Orphan

Mayank had left office quite early, or rather at the right time - at around six in evening, but instead of going home, he went to Worli Sea-face, very near to his office.

Sun was still warm. In Mumbai, the length of an evening is very short. The night waxes out as soon as the afternoon wanes. The sun drops into the sea as if the gravity doesn’t allow it to stand in the sky any more, minimizing the existence of the evening. At times, Mayank wished if he could lessen the interactions with his parents by such degree as these evenings and to avoid the daily altercations between them, he decided to return at an hour when they would be asleep.

Sitting by the seaside, one of his early childhood images always popped up in his mind. This was the night when his father had tried to hang himself to the bedroom fan. The doors were closed from inside. His mother was requesting to open up. He was shouting, “What the hell my son will feel like when he gets to know that his mother loves to go for coffee with her boyfriend more than sitting with him for his homework?” She had shouted back, “He is not my boyfriend, you fool! He is just an office colleague!!” Then she had run to the phone to call for his grandparents. When they arrived, his grandparents convinced his father to open the door.

During all this, Mayank had sat in his room, sobbing badly. He didn’t understand the happenings in his house in its exactness but he jotted it down on the memory cells to find its meaning in his growing up years. And now when he understood, he told himself, “May be I would have never known if my mom had some affair with her office guy, if they had not made a scene that day. But all these years I definitely knew that my father would go anytime he wished, without giving a thought to my homework.”

The waters from the sea touched Mayank’s feet hanging from the walls by the sea side. The sea was rising up. He looked at his watch that was showing that midnight had arrived. He checked his mobile. He had missed nine calls, seven from his home and two from unknown numbers. He called for a taxi and headed for Elphinstone station.

“How should a twenty-five years old son behave when his golden-jubilee-neared parents fight on almost all the trivialities of life? What should he do when they start marketing their individual contribution to his life? And what should he do if they decide to separate at an age when they would need each other the most?” Wondering into all such questions, Mayank boarded the last Local to home.

When he arrived, his kitchen lights on fourth floor, he noticed, were still on. His heart dropped. “No god! Not at this hour, please.” With a heavy mood he climbed up to his apartment. His father opened the door with an unusual look. Mayank was just two steps in that he said, “your mother left.”

In an instance, Mayank already thought about hundred things. “Left what? Food uncooked? Or food uneaten? Cloths unwashed? My father? Home? World? What?”

And he asked, “What?”

“Your mother left home.”

“To where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then what do you know?”

“That she left.”

“That you already told me. What else you know?”

“I suppose she is carrying her mobile. I called her but she did not pick up. And the mobile is not seen anywhere in the house.”

That night, Mayank could not sleep. He kept trying her number but it was switched off.

The next morning, while he was readying himself to go to police station, he received a message. It read as – “I left 4ever. Plz dnt worry abt me. I m in oldage hom. I m ok. God bless. Ur Ma.”

Mayank sighed with relief. Now he knew he does not need some outsider that too Mumbai police, to intervene into some absolute family matters.

He called up his manager and informed that he was not well and hence couldn’t attend office. Then he browsed the internet for all old-age homes in Mumbai, shortlisted the ones with highest possibility of his mother’s residence. When he called up and enquired, most of the homes told him that they could not give any information about the inmates. So he decided to visit them personally. After visiting several such homes, he finally found the one where his mother was sheltered in. He tried to persuade her by every means he could. But she was not ready to live with his father. When he suggested making separate arrangements for both of them, she agreed to pack her bags and come with him.

Returning home, sitting by the window in the taxi, Mayank asked himself, “What are they after?”

He remembered a night from his childhood. His mother had asked his father, “What’s the problem?”

His father had replied, “Nothing as such.”

“When you watch television to avoid a conversation, there is a problem!”

At this, his father had turned towards her and had asked, “Why do you think, I would be interested in telling YOU my problems?”

“Ya, off course! Why should you tell ME? But I hope you understand well that it’s OUR family which will suffer from your so-called personal problems.”

By now, they had entered into shout-on-shout-back game.

The problem for Mayank with every such thing was – He never discovered the reason for their fights. He engaged himself in a retrospective analysis, “An individual’s personal chaos has a great potential to disturb his or her child’s mind. People, at times, marry to stabilize their lives. But do they ever calculate the possibility of destroying their partner’s stability if they do not attain theirs? After all, one’s mental or societal stability, like all his or her personal qualities, has to be attained by his or her personal endeavor. It can’t be sought as a dowry. It can’t be derived from anybody else. And what happens if one gets into a marriage where his or her partner is also in an unstable state? Now think of a child, such couple is going to produce!! And I have been one such child – a child born out in a dysfunctional family. I always wonder if I were just a mistake of a night! When my parents were never in love for all their lives together, how could they make love voluntarily?”

He thought, “It was never like they loved me in any way less than the parents of my friends did to their children. But they certainly fought more than that. And their love was divided. I was never loved by my parents; it was either my father or my mother. They even fought over the matter that, of the two, who loved me more!”

In all his childhood, Mayank spent most of the time in figuring out one or the other thing. During lunch hours in the school, when all his friends bragged about their parents and their love, he wondered what to brag about. And the whole break time would pass in such wilderness and all he did was eating his Tiffin silently. He could never feel proud enough about his parent that he would feel to talk about them in friend’s group. If ever he visited some relative’s place, he would curiously watch how they behaved with their kids, sometimes with pity for self, sometimes with jealousy towards them. He used to notice, how a mother would reinforce the faith in father, if ever the kid would talk against him. And he also watched fathers to do it for mothers. At times he would think, “Is this the reason why I don’t believe them?” He remembered how his father would spill of bad words for his mother when he found the slightest error in her cooking or his mother would curse his father when he forgot to fill in the electricity bills; though each one would know that there must be some reason why the other committed the mistake.

He thought of the day he was taken to his boarding school in Lucknow. He had passed class fifth and his parents, for the first time, had come to a conclusion together that it’s best to keep him in a residential school. All exams and such stuff done, Mayank was enrolled in the school. The school had allowed the parents to take their kids out that evening as from the next morning they won’t be seeing their parents. So he was taken out to the markets of Aminabad and Hazratganj to do some last minute shopping. This was one of those rare occasions when Mayank had his parents together. He was happy. While walking on the roads, he held his mother’s right and his father’s left hand very tightly, signifying the only link left between them. On the dinner table, his mother had asked his father, “I think we can stay for one day more… just in case, Mayank needs something else?”

“I guess school authorities are good and they will take care of his needs, if any,” his father had snapped.

“But this might help him settle down… he is so young… such a kid… and he will be on his own from now…”

“Then, might as well we don’t leave him only, if you so believe that he can’t live without you… and more over you only wanted him to be put in a boarding school… as you always believe your job is more important than your family…”

“Yes it is… because we just can’t survive on whatever you earn…”

He didn’t remember where this discussion had progressed from there. All he could recall was that his happiness was gone. He had said, “Mom… dad… please don’t fight. I will be all right. You can leave… I will make friends and I will be all right.” That night while leaving their parent, every kid in the hostel was crying, except Mayank.

He looked at his mother, who was sitting by his side. She was asleep, resting her head on his right shoulder. He questioned to his self, “So what is the reason?” And then, offered himself a random flow of thoughts in the absence of an answer, “The reasons of their fights are not important anymore; but the fights are, I guess. They are REASONS – the reasons for their survival. And it’s so very obvious. A fight has to be the reason for our survival. Now the question is - whom do we fight? We all fight different enemies at different times. When we are awakened, we fight against the night; when we are asleep, we fight against the day. But what if we have lost all the battles and don’t have any enemy to fight with? We might then tend to create enemies - some unreal, superfluous enemies. And the process of creation is outwardly. We, at times, forget to fight the enemy within. May be, that’s the only reason they ever had for their survival and they hold each other as the only seen enemies! May be, just may be. In these fights none of them ever won but the loss was always mine. They could never hurt their enemy but what they killed was the concept of parenting. They killed my parents.”

When the taxi stopped at a traffic signal, Mayank saw an orphanage. He looked at the kids hanging around the gate and then thought of himself. A thought appeared and then lingered around in his mind, “What’s the difference?”