before flying to US. All those days, I had waited eagerly for her to call me back and to say that she had changed her mind – but that never happened. On the last couple of days I had sent off all her clothes and other personal stuff to Riz’s address. Then I had hired a lawyer specializing in divorce cases and given him the money and the details. He had quickly prepared the papers for me to sign and assured me to see the job through – it was after all a simple case – as it would be a divorce with mutual consent. I just signed wherever he wanted me to and got rid of him. Next I had gone to the bank and transferred half of my advance salary to our joint account...

Did she need any money?

I scratched my chin. That didn’t make sense. She was married to Riz now and … maybe … well I didn’t know Riz’s financial condition now… that I could take care of now – last year my earnings including the stock options were well over the six digit mark … but did I want to get myself involved in her world … well there would be a time to determine that … later

She had got my email address from Preeti …

After I had moved over to NY and settled down in a suburb that was two hours away by the shuttle. The divorce formalities would take more than a year – as my lawyer had advised me and that was that – I had shut the door on that part of my life … Life was routine, after the initial excitement of having landed in the US was over. Get up by the alarm clock, bath and breakfast of cereals and juice, short drive to the station to catch the shuttle, arrive at NY Central, move in the milling crowd for the four blocks to reach office, coffee and early morning meeting, roll up the sleeves and get to work and stay till it was late – most days having ordered a sandwich from the nearby deli for lunch; return and reach home by about ten and a quick whiskey and soda followed by a microwaved dinner and then hit the bed after setting the alarm. This was pretty much the routine. Except on the weekends, where sometimes I would try to cook up a traditional dish – realize that I was no good at it – and walk over to the local mart for the weekly stocking up on supplies.

Preeti came after three months. She was supposed to arrive much earlier. I had asked her for the reason. “Mr. Ching didn’t want to let me go”, she had smiled, “probably I remind him of a daughter or so.” I raised my eyebrows to convey a ‘is that so’. However, subsequently throughout I had found that whenever Mr. Ching was in NY; Preeti used to be in constant attendance upon him, even staying in the same hotel, from the moment he arrived till his departure. She doted on him, as I used to observe in the office, in the meetings when Mr. Ching used to be present and I thought I saw a reflection of the paternal touch – the way he used to address her. “You see him as a father”, I had once remarked to her. “Of course”, she had said, “isn’t he the person who has given me a new life?”

In any case, Preeti had come and without a word moved over to the spare room in my apartment. From the first night, she had climbed into my bed. My daily routine got modified now to the extent that it was now both of us who were following the same schedule, sans the stiff shot of whiskey at night – for Preeti would invariably drag me to bed. The sex was great and immediately, both of us would fall asleep. We rarely talked about anything that was of back home. She never mentioned the ‘K’ word not even when the final orders of divorce suit had come – and I was grateful to her for that.

At the office, both of us slogged hard. It was unusual for a lower level executive and for any intern to spend so much time after hours but we both did. On my part, I loved learning the new stuff outside the world of image consultancy. They had put me in marketing and by a fluke I had stumbled upon a major source of revenue leakage that could be plugged by a rejig of the administrative set up at a production facility. That was my ticket to the top. To my pleasant surprise – I had discovered that I was good at strategizing and designing restructuring of portfolios. Mr. Ching was very appreciative of that and two years down the line, I had been designated as an AVP with a quite lucrative stock option. That was when the label ‘brains’ had stuck to me.

Preeti on her part did the pure slog. Everyone knew that she was Mr. Ching’s protégé and she was doing the work of two. What she lacked was a formal qualification. At the end of the first year, she had been designated as the employee of the year and Mr. Ching gushed at the function, that HK Corp had been pleased to announce a sponsorship for any executive mba program that she could pursue on the weekends.

Both of us becoming busy in our work meant that we had little time for each other. One Saturday we had been to a local pub, downed a couple of beers and danced few numbers. On the way home she said, “Ramesh, this mba course you know. I have been accepted at the state university. Problem is it is highly inconvenient for me to commute to the campus from here.”

I had mulled over the problem. What she said did make sense. The right thing to do would be for her to find an apartment near to the campus – although that would mean separation for us. I said as much.

“You think, I should move over?”, she looked sidewise at me. We were still walking.

“Definitely”, I said, “Let’s start hunting for a suitable accommodation for you right from tomorrow.”

She had looked down and we had continued walking.

A fortnight later she had moved out of my house and out of my life as well. However, it didn’t take me long to readjust. There was enough of work to keep me busy – even on weekends…

Had I been wrong - letting her go? I scratched my chin. But that’s what she wanted.

She had completed her mba degree course in two years. The entire family had come for the graduation. I had visited them and it was a very joyful affair. Shortly thereafter, she had been called by the Singapore HQ and she had gone back to Mr. Ching, taking our farewell with a very big smile at NY.

And then was Jennifer whom I had met at a business conference. We had hit it off from the outset. She was a divorcee with no kids. She loved curry and yoga. Three months of dating and being in awe of each other all the while – we had decided that we were soulmates and it made no sense not to get married – at the ***** temple in NY. … Only that … to cut a long story short … I couldn’t bear the joss sticks burning in the house and sacred chants playing all the time … she had said sorry – that it didn’t work out and we had parted mutually in a consensual divorce …

Where had it gone wrong? … Where did I miss it all out?

The public speaker announced the security check in for my flight. I rose up from my seat.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

I looked at the housefront – it was Riz’s house alright – there was his nameplate. I opened the gate and walked through the small garden onto the grill work. Kajol had already come hearing the bell.

At first sight I didn’t quite recognize her. She was clad in a saree, had put on weight and was wearing the headmistress type of glasses.

“Ramesh”, she said breaking into a smile.

“Kajo”, I gave her a look from top to bottom, “you look nice.”

“You mean fat, eh?”, she chuckled. “And look at you. Since when are you sporting a paunch?”

I shuffled my feet. “Oh come in, come in”, she said and ushered me in to the drawing room, “Rizu would be coming anytime now,”

There was a boy playing on the carpet. I walked over to him and handed him the train set I had purchased on my way. He looked at me with large round eyes, the eye-brows arched picture perfect.

“He has your eyes”, I told her.

Kajol just smiled.

“Tell me, did you get to complete the doctorate?”, I asked.

“Oh that”, she rolled her eyes upwards. “It was pretty difficult – you know – with the guide dead, and no one else willing to take over, not to mention the pregnancy. Remember Puja – the one who had been nearly murdered at the professor’s residence – she is an assistant professor now. It was she who arranged another professor at her university – and finally got the degree – two years back.”

“Wow, congratulations!”, I said. It was so easy to talk to her – I had forgotten that. “So any job, career.”

“I have a full time job now”, she said evenly, “him”. She pointed at the boy. We both laughed.

I looked at him. He was silent. For a brief second I wondered whose boy he was – then I dismissed the thought – it was all immaterial. He was silent all through, opening up the toy and trying to fix us while all the time looking at us with those round eyes.

“What do you call him?”

“Ramesh”, she said. “Rizu insisted that we give him that name.”

I had a shock. I cleared my throats and asked, “By the way, when did you two get married?”

“Right after the divorce came through – just a civil registration affair with two witnesses”, she answered looking at me with a level gaze, “Of course, when he was born; I was still married to you and so he carries your surname too. Rizu didn’t want that changed either.”

I again looked at the boy. He was just a couple of feet away and he hadn’t spoken a word yet.

We both fell silent. I began thinking when it would be the proper time to leave.

“Papa”, the boy cried out and I had another shock. I looked behind. Riz was standing behind me. He looked at me and gave a nod. Then he walked over to the boy who was smiling now, his face split wide …

My mind had gone into a turmoil. Instantly, I recollected Riz calling out that he would be never speaking to me for life … now I knew that he meant

The second thing was the smile on the boy’s face. It revealed the uplifted dentures, that special combination of muscle and bone – the feature so well known to me – for I had been looking at that everyday when I had used the mirror.

Riz had flung his office bag and bounded to the child. Hoisting him up above his shoulder, he walked out to the garden. From outside, the sound of both of their jostling and laughter drifted through.

“Come, we will watch them play”, Kajol said and we both walked to the grilled verandah. The two of them were playing with a big beach ball.

“Before he was born, Rizu used to treat me like a princess – would you like this, would you like that – that sort of thing all the time. Afterwards”, she paused dramatically, “I have become the nanny – did he have his milk, when did he get up in the afternoon, did he have the protein supplement – that sort of thing.” She smiled slowly.

I dare not look at her. A lump was beginning in my throat. There was Rizu giving everything to my boy – the same boy that I didn’t want to give a chance to live. What was I doing here – I wondered. The three of them had made a life. What business did I have to linger further?

“Kajo”, I turned towards her, “I must go now.”

“Don’t be silly”, she said immediately, “Rizu would kill me. Wait till he is done with the child. He would have burst into tears when he saw you – only that that would have upset the child – so he ran out with him.”

I was stunned. I no longer knew what to say.

“Come, I will show you the house”, she led me in. “Here is for the two of them”, she showed me a room strewn with toys of all kinds. “I have strict instructions not to tidy up or disturb any of the things inside”, she laughed gaily. Then she took me to her room, a double bed in the center and with very basic furnishing.

“You must be tired from the long flight”, she said and before I could protest she had taken off my suit. “Lie down a while, you will feel good.” She wouldn’t hear a no from me and hustled me to the bed. I lay face down, glad for the full stretch. I could sense her sitting down besides me. Then her fingers were over my stiff neck and shoulder muscles, kneading softly. I felt the sensation of relaxing under those very familiar touches. My mind had gone into a blank …

“Kajo, when did you know that he was my boy?”

“I knew that all the time, right since the doctor had told the timing of conception. It was just before you had gone on your first foreign trip – to Singapore. No one else other than Rao had come inside me – the others … they … they … always had condoms. And with Rao it was after you had gone to Singapore.”

“Why didn’t you tell me then”, I croaked.

“I didn’t because, in your heart of hearts, you wouldn’t have believed me, no matter what I said. You always wanted the test – didn’t you. For you, I would have walked barefoot a hundred times over burning coal. But, no way, could I let our child undergo any test to satisfy you.”

“What if it had been someone else’s?”, I picked up the courage to ask.

“Wouldn’t have made any difference to me. After all it was your child as it is mine, no matter who the biological father be.”

I stayed silent for a while, trying to fight off the sleep waves, arising out of her rubbing my shoulder.

“How is your marriage with him?”

“What marriage – that is on paper only. You know, he is not meant for any of that …”, she said turning me over and looking into my eyes, “besides my interest for that sort of thing died on that day the professor had attacked. Anytime, any thoughts that could come in all these years”, she looked away, “it would always be with those images. And maybe it could have gone away with the care and understanding of someone, someone … you, only you … …”, she didn’t complete. Taking a deep breath, she said; “I have always been married to you, Ramesh. There can never be anyone else.”

I sat up bolt upright. “Where did I go wrong Kajo? I did only what you asked me.”

“Yes, you always do what someone tells you to, don’t you”, her voice had gone dry, “does it matter if that is right or wrong. You put up a system and expect it to work out automatically. Did I tell you to send the divorce notice? Where were you when I needed you most – when everything had gone dark around me – did you ever think if my doing phd was for the good of both of us – it has always been you and you – wasn’t it – why couldn’t maintain a relationship with Preeti or with your second wife – have you ever wondered – you always did what they said they wanted done – for you that was always right – even if they were wrong – you would never stand by them with their wrong decisions and the consequences – it was always you and your own way of thinking.”

I was stunned. Never did I imagine the volcano beneath her calm and serene façade. God! What must she have undergone these years?

“Kajo”, I caught her hands, “it’s not too late. Let’s get back together.”

“And Rizu?”, she asked and I felt like a cad once again. She gently, took away her hand. Her eyes were sad, the passions blown away since long. “Ramesh listen; both of us together have made mistakes, thinking that things will work out their way and without any effort from our end. We must pay for that, in this life. Let us accept that and be grateful for what we have.”

I looked down. Every word that she spoke was true. Each time, I had thought of myself only – even when allowing her to have her own way. There was nothing to say further.

Riz came bustling into the room and gave a hollow punch to my abdomen. I got up holding my belly. “Riz …”, I said.

“How dare you”, his eyes were flashing, “give my boy a small cheapskate of a toy?”

He was bristling and looking at me with murder in his eyes. Then he came nearer and hugged me tight, “Ramesh … must you go back today … …how long do you want me to look after them alone … … why won’t you come … …

I patted his back and this time had no compunction in letting the tears flow, “I will stay tonight … … and come back again … … and again. Next time I will bring him the biggest toy that the airline will allow me to carry.”

T H E E N D