Just Out Of Reach

JUST OUT OF REACH Jhinuk was staring out of the windows absently. Dusk had descended there, though not low enough to touch the budding semi white kaash flowers just beginning to peep out amongst the weeds on the grounds outside. A few stars although have started to twinkle in the gradually darkening inky sky. Something jerked Jhinuk back to her senses. The room had shrouded itself in shadows- she has not even had the urge to turn on the lights. “Lazy bee!!” she chided herself. But even then the lethargy that had engulfed her since late afternoon refused to budge and she found herself saying “Why not give it a few more minutes still?” Every evening of Jhinuk’s life lately has been the same. Dull, boring – preoccupying. We call it “Lately”, because the days when Rini was a child didn’t use to be like this. Jhinuk always had a lot to do. Rini, her only daughter never felt like she could sit quietly for a moment and give her mother some respite in turn. She liked running around the house, just after she returned from school, loudly screeching and honking- which were supposed to be car horns- if anyone stumbled across her way. Jhinuk had a hard time making her brunch or getting her down to study. She particularly recalls the day when Rini had banged herself against a bare wall at a breakneck speed and had come to her bleeding profusely- not to mention crying relentlessly-telling her mother that she had mistimed the brakes in her car (?) with the result that she had ran into the wall! That was too much of a test of patience for Jhinuk. The first thing she had done then was slap her daughter just as hard, causing her to shed some more noisy tears! The memory of that day still irritates Jhinuk. Only the source of irritation isn’t as it used to be. Rini is a bigger girl now. There was a time when everything in Rini’s world would begin and end with Mommy. Jhinuk liked that. She also disliked that. Not that it matters now. She had taught her daughter always to be free willing. “Be self dependant. Do whatever you think must be the right thing to do. If you are justified, you will be excused.” Rini would listen, her eyes out of focus, as they always did whenever her mother happened to barge on longwinded ideological lectures. May be she had put in too much of effort to inculcate a bit of her own self in her daughter Jhinuk introspected while rocking gently on the armchair. When, not so long back, Rini used to be only just old enough to be cradled in her arms, Jhinuk would stare into her innocent baby face and wonder if she could bring up this helpless creature to be something like the steely woman people knew her to be. But looking back, her little desires didn’t seem to be that little. Jhinuk sunk her head backwards. She was having difficulty to come to terms with the newer horizon of life, which Rini had decided to live her own way. How old has she been yet? Still nothing more than a nestling that had just learnt to fly and discovered that there awaits a fabulous world outside her mother’s safe repose… arms thrown wide to welcome her into its spellbinding labyrinths. So, suddenly Rini finds her mother’s protectiveness imposing, even disturbing. “I am not a child now in case you haven’t noticed Ma. You don’t need to know every little thing I do.” Rini had let go of a tirade when

Jhinuk had finally crossed her about a hushed phone call she was making every evening. Jhinuk had flared up too. “How dare you speak like that to your mother? What do you think of yourself? Have you grown up so much that you could say whatever you like to me?” “No but at least I have grown so much so as to have right to some privacy.” “What privacy? How old are you? Do you know anything of the people around you? This age of yours is so vulnerable that anyone could exploit you. Do you think yourself old enough to understand that?” “I understand Ma and I know my friends. I trust them. Even you know them. You never complained before. So why do you have to make this fuss now every other day?” “If you were a mother dear, you would have understood. But you are still very sadly childish. When have I ever stopped you from anything? But there is a limit of tolerance. You are testing that. Do you realize it?” “Why? What the hell have I done? As far as I can see my only crime has been that I have been spending a bit more time with my friends than I have been doing with you.” “Let me tell you what you have done. You come home late every evening from school. God knows what you do there after the classes. You have stopped worrying about studies. I have noticed you tend to avoid any questions about them. Do you think just being good at studies will take you that far? It won’t. You are making phone calls when you are supposed to be studying. You know I wouldn’t have opposed to you going around with a boyfriend if only you would have concentrate on your priorities. It’s high time you decide that….and remember if anything’s wrong with you, your precious friends won’t help you out. That would have to be me no matter how much I irritate you.” Rini had been contemplating her mother for sometime. Her eyes were red but she wasn’t tearful. “You know what Ma? You think I am going to be your little girl forever and you don’t get the fact that I need my friends now and just can’t blindly hang on to every word you say. The sooner YOU realize that, the happier both of us will be.”… And she had stormed into her room. Jhinuk did try hard to be understanding. She felt may be Rini was right. Perhaps she was missing out something about her daughter while engrossed in her own loneliness. May be she was counting upon her company too much. There are after all many hazards of being a single mother. But as days rolled over, Rini grew less and less docile and Jhinuk found it impossible to stop herself from being a doting mother. Rini’s father had been found missing the day after she was born. He was never found again. No news of him being dead however had reached their family. Those were such turbulent times. There had been police enquiries but no result had come out and as to what eventually happened to him since then has remained a mystery. Everyone sympathized with Jhinuk then… his family, her family, all her friends, relatives, neighbors …Everyone. “How unfortunate the poor girl is! To think that her husband should go missing like this just after their

child is born!” Jhinuk grew to detest the sympathy that was pouring in. She was fed up but the gossipers were not. Nightmares drove her around as she grew tired of attempting to stop people predicting darkly about her future. She spent long hours shut up behind the doors, gazing listlessly into the innocently pristine face of the infant and watching her smile, as if knowingly, even though she was deep asleep. Can folklores be true? Is she really talking to God? Suppose she could, what would she ask Him? “Tell me where my father is!” But then she didn’t know that her father had suddenly disappeared from her life. Perhaps she would have to grow up never knowing that such a person ever existed. Jhinuk felt awfully sorry for the tiny creature now weeping in sleep. She had never known a more helplessly ignorant thing! Such was Rini once upon a time…the same one who lashes out at her mother now for not minding her own business! Jhinuk felt she had left no stone unturned to raise her daughter as normally as possible. But everything doesn’t seem perfect. Perhaps she had overlooked a gaping flaw then which she could only regret now. It’s not that Rini was lying when she said Jhinuk liked her friends. Even now Jhinuk doesn’t have any complaints against them. When Rini was in the secondary school, they were a fine lot. Especially Aditi who was Rini’s best buddy was truly a nice girl. Jhinuk loved her. Countless number of days Rini had come home from school with her expression as dark as the bottom of an overused kettle! Jhinuk never needed to ask what had happened. The absence of Rini’s customary shabby ways of dropping her things here and there could only mean she had fought with Aditi and they weren’t speaking to each other. Rini would keep quiet, keep to herself, which was highly unusual and would respond once if her mother had called out to her at least ten times. Jhinuk would have to come to the drawing room where Rini would invariably be surfing channels on the television without really looking at anything. “What’s up?” “Nothing.” “How many times do you think I have called?” “I didn’t hear. Sorry.” “How are you able to hear now?” “Oh, shut up please Ma! Will you?” Rini would throw down anything she would be holding, bolt to her room and slam the door with as much strength as she could muster. Then it would be Jhinuk’s turn to plead with her, coax her and console her, at the end of which Rini would only be willing to speak to Aditi again. Both of them would get along as if nothing had ever happened. This never ending drama had been reenacted so many times that Jhinuk had got used to it. But time had tided over that phase too. Jhinuk doubted whether Rini, now in the higher levels after secondary, was in touch with even her once best buddy. She hardly spoke of Aditi nowadays.

Jhinuk was utterly perplexed, not to mention worried, about Rini. The change in her total behavior had been so drastic that it was almost unnerving. Jhinuk had secretly inquired her whereabouts after school. She could only blame her misfortune for the feedback she got. Everyday after school Rini would go out with boys to have fun… often with more than one of them. Most of them were from her own school, but many were not. They however all appeared wellto-do and it didn’t look like Rini was up to anything apart from enjoying their attention. But she never went out with the same guy. It seemed to Jhinuk that Rini was insatiably hungry for the company of men and no one person could please her. What was worse, she was growing more and more desperate. She had also started turning a deaf ear to whoever advised her to give a break to this game that could turn gravely dangerous anytime. Jhinuk was at a loss about what to do. How to make her only daughter see sense? Jhinuk tried in everyway to make Rini understand. She incited her daughter to speak up about what was going on in her mind…. But Rini was introvert and suddenly she was being implacably obstinate. She would absolutely refuse to open up. Meanwhile her annual results had come out. Rini used to be a pretty consistent scorer, so Jhinuk was a trifle surprised when she received a call from her school authority right when she was leaving for her workplace. “Mrs. Dutta?” “Yes?” “I am calling from your daughter’s school. You need to know that your daughter has refused to collect her annual report card. As you are her guardian, we are requesting you to get it on her behalf.” “She refused to take it? Why?” “Well, you must know that she has failed one of her majors, so she is ineligible to be promoted to the next level. Your daughter knows this. She says the examiner had not treated her answer sheet fairly.” “Failed? My God, are you sure there hasn’t been a mistake?” “Mrs. Dutta, we are a school with commendable reputation. Never in our history has there been such a grave mistake. Also we don’t have any grudge against your daughter. Why would anyone fail her on purpose like your daughter suggests? No, Mrs. Dutta …you please come over and ask her to control herself. May be she is in shock and needs some rest.” Rini did not throw any tantrum when her mother had asked her to follow her back home after collecting the report card for her. She was unnaturally quiet all throughout the way back. Jhinuk was quiet too. As wind washed against her face with the bus picking up speed, she felt disheveled. Somehow nothing in her life has ever been right. She had fought again and again but the rewards she reaped for her valiance were situations still more daunting.

Once they reached home silently, Rini slowly walked over to a sofa, threw her weight down on it and gazed obliviously on to the floor. She didn’t even seem to realize that her mother had sat down by her. Jhinuk put a gentle hand on her daughter’s shoulder. Rini gave a shudder. Perhaps she was expecting a severe reprimand. But sometimes a bit of patience can work wonders when nothing else can. Rini suddenly looked straight in to her mother’s eyes and said “I am really very sorry Ma. You won’t forgive me ever, will you?” Painful tears were silently sliding down her face. How could Jhinuk not forgive? Jhinuk had promised Rini that she wouldn’t have to go back to her school. She would be joining a new one and start everything anew. But the problem was that no school was prepared to admit a student in the middle of the year, especially a dropout. Though Jhinuk never discussed this problem with her daughter, Rini seemed to second-guess it. These days, she would usually stay very subdued. It was quite difficult to tell if at all there was a second person in the house if she was not in the same room. She had however returned to her usual cheery self that she used to be once. But she had also started having frequent mood swings when she would lapse into vacant stupors for hours at a time. Jhinuk got no satisfactory reply as to what Rini actually thought of during those hours. This strange development intrigued Jhinuk. She hoped the sooner she could get Rini back to school and to a normal surrounding, the better it would be. She had also decided to take her for some mental conditioning. Jhinuk could tell her daughter was suffering from severe depression. If only she could draw out some more time from her duty hours… Jhinuk was heading home from her office with a particular piece of good news. One of the schools she had applied to, for Rini’s admission, had consented to take her in. Jhinuk couldn’t wait to share it with Rini. She knew full well that Rini was waiting as eagerly as herself to hear from the schools in affirmative. Jhinuk didn’t want to squander the pleasant surprise by breaking it early over the phone. She stood on the doorstep and rang the bell impatiently with the trace of a true smile playing on her lips for the first time in many days. …The doorbell rang loudly shaking Jhinuk out of her reverie. The darkness in the room was complete. It was late. Jhinuk finally arose and turned on the lights. The room was suddenly flooded by them. As if almost burst into being from nowhere, did a laminated photo of a cheerful young girl, smiling jovially down from the wall just opposite the armchair. Jhinuk had spent one more evening like every other before, reminiscing the past. Someone was at the door. Jhinuk shut her eyes for a moment as if to adjust herself to the sudden blinding light and swept from the room without so much as a glance at the wall. Ishita Mukherjee 3rd year, Electronics & Instrumentation Engineering