Crossing the Mirage:Passing Through Youth

"Did it all go wrong then?‟ he thought. "Oh, they didn't even lock the house!‟

“Chotebabu, nice you've come,” said the housemaid who came in sobbing, “they are all waiting for you at the OGH.”

“How's Vasavi?” he managed to mutter.

"They‟re trying to save her there,‟ she said amidst sobs. "When your friend rang up, we found her unconscious and moved her there. Had he not alerted us, there would have been no chance. God bless him."

Like a corpse on the move, he accompanied her to the casualty of the Osmania General Hospital, but finding none from the clan there, he made enquiries with a nurse on duty.

“Poor thing,” the nurse sounded sympathetic, “she took so much pesticide, enough for a couple of cotton crops.”

“Can't she be saved?” asked Chandra impatiently.

“Sadly,” said the sister crossing herself, “she's no more.”

“Oh, my God!”

Distraught, he reached the mortuary to join his disjointed parents and others, who had gathered there to lament over the happening. On seeing him, his mother became all the more inconsolable.

“See how she hurt herself and us too,” she cried, clutching at him for support. "Now I am condemned to live in guilt all my life. I wish God would take me away too without delay.‟

“What an irony!” said Yadagiri, with welled up eyes. “She helped you desert us then and caused your return now.”

In the profusion of tears that rolled down Yadagiri's cheeks, Chandra could discern a few that owed their emotion to the return of the prodigal.

“I'm sorry for whatever happened,” Chandra mumbled, going up to his father. “I will not hurt you again.”

“In a way, it's of my own making,” responded Yadagiri with empathy. “Why blame yourself for that?”

Choked with emotion, Chandra couldn't utter a word more.

When the body was brought after the post-mortem, wiping his unceasing tears to clear his vision, Chandra stared at it endearingly before he fell on it unconsciously. And that set his parents shaking with grief and the rest sighing in pity even as the nurses shifted him to the ICU. While Anasuya cried no end, Yadagiri, too shocked to react, sank onto his knees.

However, as it became clear that Chandra was physically exhausted and mentally weary, the doctor declared that there was no cause for worry. While Chandra was being drip-fed for his recovery, it was felt prudent that he be spared the sight of his sister's cremation. Thus, in a way that reflected the reality of life and death, Vasavi's body was ritualistically consigned to the flames even as her brother's was religiously nursed back to normality.