The Greedy Brahmin [part II]

Some day ...thought Babu and walked towards home as the Sun set behind the faraway mountains.

As soon as he reached home, Saraswati began ranting about all that she needed for the house and her impending trip to her mother's place. They were all the same he thought.

He said nothing. He quietly ate his meal and lay down on the cot, under the stars...

There was something about Sindhu that brought up very strong feelings in him - something that was nostalgic....very familiar..

Voices, faces and screams - all seemed to swim together, as Babu drifted to a state of being half asleep..

"Babu, where are you - you devil! It seems like you were born to bring misery to me, as if all that I had in my life already was not enough.." Shouted his mother. She waited there at the entrance of the house with a stick in her hands. Babu shivered at the very sight, as he looked at her from his hiding place on the neighbour's staircase. He had apparently finished most of the 'payasam' she had made for the guests who were coming to see his sister in the evening. And she was wild at this moment for there was no more money on them to get all the ingredients and do it all over again.

"Babu, you better come out or I will rip the skin off your back when I lay my hands on you". Babu didn't have a choice - he slowly walked towards his mother.

One...two..three..the slaps burnt through his skin..Babu shut his eyes close as tears rolled down his cheeks.

She stormed back into the house throwing curses at him and his father.

Babu wished he had a normal family too. His father was a priest who barely managed to feed his family. But, he was a gentle human being who always helped and served people with no expectations from anyone including his wife. All that she told him was how worthless he was, every single day. He bore the grunt of everything for the love of his children and just so that they had a home to live in.

Every single meal in their home was tension filled. Babu always stayed away, hiding behind a box or a door - praying that their regular arguments didn't reach any new level. His father walking away from his plate of food, his mother sobbing as if someone had died at home - was a very common scene. She screamed at the top of her lungs, and Babu was always embarrassed about what the neighbour's thought of them.

Tonight after such a fight, he heard his mother yell from the kitchen "I don't know what sin I had done in my previous life to beget you and these monster kids. God, why don't I die before I have to see more".

His father lay on the cot under the stairs - he saw the terror in Babu's eyes. He gestured him to come near - he just held him close. Babu's own tears were mixed with those of his father's..

He never forgot his father's agony..

There were a million such incidents that tattered his childhood. If one ever saw it, it would have looked like a cloth with a million holes in it - some big, some small - everyone of them indicating an incident that had ripped his heart out as a child...

He swore on that day that he would avenge all of these tears - all those gentle thoughts and sentiments that would have lived in a happy little child of his age were now replaced with very strong, mature feelings of anger and hatred. The innocence was long gone!

In his little mind - his mother had ruined it all - for every one of them..

He would one day get back. Successful and strong - was it to impress his mother, or was it to prove something else? He never knew, and never cared.

After all this time, as Babu lay there he realized what it was about Sindhu that was familiar. Those were the same eyes - those of his mother's! There was the same haunting look in them, the same controlled anger, the same hunger to be loved, the same hatred for something unknown, the same silent strength, the same something...

Did he love it or hate it? He didn't know. He was most certainly drawn to it - a very powerful pull that he didn't resist...