The large wooden table with files stacked on the side, the rakes of books behind the chair, the lingering smell of the incense sticks, and the statue of Mother Mary on the left constituted the principal’s office where Aparajita sat, waiting for Father Joseph to speak.

‘I request you to meet Rahaman at the hospital.’ He spoke after a long silence.

Aparajita had always followed that voice with great respect, but it did not sound familiar to her then; it did not have the strength of conviction but the faint tremor of hesitation in it, defying the smile on his lips that looked too purposeful and overpowering at once. Her head dropped, her eyes swelled in tears. To her, Father Joseph was Lord Shiva incarnate, whose love and care helped her to strive forward in her studies, to beat all challenges of her otherwise poverty-stricken life of a peasant’s daughter. She counted each moment, waiting for his lips to move again,

‘I know he has caused you grievous harm but, your meeting him seems essential.’

She looked up and wiped her face with her palms. Clenching her fingers to strengthen the obstinate resolve in her, she smothered her trembling voice to a whisper, ‘He had raped me, Father. How can you…,’ and no other word came out of her lips as she looked at him, eyes dilated.

She watched him exhale and look away, first to the statue of Mother Mary in all tenderness as though a child who lost his way, wished that his mother helped him find one, and then, as he withdrew on the backrest of his chair, he closed his eyes, the wrinkles on his face relaxed to bring the lost serenity back. After a few moments of silence, he drew forward, spread his elbows on the table and looked at her again.

‘I know my request is absurd. It is indeed painful to you. You are just in your teens now; too young to understand the significance of my request in its entirety. Had it been any other girl, I would not have even thought of uttering it. But I consider you mature and spiritually strong enough to pull off the absurd and meet him.’ He gulped something as he stopped and she witnessed the return of strain on his face, ‘I have good reasons to ask you to do so.’ He stopped again and drew the glass of water to his lips.

Aparajita wiped the sweat off her forehead and watched him speak again.

‘Meerpur is a very small village. This information, if known to the villagers, will bring disaster to your family. You all may have to leave this village. Rahaman could not mention his crime to anyone till now because he knows his father would not let him escape unpunished. Moulana Sahib is not only his father but also the headman of the village. But it can come out at any time. Apart from your parents and myself, no one in the village knows about it right now. I wish it is left this way.’ Father Joseph leaned back on the back of the chair again and sighed, ‘Let me share some information you are not aware of. Yesterday, a gang of criminals had attacked Rahaman. He was stabbed and left to die beside the village temple. When the temple priest shooed the gang away, it was too late. The doctor at my clinic here discovered that, apart from a grievous injury from the multiple stabs, he is a drug addict as well. I have sent him to the hospital in the city. I am sure you understand how critical he is at present.’ Father Joseph rested his chin on the tip of his fingers, ‘Now the trouble is, although he is unable to speak a word, your name is tearing out through his lips again and again. It has created doubt in Moulana Sahib's mind and that is not a good development. Since he loves you like his own daughter, he is worried about you too. I spoke to him yesterday. He wondered what the matter could be. The doctor suggests that you meet him.’

He stopped and stood up; his fragile frame whirled to the window and from there, turned towards her, ‘I have spoken to Brother Mathew at the hospital under whose care Rahaman is presently being treated. It takes just one hour to reach there. I have arranged a car from the Church. You and your parents can go and come back within a few hours. Brother Mathew will make all the arrangements. No one would know but at the same time the unwanted curiosity that Rahaman has created would die down.’

Aparajita gazed at him for a few moments and dropped her head. Her lips made a faint movement as if she wished to utter something but, no words came out. As Father Joseph's palm fell softly on her head, her eyes rose to meet his and as though his touch was the trigger, she sobbed.

‘Forgive me Aparajita. I have said what I have felt is important for you. Your parents are waiting outside. Discuss with them and let me know. I would respect whatever you decide. There is no pressure on you whatsoever.’

*****

Seated in the car that drove steadily through the highway, Aparajita felt the breeze caress her. She watched her parents seated on either side looking around, their eyes full of wonder, experiencing, what in their life of a peasant they would perhaps never be lucky enough to experience again—a long drive in a car. In less than an hour, Brother Mathew received them at the hospital.

‘The moment has come,’ steamed Aparajita in silence; her breathing heavy, ‘just a few more steps and I would come face to face with the consequence of the deed that shredded my faith because I had never considered that my friend was a man and that there was a biological difference that shaped intentions and coloured perspectives to the extent that all considerations of morality vanished, leaving an experience that was like the ash, promising nothing towards an amelioration, in the present or in the future'.

Her jaws tightened, her fingers curled to a fist and she erupted in her heart, 'Look Rahaman I have come, not to let you have peace but to deny you the sadistic pleasure of watching me be destroyed! I still exist—I would continue to exist but would you be able to? I refuse to pretend that I have forgiven you. I won't ever forgive you because in order to forgive you I would have to be the same old self who had believed in you, played with you, shared stories with you. I refuse to pretend that I am a sea of humanity because, I don't have it in me to look at your situation sympathetically for if I ever do, I will have to be the same old self who used to keep a share of my food for you; lied, so you could escape punishment from your father; climbed trees to pluck mangoes for you. The spite, the sarcasm that I have in me for you are your own creation and you will have to share it. And look, I am doing nothing in particular, but how nicely am I doing it? Are you not amazed that all your effort to tarnish me, my being, had pushed you to the brink of annihilation and yet I have done nothing in particular? I have developed a syndrome that perhaps you too share — lack of faith; and it is this grappling with fast vanishing faith that would, in future define relations between us two. No, I am not paranoid, but all that I see around me today appears to be questionable! I do not know what is it but I feel you would be able to answer that better. After all, you have taken the first step to quell the most potent force that binds the universe — Faith; and how successfully you have done it, by just one act of yours.Thanks to you, I have achieved the capability to regard joy as a sin. I have promised myself that I would answer you. I would travel all the distance to build my life and that would answer you in full. I have no feelings for your condition today; I am indifferent to your illness. You are not ill; ill is you.'

The elevator creaked to a halt.

‘Uff! the electricity is gone. This has become a menace now.’ Brother Samuel threw his hands in the air.

Aparajita felt herself materialize in that situation from somewhere. She tried to remember her movements post Brother Samuel's call, but she could recollect nothing; not even the faint remembrance of her walk to the elevator or even their movement upwards in it.
After a couple of minutes’ wait, the generator connected everything in order and she stepped out with others in the hospital corridor, to walk to the cabin where Rahaman lay.

'Yes, you must be lying, for you do not deserve to be standing,' she chewed the inside of her lip cynically at the memory of the grimace she had seen on Rahaman's face on that evening.

Reaching cabin 108, Brother Samuel stopped and turned around.

‘His father is inside. The dressing is going on. Wait a few minutes. The nurse will call you.’

Aparajita took deep breaths but the air seemed too less. She turned to see the cabin and her mind drifted again, 'Therein lay the assassin', she boiled, 'therein lay the penalty of hatred.'

A few moments later, as Moulana Sahib came out of the cabin, she kept her palm on her heart feeling it pound with incredible force as if it wanted to tear out of her. She took the first few steps and stopped in front of the door, turned around, took a few sips of water from the bottle her mother carried and turned back to proceed.

The nurse smiled at her, watching her peep in, but that professional detachment in her smile made it seem unnecessary. A small steel table stood at the corner with an empty flower vase and the bed was stuck to the wall. Aparajita saw Rahaman's head when she took her first step in and on her next two steps she saw his body lying with his hands tied to the bed. For a brief second she stood shocked, unable to relate to the destruction she saw in Rahaman?s frame. But she quickly regained her indifference.

'How are you, Rahaman?' she uttered, her voice even, simple.

Rahaman's eyes dilated, watched her as though she was alien to him, and then narrowed under his furrowed brows as though he was making an effort to recall a face he once knew; his lips moved as if in a silent prayer.

‘I am Aparajita’, she said in a frozen voice.

She watched him throw his head back on the pillow, his face, twisting in pain, turned red and then he once again lifted his head to look at her. The nurse wiped the sweat on his forehead.

‘She has come. You wanted to see her.’ The nurse spoke in the same professional vein; a hint of command infested the softness of her voice, but there was only a moan in response to it.

At first, she saw his eyes growing dark as though a shock had hit him hard but, within another few moments it appeared as if he was waiting for her to speak and that he was ready with all his attention to listen to her, his eyes fixed on her. She observed his face grow brighter, the shock gradually ebb, the patches of incredulity transform to serenity and emerge bright and mellow at once.

Aparajita saw his fingers straighten; twist under the grip of the knot that tied him to the bed and recollected the freedom they once enjoyed to catch her hair, pin her on the ground while the other set rejoice in smothering, mutilating her modesty in abrupt, immodest swipes leaving her helpless on the grassy knoll that evening, but the whole event was out of her gathering in a flash as her breath quickened all of a sudden and her body shuddered.

‘It's bleeding!’ the nurse exclaimed, looking at the wrist.

Aparajita watched the incisions on his pale skin open up. Responding to the nurse's glance, she caught the bandages on his wrist in a tight grip while the nurse worked on with the scissors. His cold, damp fingers touched her wrist and his static eyes fell on her. Just then, hearing a blurred sound that resembled her name, Aparajita glanced back into his eyes; into the hollow shapes from where an intent look emerged. He did not turn away, watching her without pretension; his eyes calm, shining above his quivering lips as though he yearned for something. But, that expression realigned her analysis she had nurtured till then, and she felt uncomfortable at the sudden discovery.

‘Ap---jita’ he uttered once again. The nurse tried to reach for the glass of water on the small table but her palms were full of blood. Her eyes met Aparajita's for the briefest of seconds and without an iota of thought Aparajita reached out for the glass and took it to Rahaman's lips.

Watching him sip the water through his quivering lips, she sighed, forgetting those moments she had lived through after losing herself to discover her being in that fateful evening.

Keeping the glass back on the table, she drew away. Somehow, she did not feel like looking at him again, but she did, inadvertently. She watched his lips quiver again, as if he was on the verge of weeping. A while later, his lips parted to say something but his tongue struck his palate, rolled and released a faint sound of a moan instead. As he sighed and closed his eyes, Aparajita watched a drop of tear roll down his cheeks, as if all that he wanted to communicate had melted in that flow.

Aparajita felt that sigh strike her and a violent flap in her heart melt all the strength she had held till then. She rose to her feet in a flash, watching wide-eyed in all stillness as if she was under a spell that drove her to explore an unwelcome impulse of her heart and then, before that flap could trigger any forbidden consideration in her, she ran out of the cabin as she would when frightened.

‘He is unable to talk.’ She reported in a trembling voice watching Moulana Sahib in front of her.

Within a few seconds, the nurse rushed out and ran back with a doctor. The doctor came out of the cabin soon after.

‘Rahaman is no more.’ He pronounced.