Page 94 - Musings 2022

He nodded.

“Why do you think he did that?”
The man shook his head “Don’t know. Maybe because he never got to study. Wishful thinking”

“Doesn’t make sense that he would do it with you though.”
“What are you getting at?” the man asked, slightly leaning forward towards her.

“Have you heard of projection? Parents usually project their aspirations unto their kids”

The man took a couple of seconds to register what she was saying.
“I don’t think he ever saw me like that” he muttered

“Never mind” she smiled coyly.” Tell me more about your time at your grandparents”
The man just stared silently into space, his knuckles growing white at the handle of the club

chair, making a squeaking noise. The therapist noticed it, scribbling it down in her notepad.

“Need I remind you that you have a court hearing next week and I need to submit a report by
then explaining why you wilfully crashed a car into an electric pole with your daughter in the

backseat. If you don’t give me something to work with, how do you expect me to help you?”
The man clenched his eyes close, breathed deeply, reason dawned on him and he spoke in a

jittery voice.
“Over the summer, I got close with him and his family. Going to his home to have dinner with

him and his family became a regular occurrence. It didn’t dawn upon me then just how unusual

that was considered but others on account of him belonging to a lower caste but it seriously
never crossed my mind. I called his niece, sister since she had tied a rakhi to me. I may have

been oblivious to the lines that I was crossing by venturing into his life and he might have been
too but others around us were not. I could sense that it bothered my grandparents but they never

said anything to me.”

“What happened next?”
The man could not speak. He could sense a constriction in his throat and a sinking feeling in

his stomach as the haunting images flashed before his eyes.
“I don’t know how the news reached my father but it did. He was furious when he realised that

I had been mixing with people below my station. As he saw it, there were boundaries between

servants and masters that must never be crossed and Narayandev had violated the sanctity of
rd
that rule. There would be repercussions…It was August 23 , 1961, just after 2.p.m when I
returned home from school. Swati, Narayandev’s niece came huffing to the house. She was all
red in the face, a torn white blouse barely hanging from her shoulder, a sickening purple bruise

across her cheek and blood flowing from her nostril like a broken faucet. “Dada”, she said
between sobs “They are beating appaji! They are going to kill him!”. Her fear sent down a chill

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