The Promise

Grey clouds loomed overhead and blotted out the sky till as far as he could see. He stood alone at the gate, looking up and around at the desolate loneliness that surrounded him. Turgid drops of rain splashed into overflowing pools of water around him. A cold breeze blew across the compound and chilled him to the bone. He was shivering and alone, but he wasn’t scared in the least. He had no clue about where his courage came from, only that the resilience of his character equipped him to face anything that nature had to throw at him.

After all, he had been promised.

He clutched the raincoat tighter around him, meager shield though it was against the torrential downpour. He gritted his teeth and squinted at the horizon, expecting his dad to come and get him at any moment. School had got over quite a while back, and he had lost track of the time after the first hour. All his friends had left for the warmth of their homes. The watchman had asked him to go back, then pleaded with him, then asked if he could arrange for some transport for him, but he had refused on all three occasions.

It was not that he couldn’t walk the way back. It would be a long walk, a dreary walk, but it was certainly not an impossible walk. He did not WANT to walk back, for you see, he had been promised.

The watchman was now safely ensconced in the school cafeteria, safe from the thunderstorm that had come out of nowhere. He stood alone now, under the watchful eyes of the neem tree just outside the school campus. The tree itself seemed a bit unsteady, as if unable to decide whether to stand up and face the storm, or to lie down and see it through. He stood under the tree, just as he stood every day of every season, and waited for his dad to come and get him.

He was not disappointed, or concerned. He had been promised things before, and those promises had been forgotten or broken, and he did not mind any of that. His dad was a busy man, a zonal manager for a multinational cosmetics company; he rarely had enough time to keep his promises. But this was different, this promise that he had made. It had the plaintive reassurance offered by the sort of desperation that can only come from the loss of a loved one. It had a purity to it that was offset by the great loss that he had endured with his dad, and this was one promise that he had known would be kept as soon as his dad made it.

They were going to scatter his mom’s ashes today.

She had died a month before. It had been a horrific accident; her car had been crushed in between a barrier and a municipal bus. The petrol tank had caught fire, and exploded, and her body was charred almost beyond recognition. They had identified her, father and son together, only by the string of pearls that had escaped the fire. The string of pearls she had bought from the international airport at Bombay, one of the few luxuries she had indulged in her life. She wore them almost every day, and they added a twinkle to her eyes and a heartbreaking eloquence to her smile. He had seen her happiest in those pearls, and it seemed almost prosaic that they would continue to belong to her in spite of her early demise. The body, or whatever was left of it had been cremated, but his dad had kept the ashes. They had needed the support and strength it provided before they could finally accept that she was gone.

It had been difficult. She had been the light of their individual lives, the glue that bound them together. The family had not been a close knit one, as most families usually are, they all had their own little worlds to play in, and all of those worlds had seemed mutually exclusive to one another until she magically seemed to unite all of them with a single action or a single word. She had been everything to them, until she died. And now that she had gone, they found themselves in the untenable position of having to continue with their existence when the heart had been ripped out of it.

He squinted at the horizon as lightning flashed overhead. As the thunder boomed all around him he thought he heard footsteps behind him, and allowed himself a glimmer of hope for a moment, before it vanished when he turned around and saw nothing there. It was getting dark as the day gave way to dusk. His bag seemed to grow heavier on his shoulders; his legs seemed to be failing him as he grew increasingly weary. But he was just as alert, just as determined as he had always been. With juvenile determination he clung on to his conviction.

The promise would be kept.

It was almost dark and the neem tree cast a menacing shadow on him. He had been sitting at its base, tired and exhausted by the incessant rain pouring down. He was hungry and forlorn, forced to near desperation by the ravages of nature. He rubbed his eyes, forcing them to stay open, and his mind to stay awake. But his mind seemed to wander off to places he never thought it could go to of its own volition. He was mesmerized by the gamut of colour and emotion stored within his memories, as all of them came flooding back to him. His birthday parties and his concerts, they flashed right by him like a projectionist’s trial run. He heard his parents cheer for him and whoop for joy when he came on stage. He heard his teacher’s words of encouragement. He saw his friends run about and scream for joy.

He was there, right among the joyous throng of people, celebrating life and all that is worth living. They had him in their arms, they talked to him and sang to him, and they made him feel what he had not felt for such a long time, alive. He slipped into his reverie unaided and uninterrupted. All his childhood he had been scared, terrified of the consequences of his life, of whether he would be able to live it to the best of his expectations. For the first time, he managed to let all of his inhibitions vanish into the overarching experience of his own vitality.

He did not even notice his dad until he stood right in front of him, blocking out the rain and the thunder and lightning.

He took his hand, gentle yet firm, and was lifted to his feet. He gave him his bag, and sheltered under his umbrella. They walked.

His dad was wearing the grey trenchcoat that his mom had gifted him for their anniversary. It had not been their happiest, there had been too much work it do, and too little time in which to do it. He had felt ignored then, and not for the first time, but none of that seemed to matter.

They were finally going to lay a ghost to rest.

As they walked, the road seemed to dissolve under his feet. He looked up at his dad, he was silent and yet not sullen. His face was radiant, his eyes calm. I knew you would come, daddy, he wanted to shout out.

You had promised.

But he said nothing. He continued to walk, in step with his father. The rain had stopped, the umbrella was closed. The dreary day gave way to a pleasant evening. The scent of fresh blossoms mixed with the wet earth permeated through the air. A light breeze wafted through the trees and caressed their faces. The moon rose in its incandescent splendor and seemed to light their path. The road was covered with yellow flowers and green leaves that were desaturated to a light grey by the moonlight. The birds cried out their nightsong, and a few bats flew past on their nocturnal hunt.

The walk was shorter than he remembered it, but then he wasn’t alone. Walks always seemed shorter when there was somebody to share them with. He had reasoned it out as being because when you walk alone, there is just so much more to see and experience, and when you walk with somebody, you do not really see and experience anything other than the person you walk with. He remembered his mom smiling at him when he told her. She had stroked his hair and kissed him, and said that now that she thought about it, he seemed so right.

He missed her, but he knew that she had to go. Not for her peace, he understood, but for their own. He had to let go, and so did his dad, for her memory was so overwhelming it would encompass their lives if allowed to. The worst sort of ghosts are the ones we build up in our minds, he thought, because they have so much power to hurt us at just the places where we are most vulnerable.

They had entered the driveway when he saw the lights. Bright blue and red and flashing independently of one another, they seemed to cover the entire lawn in kaleidoscopic hues, their dazzling brilliance all but blinding to the casual observer. He heard the excited chatter of voices, some murmuring, others shouting, yet others howling. He saw the uniforms, khaki and white, scurrying about. And yet all he could feel was the wet earth underneath him. All he could smell was the wet grass that surrounded him.

Except that wasn’t true. He smelt fear, and he was unsure for a moment where it came from. And then he knew, he smelt his own fear. The chatter seemed to die down, almost as if someone had turned down the volume imperceptibly on the uniforms. The uniforms stopped scurrying about randomly and seemed to follow a pattern of meticulous order.

His neighbours looked at him with eyes wide open and mouths gaping, unable to express anything more than the obvious. A kindly looking man with a bushy moustache was talking to them, they pointed to him and nodded. He stepped forward and blocked the path.

“I’m sorry son, but you’re going to have to come to the station with us. There has been a suicide, and it is a police case now. Apparently your father killed himself this afternoon. We need to ask you some questions..”

He would have turned back, but he didn’t. He already knew what he would see. The promise had been kept.