Now that the words have been said, does it make her feel any better? Does she feel like the pressure's been lifted? Not yet. But she does feel some sort of security to hear it. It feels more real, less imagined, and more tangible. But she knows she needs to get the entire story out. There was no one she could talk to this about but her phone. And so, she did. She conversed with the slim, black rectangle as though it were her most intimate friend. And sadly in enough, in that exact moment, perhaps it was.
And as she speaks, she remembers.
Just another day at the hostel. Shruti sits on her bed with a Biology Module in front of her. The endlessly vast material has bored her out of her mind and the little doodles on either side of the text show that. Her long hair has been tied into an unruly bun and wisps of hair that has escaped fall on her brown skin. It's a sweltering day in Kota, but she hasn't switched on the AC yet for fear of receiving another whopping electricity bill. The hostel owners needed only one excuse to drive up the electricity bill by another thousand rupees and Shruti wasn't prepared to give them that. So, she sits in her rather hot room clad only in briefs and a t-shirt. Her green eyes dart around the room desperately trying to ignore the textbook and looking around for a distraction of any kind.
Until, of course, the ominous knock on her door.
"Beta?" The hostel warden says, as she raps on Shruti's door incessantly.
(Beta: child)
"Ji?" Shruti says, opening the door.
(Ji: yes)
"Beta, your father is here to meet you. He's waiting downstairs." The warden says, looking at Shruti's room suspiciously. She sees the book lying open and looks back at Shruti, satisfied.
"My father? I don't have a father!" Shruti laughs, wondering at the ironical ways of the universe.
"What? He has the exact same eyes as you. He must be your uncle then. Maybe I heard papa when he said chacha? Anyways, you need to come downstairs." He's waiting in the lounging room for you. The warden says, looking puzzled. She beckons Shruti to follow her.
Shruti follows feeling very unsettled and queasy. Same eye color. It couldn't possibly be him. How could it be him? He had been as good as dead for the past eight years. And she had assumed he was dead. Not alive. And definitely not coming back.
The warden opens the door to the lounge room and ushers Shruti in.
The man sits there, his posture nervous. Dressed in formal attire with a plain wristwatch and shoes, he looks like a teacher. He sits there looking nervous and almost queasy. Sweat beads form at his hairline and he's constantly tapping on the floor with his fancy shoes. He fumbles with his watch yet again and his other palm rests on the couch in the lounge.
Shruti felt it was some mistake that the warden had made. That she'd walk into the lounge to look at a total stranger and hed look back at her equally puzzled. Then she'd explain to the warden that he wasn't her relative and he'd confirm the same. Then the warden would laugh embarrassedly before realizing that she'd mixed up the names. Perhaps some other girl named Shruti in the large hostel?
She hadn't anticipated walking into a whole new dimension.
Shruti hadn't anticipated that when the door opened the man would raise his head. Or that the man would stand up so quickly. And she definitely hadn't anticipated that she would be staring back directly into a pair of green eyes. Green eyes that had coincidentally given her own green eyes. Green eyes that belonged to a time long gone and so deeply buried in the past that it felt like an altogether different world. Shruti might have as well seen a corpse actually rise up from a coffin or a person walk out from his own burning funeral pyre. She stood there numb and absolutely stunned. It was as though she'd seen a monster rise from its death. And in Shruti's life, her father was the monster no less.
He speaks in the same tone, the same voice. The papery and a little rough voice. It's the familiarity that pinches Shruti. How willingly, how easily her brain seems to remember him. As though all the efforts she made to forget him were futile. But her brain remembers him, the familiarity of his voice, the crinkle near his eyes, and the deep green of his irises. Her brain remembers the slight, crooked mouth and the broad jaw. And when she looks at him, it seems as though all the years that passed in his absence don't make any sense if they were going to lead up to this moment where she would meet him again. She had grieved for him. And then cremated him in her heart. But he'd snaked his way back and stood in front of her.
In another world, she might have jumped into his arms glad to see him here. To ease the ache of homesickness.
But now she misses his absence. The absence she'd grown accustomed to and learned to accept. Him standing right in front of her is like a mirage too painful acknowledge that somewhere near perhaps exists an oasis.
The warden takes Shruti's silence for her delighted shock and leaves the room smiling. She closes the door behind her leaving the father-daughter duo behind.
Father. Daughter.
"Shruti?" He says, in the same papery and roughish voice. His broad jaw moves when he forms the words. It sounded rusty to her ears like the name hadn't been used in a while.
He looks at her and sees how much she's grown. She looks at him with his own eyes and it makes a deep rumble in his heart. She looks at him, her eyes transparent giving away every thought that flicks in her head. She looks at him in accusation. In betrayal. In grief. In anger. In hatred. In anxiety. In angst. In worry. In slow acceptance. And when he looks at her, it was almost as though he'd looked through her and seen all the years that had happened. For someone who's been stilled for so long, Shruti recovers quickly.
Now she's not sure what to feel. And all she feels is numbness right now. The shock radiating through her senses. Her mind, unable to comprehend.
"You're alive?" The first words that she can think of. The words come out, strange and foreign. The voice is strange and foreign unlike the tinny ten-year-old voice he left behind. It's womanly. Less childish.
"Shruti. How are you? But to answer you, I didn't die. Was there someone who told you that?" He asks, unsure of her question.
"Clearly." She says, a little sharply. Eager to show him that she'd grown. That she had lived with his absence. That her mother had raised her well. Well enough to defend herself and her entire family if she had to.
"Won't you sit down? "He asks, carefully observing at the girl who looked at him through eyes that were startlingly similar to his own. She'd grown so much from the little one he'd left behind.
"No. I'm fine here." She says, not moving from the door that stands closed behind her.
"Okay." He says, not wanting to aggravate her any further than his presence had already.
They stand in silence still looking at each other. Taking in the differences and remembering the similarities.
"Well, won't you say anything?" He asks, the hope in his voice giving him away.
"I don't have anything to say." Shruti smiles as she speaks. And it is genuine. It would have hurt him less, he realized, if she had kicked him or even cried. But to see her smile almost cordially as though she were well and truly accustomed to his absence.
Shruti for her part ignores the hammering in her chest as she smiles at her father. It's true, she has nothing to say. Mostly because of all that she wanted to say, she'd said in his absence. Until her pain stopped screaming and became a hoarse, dull yell. And the yell had diminished into a voice that had died out. She didn't have a father. That was how she'd forced herself to accept. That she would grow up without her father. He was dead. Never to return. But now he had.
It wasn't that his presence in the room didn't affect her. Her emotions were swirling stormily and were beyond her comprehension. It was just that she didn't have anything else to say other than confirm that he was alive.
"I thought you would have a lot to say." He tries again and Shruti can see that she's hurt him with her words. And she feels sorry for him. She looks at him and how he feels when she recoils from him. She stares into his green eyes and sees the same pain of loss and rejection that had haunted her so. And she feels sorry for him.
"I don't. But if you want me to talk I can. "
He feels smaller when he hears those words and still smaller when he hears the maturity behind those words. The depth and the growth that his daughter has gone through, so much so that she's being kind to him after all that he did, makes him feel smaller. In the strangest way, he's proud that his offspring has grown into such a commendable young woman and hates himself even more knowing that he wasn't the man who raised her.
"I do. Seema has raised you well." He says, his voice breaking slightly.
Shruti looks at him, empathetic. "I've been fine, thank you. My entire family has been fine, thank you very much. "
"You've grown a lot, bubba." He says, his roughish voice now tender.
"I just turned eighteen last month," Shruti says.
"I know." He says. "How are Seema and baby Shweta? "
"Wonderful. Shweta is almost sixteen. Maa is doing great." Shruti says, feeling very protective. Almost like the man of the family defending her family against the man who was once the man of the family of the same family. An awkward tryst, an odd role one that she still had difficulty playing even though that was what she'd spent most of her young life doing.
"I'm a teacher these days." He says.
"Okay." She paused, unsure of what to do with the information. "Weren't you a neurosurgeon or something?" Shruti asks, knowing he'd been a doctor but she'd never cared to know his specialization when she was younger. She feels stupid asking it almost as though it's a low blow.
"Cardiologist." He says and pales a little. "You must be wondering why I'm here."
"Indeed."
"I've come here to apologize. As late as it is. I've come here to say I'm sorry for everything that I did. I don't ask for your forgiveness. I don't deserve it. I just need you to listen to it. You were the only person that I could actually have the guts to approach." He says, unable to meet Shruti's eyes.
"You left for self-discovery, didn't you? Maa would never tell me but I found it out from Nani. Tell me, did you find yourself?" Shruti asks, moving a little closer to the man who was her biological father.
"I didn't find myself. I built a new myself that was different. I went to Uttarakhand, to Kedarnath to search for peace, for spirituality. I went further up towards the monasteries in Ladakh looking for peace. But I didn't find it. I traveled almost through the length and breadth of the country until I grew tired of it but I still felt the sickness in my heart. So, I started living in Chennai, working around a bit. Until I managed to get myself into a small school in a village in Kanyakumari. Took me quite some time to learn the language but now I'm fluent in Kannada and Tamil. I didn't discover myself. I built a different life. I grew to like that routine, the calmness of a coastal life as a teacher. And with my little students, I find a little bit of peace every day. But I want you to know it wasn't the three of you I wanted to escape. It was myself which is why I never found the peace I looked for in the temples and shrines. I carried my negativity everywhere. Until I grew exhausted and had greatly diminished my funds. I had no choice but to work and I began to do so. It took me some time to get over the spite and pessimism within me. But I managed to."
Shruti is quiet for a while, taking in all that he said. She says, after a bit.
"How long did it take you to settle in Kanyakumari? And start teaching? "
"Almost five and a half years. I've started a small seafood business as well. It's doing well, with God's grace." He says, knowing very well the next question that she'd ask.
"Okay. But it surprises me that you didn't try to apologize or contact us sooner. Why didn't you try to come back?" She asks, letting out a breath she hadn't known she was holding.
"I wasn't ready, I suppose." He lies.
"Well, so why now? You could've easily not tried to meet me. It wouldn't have been so hard. And why are you meeting me? Maa deserves an apology and so does Shweta. Do you have any idea how..? Why are you even bothering to meet me alone? I'm not the only one who deserves an apology." Shruti asks her voice hardening now. Her emotions are slowly getting through her numb heart and she can feel her irritation seeping in.
"You've always been my favorite." He says, smiling uneasily, trying to dodge her questions.
"That's not even important. It's actually the stupidest thing I've ever heard." Shruti says, her face hard.
"Please don't say that." He says, acting as though it were somehow her fault. Weak men who never face reality; always trying to play the victim in every situation even when they are clearly the perpetrators. Trying to guilt her into adopting a softer stance.
Shruti brushes it off. All her love and respect for the man had died a long time ago.
"Why didn't you try and meet maa?" She asks.
"I couldn't, Shruti. I can't face your mother. You're the only one I can ask to convey my apology to." He says, tiredly. He looks at her now, his face defeated.
"I won't do your work. You cannot expect me to help you." Shruti says, angrily.
"I don't. I just came here because I'm starting a new phase of my life. And I need to settle my debts from the past before I move forward." He says.
It's not so much the words as the tone that makes her realize what he means. And for a long time, she just stares at him. Her anger dies out and she can only feel the faint touch of betrayal. It was almost as though he'd managed to disappoint her all over again. She takes shallow breaths, her breathing barely perceptible.
"Oh." She says, almost like she's choking. "Oh."
The fact that her father might have remarried and had a new family had never crossed her mind. Even though she'd cremated him in her heart, she'd always cremated him as her father. Her sister's father. Her mother's husband. The prospect of him being somebody else's father and husband had never occurred to her and she felt stupid for never having thought so.
He had always been selfish.
"I'm sorry." He whispers his voice breaking as he does. He doesn't cry but he doesn't meet her eyes either. But when he's certain that his voice is a bit stable, he tries to speak.
But Shruti cuts him off before he can even start. Her voice is a whisper, "So why did you come here from so far south? Simply to tell me about your new family?"
"No, Shruti. Not just for that. You're my firstborn and I need your forgiveness before I embark on this journey and start my new life. I'm going to become a father." He says, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Again. You didn't say again." Shruti says, her eyes now glistening. All her numbness and indifference have shattered and she's seething with rage.
"You haven't changed a bit. You were always selfish." She says.
He doesn't say anything for a long time and neither does Shruti who by now is sitting on the floor with her back against the closed door. Her face is now streaked with tears and all her maturity and reason has flown out of the window. She's exhausted with the incessant drama and looks at the man she once called her father for a long time. She takes in his image and closes her eyes, preserving this image. How was it fair that she was supposed to be content with this single image, this horrible meeting for the rest of her life? How was it in any way fair that Shweta, she, and her mother would only have memories of this man while his new family would have him with them for the rest of his life? How did any of this make sense? Why was it that she had to be content with some broken state of affairs all the time? Cleaning up messes that didn't even belong to her in the first place? How was it even okay that he was here, alive and happy enough to start a new family? Was there no such thing as karma? Didn't it matter to the universe how much pain one man had been capable of inflicting? Were there no unforeseen consequences that he would have to deal with, no cosmic energy threatened by one man's desire to do as he pleased?
She looks at him, all the hundred thousand words that she would have wanted to tell him back when she nursed the idea that he would one day return. How all of those words had died and now when he was back, only the hollow corpses of her vacant words stared back at her; never suffice to explain the amount of pain he had put her through. It seems like an entirely different life when he had been a doting father; somebody who had taken her for long walks around the neighborhood. All of those empty years of love she couldn't give hammers in her heart; as the grief of losing the same person twice hits her.
No pain quite like that of losing your father when he is alive.
Of looking at the shape of your jaw, the green of your eyes, and wondering how it was possible to hate a man who had given you so much of yourself. Nothing quite as painful as growing disillusioned with the idea of the parent you had in your head when you were young; watching as they consistently fail to reach it. Questioning why promises are even bothered being made when they were going to be broken in the first place. The realization that parents are just older human beings and are prone to making just as many mistakes as you are.
She leans her head against the wooden door for a long time until her tears have dried and her breathing has restored. She slowly gets herself up and walks up to her father.
"Congratulations, Sanjay." She takes his hand and shakes it with a quivering hand. The touch, the warmth, the relationship all having died out a long time ago. Cheated by destiny; only the gesture remains.
And then she walks out without looking back.
Dr. Sanjay sat in the lounge for a long time.
Throughout the entire length of the conversation, she hadn't once called him papa.
A/n: That was pretty difficult. I've made so many changes from how I initially intended it to become. What do you think about Shruti's father now that he's in the picture? What do you think Shruti should do about this secret? Should she tell anyone about it or keep it within herself?
Give me comments! I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter.
Yours faithfully,
shortgirlbigbook â¤ï¸.