Crossing the Mirage:Passing Through Youth

The envisaged envy of others in his fantasy made him envious of them in reality.

"Surely, it could be a heady feeling to be admired by women,‟ he thought. "How wanted that might make one feel! Won't the glow of the favored shows it could be infinitely fulfilling. But looks like, it's my fate to encounter indifference indefinitely. What a wretched life, I can't even dare to daydream!‟

In that state of depression, when he saw his father at the Princely Pearls, his state of mind ensured that he found him more oppressive than ever. The grouse he nursed that it was his father‟s genes that were the source of his and his sibling's troubles came to the fore as though to settle scores with his hapless parent.

The psychic mix of hostility towards his father and empathy for his sister catalyzed by self-pity made Yadagiri's welcome words seem absurd to Chandra's pixilated mind. What was worse, the father's show of affection appeared apologetic to his son's afflicted mind. Unfortunately thus, in the son's myopic vision, the paternal love seemed an embodiment of parental guilt. It was as if at that very moment the son's alienation from his father reached a point of no return.