Shape of the Sun

When fairytales are only tales

In the beginning, it wasn't like this.

Rajkumar knew that it sounded cliche, but it was true. Once upon a time, he and Anisha were the fairy-tale couple when he was in college. Her father, Dr. Mehek Gopal, had been his mentor  and guide when he had first gotten into medical college, straight out of the army. He had been the one who had taught him a lot about medicine, and even outside of it. Dr. Gopal had taught him that life wasn't black or white, and not all bad people had bad endings. Wasn't he, a convict on the run from Pakistan, now flourishing as a respected doctor in London? Perhaps, he believed that it would help his new mentee, who was so brilliant but reserved, take on more hurdles too.

All that Rajkumar could do now was to thank him for his infinite love and trust. He hoped that Dr. Gopal could see how proud he had made him from heaven, or hell, or whatever afterlife he was in.

When Rajkumar announced his decision to study medicine abroad rather than architecture in India, needless to say, Bhairav hadn't been pleased and refused to give him any form of support, even going so far as to stop his mother, Choti, or the guys from doing so. Rajkumar, never one to back down, deferred his admission date by a year and a half and reported to the reserve army in the UK where he could get some stipends and work experience that he could fall back on if everything went south. Perhaps, his father regretted when he saw this and tried having him rescind his report, but Rajkumar stood by his stance and finished the whole program. And by the time he got into college, he had been amongst the oldest in his class.

No matter how sociable and popular he ended up becoming, it was still difficult for Rajkumar, who was proud on the inside, to comfortably adjust to this situation. And it was at the end of this first year of college, that he met Anisha, Dr. Gopal's adopted daughter. A mutual friend had introduced them and he had thought nothing much of her really, until she had confessed to him a mere three weeks after. Rajkumar had recalled feeling genuinely stumped at this development since they barely even talked after the initial introduction. He had asked her why she was attracted to him, and Anisha had told him that she just loved everything about him, from how he dressed to the confident way he spoke in the classes that she snuck into just to take a peek at him. She had also taken him to her studio where he had seen many oil paintings she'd done of him at random moments that he had been doing other things, unaware. On that hot summer afternoon when the sunlight shone through the large ceiling-to-door studio windows, nineteen-year-old Rajkumar had taken one look at this girl that was looking at him with so much affection, his reflection in her lovely, brown eyes, and had bent to feverishly kiss her. It was as fevered as his heart was. That Rajkumar wanted to love this woman.

This Rajkumar could only sneer at his past stupidity, a hand trailing the length of his phone casing as he sat, relaxed on the sofa. He really wanted to go back then and give his past self an unhealthy dose of reality. But then again, it wasn't like everything was a total waste.

It wasn't, he couldn't lie on that one.

He and Anisha had quickly started dating, coming to the attention of her father, who had invited him over for a private dinner. Rajkumar had left that dinner with a protegee quota, and awe for such protective paternal instinct, particularly at the time when he was still bearing a grudge against his father. His protegee quota allowed him to assist and work firsthand with Dr. Gopal, a therapist that conducted forensic reviews with the local police.

What a joke.

A few weeks in, Rajkumar had come by the office to drop a file that he had taken home in error when he came across the scene of Dr.Gopal hitting Anisha straight across the face. He had hidden himself, terrified at what he could easily identify as abuse. Why would someone who worked against such acts commit them? And why hadn't his girlfriend reported this or told him?