SAPIENCE
Fiction Short Story
By
VIKRAM KARVE
From my Archives: One of my earliest stories - Short Fiction - Love, Romance, Deceit, Adventure...
The moment I saw the e-mail I did two things.
First I took a print-out of the mail, kept it in my purse and deleted the mail from my mailbox.
Then I called my travel agent and booked my ticket on the next flight to India
The e-mail contained a name and an address.
That’s all – just a name and an address.
I cannot begin to describe the emotion I felt as I looked at the name.
I had so many questions to ask him…Unanswered questions that were haunting me for so many years.
It all began when my fiancé Anil suddenly broke off our engagement without any explanation.
“Why?” I asked him totally shocked.
“I can’t tell you,” he said.
“You can’t dump me just like this. I’ve done nothing wrong,” I pleaded heartbroken.
“I’m sorry, Rita. I can’t marry you,” he said trying to look away from my eyes.
“What do you mean you can’t marry me?” I shouted at him, holding his shoulders and shaking him.
He did not say anything. He just remained silent and averted his eyes.
“Is it someone else? Tell me, is there someone else? What do you mean you can’t marry me? Actually you don’t want to marry me, isn’t it?”
“Okay, you can think what you like. I don’t want to marry you.”
“You have to give me an explanation. I am not going to accept being jilted like this.”
“You have to accept it. Don’t delve too much.”
“How dare you say ‘don’t delve too much’, you unscrupulous cheat?” I screamed in anger, taking hold of his collar.
“Cool down,” he said pushing me away. “It’s you who tried to cheat me.”
“I…? I cheated you…? You are accusing me of cheating on you…?” I said dumbfounded and furious.
“You shouldn’t have tried to hide things from me,” he said as if he were accusing me.
“Hide what?” I asked, getting livid.
“You never told me that you are an adopted child,” he said.
I was shocked and shouted at him loudly in anger, “What nonsense! Don’t talk rubbish. I’m not adopted…!”
“You are...maybe you don't know but you are not their real daughter, you are an adopted daughter.”
“Who told you?”
“We got some pre-matrimonial enquiries done.”
“Matrimonial Enquiry…? You spied on me…?” I accused him, “to blackmail me…? To humiliate me…? With all these sick lies…?”
“Don’t worry. No one else knows. It’s a reliable and discreet investigation agency.”
“It’s not true. I am not adopted,” I said feeling shattered numb, feeling paralysed, cold, as if I had been pole-axed.
“Why don’t you ask your parents…?” Anil said as he walked away from my life, leaving me heartbroken, desolate and shattered.
I never asked my parents... the only parents I knew.
They were the one’s who loved me, gave me everything.
I could not ask them...it would terribly hurt them.
I did not have the heart to hurt my gentle parents who loved me so much and had given me everything.
They did not say anything to me when my engagement was called off, but I could see the sadness and a sense of guilt in their eyes, as they withered away having lost the will to live.
I felt deeply anguished and helpless.
My parents loved me, meant everything to me, and we carried on our lives as if nothing had happened, and I lovingly cared and looked after them till their very end… but deep down I felt terribly betrayed.
Years passed.
Time and life moved on.
I relocated abroad past and immersed myself in my work.
They say time heals but time did not heal this wound.
I tried to forget but I could never forget.
One day I could bear it no longer.
I decided to find out.
And now I had found out.
The investigation agency had done a good job – very confidential and discreet.
For the first time I knew the name of my actual father – my real father, my biological natural father.
And now I had to meet this man and ask him why he did it, commit that cruel unforgivable act of abandoning me to the world.
I landed at Delhi
It was cold, the morning chill at once refreshing and invigorating, the driver drove fast and it took me six hours by taxi to reach the magnificent bungalow near Landour in Mussoorie.
I checked the nameplate and briskly walked inside, eager to see my real father for the first time.
There was a small crowd gathered in the porch.
“What’s happening…?” I asked a man in the crowd.
“Bada Saheb is no more. He passed away this morning. He was so good to us,” he said with tears in his eyes.
I pushed my way through the crowd.
My father’s lifeless body was lying on a white sheet bedecked with flowers, ready for the last rites.
As I looked at his serene face, tears welled up in my eyes.
Suddenly I lost control of myself and cried inconsolably, “I have become an orphan. My father is dead; I have become an orphan…”
“Me too…” a familiar voice said softly behind me.
I turned around and stared into the eyes of my ex fiancé Anil.
Anil looked into my eyes with tenderness.
Slowly comprehension began to dawn on me, and we, Anil and I, kept looking into each other’s eyes in silence; grotesque silence; deafening silence; illuminating silence; empathizing silence; compassionate silence – an enlightening silence. Sapience.
VIKRAM KARVE
Copyright © Vikram Karve 2010
Vikram Karve has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
