‘Brahmi’s parents?’ asked her Taiji.
‘Yes? Who else?’
‘They are long dead,’ said her Tauji.
‘That’s not funny, Uncle.’
‘Oh,bechara, poor thing,’ said her Taiji. ‘He doesn’t know. See? This girl is crazy!’
‘What don’t I know?’ I asked, walking to the room they had locked Brahmi in, but her Tauji was swifter than what I’d expected and rammed me against the wall. He jammed the bat against my neck and pressed home.
‘Look ladke, Brahmi’s parents are long dead, it’s been ten years,’ he said and pointed to the picture on the wall, draped with a garland of dried flowers.
‘But—’
‘Our niece is crazy, thatsaali. For ten years she has gone around saying her parents are alive, her parents are alive, making up stories about them. She’s made our lives hell. How much patience does she expect from us? Huh?’ said her Taiji.
‘But—’
The words died in my throat.
‘WAS SHE RUNNING AWAY WITH YOU?’ asked her Tauji and released the bat from my neck.
‘No,’ I spluttered.
‘Don’t know how many times we have taken her to the hospital for her bleeding wrists,’ screamed her Taiji.
‘But that can’t be—’
‘That’s exactly how it is,’ said her Tauji.
‘But her parents are—’
Her Taiji continued, ‘She just does it to trouble us! She of course knows they are dead! When she cries all night calling out to her Mumma–Papa, doesn’t she know they are not alive? Then why in the morning she pretends that they are? Going around telling everyone that they are alive!’
‘But—’
‘She’s an embarrassment,’ said her Taiji. ‘She should have died the same day her parents did. But no! She’s still here, making everyone believe we are the villains in her life.’
‘You hit her,’ I muttered.
His Tauji let me go. ‘Of course we hit her and we would do it again. What’s she if not a burden to us? If she dies, we will be in trouble, if she doesn’t then also people blame us for making the girl crazy.’
Her Taiji said, ‘You want to run away with her? Do so! Rid us of her! She steals, she lies, and she doesn’t let us sleep! We will do what is required of us. We will write a report that she’s missing and then what happens will happen.’
‘I was not running away with her,’ I said.
‘Then why this bag? Who the hell is she running away from?’ grumbled her Tauji.
Vedant’s name was at the tip of my tongue but I shrugged and told them I didn’t know.
‘Then who are you?’
‘I’m like a brother to her,’ I said, in more of a reflex.
They shoved me out despite my begging them to let me meet her. They told me she’d never be meeting anyone. She was going to live in that room, die in that room, and that’s what was going to happen. I had tried to argue but Tauji had swung the bat and got me square on my face. My mouth filled with blood and a molar came loose. I waited beneath her window, strained my ears and my eyes for a sign and got nothing. As I walked the entirety of the way home, the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place. Her parents were dead, that was irrefutable. They weren’t alive with shifting geographical locations. I had not once suspected her of lying.
The daze of mixed emotions has now left me. I don’t feel angry that she lied to me about her parents, I don’t feel left out and cheated that she loved me and told me all the stories behind her cutting herself but not the one that mattered. I don’t feel cowardly I couldn’t break her out of the house and run away with her. All I feel is overwhelming love. After all, I too had kept Sami alive in my head, in my behaviour, in the way I felt and interacted, in the way I lived and the way I loved, till I met Brahmi and everything changed.
