Despair to Hope (completed)

Chapter 3

Ram was restlessly standing outside his residence when I reached there. He rushed to me and held my right hand in his trembling palms. He should have wept a lot. There was no sign of sleep in his eyes.

"Vignesh..." words failed him.

"Geetha told me. Where is Anitha?"

I followed Ram into his house.

"We never did any harm to anyone. Why is it happening to us?" I could hear sobbing Swetha in the kitchen.

"Don't cry. Everything will become alright soon." Geetha's consoling voice followed.

We went into Anitha's bedroom. Anitha was lying on her bed coiled up, with her hands between her knees. She was wearing a red nightie. Geetha bought it for her in a local shop last year when they went for shopping.

She was lying on her side, facing us. She was motionless with her eyes closed. But I was sure she wasn't sleeping. Her cheeks below her eyes were moist. A reddish linear skin patch around her golden neck spoke out what she tried to do an hour earlier.

I could no longer stand steadily. I went to the window for support. My intestines rolled into a ball. Heart grew heavy. Eyes were completely filled and overflowing with tears.

'Vignesh...control yourself. You have a big responsibility to shoulder. No one else in this family can take it. If Anitha sees you in tears, that will break her morale again. Control yourself.' I didn't know if this soliloquy would help.

Enlightenment has rendered my heart soft and mellow and powerful. So powerful that when it is triggered, it will stun my reasoning and overpower my body in a fraction of a second.

The stress and pain and trauma this kid was going through were shearing and tearing my heart. I wasn't sure I could talk to her. And even if I managed to, I might not be able to...

"Anitha," Ram gently called her attention with soft whisper. I didn't dare to turn around from the window. Anitha didn't respond.

"Anitha," Ram called her again. She opened her eyes. I could no longer pretend to see the cloudy sky through the window. Removing my glasses and wiping off my eyes with handkerchief, I turned around to look at her.

Ram brought two chairs from the living room. By now Anitha had sat on her bed against the wall. With her hands clasped around her folded legs and her eyes staring at nothing she was sitting like a lifeless doll. She looked weak and tired and hopeless and helpless. We sat on the chairs.

Ram told me, "Vignesh, ask her what we should do. She is not telling us anything."

I ignored Ram and continued to look at her lifeless eyes.

"Life appears complicated. We do some X. We expect another Y. And life presents us with yet another Z. We think that life is behaving randomly. But we are wrong. Life is perfect. Life is simple. We have complicated it. Out of our ignorance," I started talking looking at Anitha.

Ram stared at me as if I were a fool and said, "Vignesh, ask her..."

"No, uncle. Karthik complicated it," a feeble coarse broken but firm voice came out of her dry throat. Anitha was looking at me. Her eyes came back to life with anger.

"Alright Anitha, Karthik complicated it." I was happy she was engaging. I knew that Anitha was smart. I continued.

"But the argument remains the same. Life is perfect. We are wrong. We simply don't know that it is Z and not Y that will result for X."

"Then why is it happening to me?"

"What if you are wrong?"

Anitha looked perplexed. "Can I control Karthik?"

"Why not?"

"But I couldn't."

"What if you didn't know how to?"

"Is it?" Anitha sat comfortably in a cross-legged position. The anger in her eyes was giving way to curiosity.

She continued, "How?"

"This universe has been programmed to function in a certain way. No one can tamper with that programming."

"But we have free will."

"Yes. But our free will is not an absolute one."

"So, Karthik doesn't have absolute free will."

"That's right."

"I can do something that forces Karthik to behave."

"Exactly."

Anitha thought for a while.

"Are you sure, uncle?"

"Trust me. If Priya is my one eye, you are my another ."

"When you are going home, I'm coming with you, uncle."

"Please."

Ram couldn't understand what was going on there. He simply watched his kid switching over to curiosity from dejection in minutes. With his eyes widened with surprise, he asked his daughter, "Are you going with uncle and auntie?"

She nodded.

"Let her be with us for three days. I'll drop her back here on Wednesday" I told Ram.