Pinch of Remorse

It was an emergency call. Charan rushed to the hospital on his motorcycle as fast as he could. His wife Suma, was waiting in front of the operation theatre at the hospital. As soon as she saw him, she burst into tears and started weeping loudly. He took her into his arms for a second, and made her sit on a bench in the corridor. Then he walked down to the enquiry counter, to talk to the policeman who was standing over there. Their only son Varun, met with an accident on the highway and was undergoing an operation.

After talking to the police, he learned that it was a hit and run case. Somebody on a scooter hit his son who was walking by and fled from the spot. Police could not get many clues on who he was. They rushed Varun to the hospital and called his home. They said his right hand shoulder was run over by the scooter. Lots of blood was lost and he fainted while they were on the way to the hospital. With great difficultly Charan controlled his anguish and suffering.

After an hour the doctor came out with a smiling face. He said Varun was lucky enough not to get his hand amputated. It was a major fracture to his right hand and at least two other minor fractures were noted, but would be of less concern. He was in Intensive Care Unit and would come to senses later in the midnight. When they demanded, the doctor advised Charan and his wife to go inside to see their son, without disturbing. Charan extended his heartfelt thanks to the doctor, while Suma thanked God for saving their son.

Varun was fully covered on the right hand side with bandages and was asleep in the bed. The moment Suma saw her son like that, her heart broke and she started weeping silently. Charan swore that he would make a visit to Kashi, if his son recovers. Later Charan called his father-in-law and informed him about the accident. Once his father-in-law arrived at the hospital, he went out and brought something to eat and they continued to wait outside the Intensive Care Unit.

Charan always warned his son against playing close to the highway. He scolded his wife for letting Varun to play that day. Suma retorted back, saying how she could keep an eye on him all the time. His father-in-law had to draw peace between them and advised them not to debate on the past issues. ‘It was meant to happen and it happened, one can not change the fate’ he tried to console them.

While sitting there outside the hospital, Charan recalled how he recovered from an accident when he was a child. He broke his left forearm and his father took him to the local doctor for treatment. The local doctor was not a professional, but he inherited the medical knowledge from his forefathers. The doctor applied some herbal paste with cement band around the hand, tied with a string and hanged it around the neck. He was not able to do anything for three weeks. His mother took care of him whole the time. Sometimes he even pretended pain in the forearm even long after it got cured, just to draw the attention from people.

He remembered his parents. Tears flooded his eyes, when he recalled his childhood and his parents. It was a quite long story that happened fifteen years back. He wished he could go back and change that incident the other way. Only he knew how much painful it was and how many nights he had spent pondering over that.

Charan was eighteen years old then. He was known for his mischievous behavior mixed with recklessness. His father never trusted him, as Charan rarely met any of his expectations. If his father gave him some work, Charan would always mess it up and overdo it. Charan neither understood his family business nor showed interest in studies. His father always scolded him and tried his best to keep him on the track.

It all happened when his father had to go to the city for attending a business call. The same night, they had to ship a full lorry load of shrimps for export. The shipment was already late by one week, and somehow that night the load had to go. Normally his father would depend on his younger brother, who lived in the same village. But it must have been the time; he also left to the town for attending a marriage.

In such circumstances, Charan came forward and assured his father that the job would be done well. And as there was nobody else to turn for help, his father decided to give him the responsibility. Again and again Charan reiterated his commitment for the job. He took the task as a challenge and committed himself to do it correctly. He knew very well that the task accomplishment would derive good recognition from his father and other family members.

Charan patiently sat with all the workers and encouraged them to work till late night and finally finished loading the full lorry by mid-night. He verified that the labeling was done properly and counted the total stock and prepared all the necessary documents personally. He was fully satisfied with the work, and finally gave a green signal to the lorry to leave for the port in the early morning hours.

As he derived lot of pleasure from the work he had done, he went home and slept tiresomely. Even though his mother tried to wake him up the next day afternoon, he refused to get up and slept again in exhaustiveness. In the early hours of the evening the news arrived in the form of a trunk call. The lorry driver told him that the lorry was hit by floodwaters. Because of the heavy rains the rivers and tanks were over flowing, and the flood hit the highway suddenly. He said that he had to jump out of the lorry and run to save his life. Powerful streams of flood dragged out the lorry along with them.

Charan was shocked to hear the bad news. Not knowing what to do, he rushed to his uncle’s house. At first, on hearing the news, his uncle was little upset and later settled and said, ‘that is OK; we have insurance for all the loaded lorries. Any way you filled the insurance papers, isn’t it?’ That came as a blow to Charan. In the whole process of work, he completely forgot about the insurance part. In fact, his father reminded him many times about the insurance before leaving. He covered his inner feelings from his uncle, and slowly got up and came out onto the road.

The insurance part was totally his blunder. That means the whole load was a huge loss to their business. That must be around three to four lakh rupees worth of load. Now everything was washed away in the floods. He went to their aqua fields and sat there till midnight pondering over the whole issue. The more he thought about it, the more restless he became. How would he face his father? Would he have the guts to ask for forgiveness? Things appeared quite complicated for Charan and that night he decided to run away from home. He went home and grabbed some of his stuff and all the money he could access, and left silently without telling anybody.

He ran away from his home, but did not really know where to go. He caught couple of lorries going on highways, and he toured almost major part of Northern India. Finally when he ran out of money, he was forced to settle down in Lucknow. With initial hardships, he did couple of jobs here and there, struggled to earn little money and good name and finally settled down with a simple grocery shop. Later he fell in love with Suma, married her and settled down in Lucknow itself.

He sighed heavily, when he recalled his past. That was fifteen years back. From then on, many times his heart yearned to go back to his village. But he never really did anything to go back. Over the years, he got quite accustomed to Lucknow life. With the fifteen years of acquaintance, he made couple of friends and with marriage he made some good number of relatives. But deep down his heart, he always carried that pain all through the years. Suma asked him quite a number of times about his past. He told her that he was an orphan initially, later modified it a little and said that his long distant relatives might be still there in South India. When she urged him to visit his native place, he dodged her by saying, ‘What for?’

Around one o’clock in the morning, the nurse informed them that Varun had come to senses. They felt little consolation in heart when they had a talk with him. As he was feeling little weak, nurse requested to leave him alone till the next day morning. Charan requested his father-in-law to take Suma home and he decided to stay in the hospital through the night.

Charan tried to sleep on the bench in the corridor. But the thoughts about his past did not allow him to sleep. He felt he did a great sin, by leaving his home that day. His parents might not excuse him for what he had done. He thought about Varun. How grief stricken he was, when he heard about Varun’s accident? He prayed God continuously, and wished nothing bad should happen to Varun. He realized that his parents also must have gone through similar trauma. Their hearts must have been broken, when they learnt that he had run away from home.

As he was repenting for his past deeds, he melted down. ‘There is no excuse for me’ he cried again and again, till his face was swollen and eyes were red. When his emotional outburst dried out, he sat there on the bench, as if his mind was just cleaned by the holy water from the Ganges. That very moment he took a decision.

After a week, one fine morning he told his wife all the truth about his life. Suma felt very happy to learn about his parents and family members. The following week, they visited Kashi with their recuperating son and from there they took a train to his village.

-Aruna Kovalam

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