This is the sixth part of a novella “The Confession”.
Read the rest of the novella here
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After having driven a good part of 7 hrs, Ram and David finally turned into Arya Gowder road in West Mambalam, Chennai at one end of which Ram’s parents stayed. After 10 odd mins of jostling through hectic weekend traffic , they finally parked the Honda City outside the house with one wheel on the footpath just like every other car in West Mambalam was parked and stepped outside. By the time they had stretched their muscles, a girl came running out of the flat on the ground floor and abruptly stopped in front of David.
Noticing no change in David’s reaction, she then turned quizzically to Ram, who smiled “David, meet Priya, my sister. And Priya, I am not going to introduce David to you. In fact for the sheer number of missed calls and text messages that you have sent me over the past 5 days I should not even have introduced you to David. He has no clue the amount of trouble he is in.”
From her expression it was clear that Priya had a lot of things to say to David, but without uttering even one word or even saying a hello, she quietly took both David’s and her brother’s backpacks from the car and took them inside the flat. David was quite surprised by this deadly silence from her as he had at least expected the basic courtesies that people usually extend to people they meet for the first time. Shrugging his shoulders, he walked behind her into the flat.
As soon as he walked in, he first saw Priya walking into a room and for some funny reason he thought he saw her crying. Before he could give this any further thought, an old lady who seemed to be Ram’s mother came up to him and hugged him. “David, how are you? Thank God your accident didn’t turn out to be any more serious than it was and you got away with just a few scratches.”
“Come, wash up and sit at the dining table. As usual, we have reserved your favorite chair for you, right next to uncle. He has just gone to buy some potato chips, which you love having with sambar rice. He will be right back. And also, save some space in your stomach for the Semia Payasam specially made for you.”
The sheer warmth of the greeting and the genuine motherly love that Ram’s mother showed David made him feel right at home even though he didn’t remember having met them before at all. In his heart he was sickened at not being able to remember this wonderful old lady, let alone reciprocate all the love she was showering upon him. He felt miserable at his condition right now more than anytime else. After all, what use were good memories if they didn’t come back to you at appropriate times.
Ram’s father turned out to be quite a jovial person although David did get the feeling that from time to time he held himself back from asking any questions which he might find odd or hard to answer. Although Priya joined them for lunch, she didn’t utter a word, all the while stealing glances at David whenever her dad or mom spoke to him hoping for any hints that he recognized her or any of them in that room. The only person in that room that David was having any real conversation with was her brother Ram, and that was also probably because he had know him for a full 5 days now, 5 days more than he knew any of the rest of them.
It was funny, she thought, how the human brain works, how one small bump on it could so easily erase countless moments of life, countless memories.
Funnily enough, coincidentally David was thinking of the exact same thing at the same moment.
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This post has been written for the Write Tribe Festival of Words 2 where today’s prompt had to be about travel.
This is the sixth post in a novella “The Confession” that I am writing trying to correlate the same to the Write Tribe Festival of Words 2.
Read the rest of the novella here
Mahabore's Mumblings 