A year passed by. Many things changed in the lives of the two brothers though it wasn’t clear whether for better or worse. Dida passed away a few weeks after her meeting with them. This didn’t come as a surprise, they were expecting it. She died quietly in her sleep. The brothers took this stoically enough but it seemed to affect Sujoy more. For him, she had been the real mother figure, much more than Mala ever was.
Anu and Jeet moved back into their home and Sujoy did his best to bridge the gaps between them. He failed. Something vital had gone missing and he just couldn’t recreate it. After a while he gave up and without any acrimony or rancour, made an honest admission to Anu. She had seen it coming. Such things were rarely amicable, but for Jeet’s sake they decided to separate without any bitter wrangling.
Anu and Jeet moved to her mother’s place in Vasant Vihar. Sujoy would continue to support them financially and could meet Jeet whenever he wanted to. Eventually, they would file for a divorce, by mutual consent. Sujoy quit his bank job and joined a philanthropic foundation funded by a prominent industrialist. He also moved out of their family apartment into a smaller flat on Safdarjang Enclave, overlooking the deer park. Effectively, he had changed his whole life around. Ronojoy witnessed all this with growing consternation, but to his great surprise, Sujoy didn’t look like he was falling apart. In fact, he appeared quite composed. Of course, he regretted the growing distance with Jeet, but accepted that this was inevitable. He cut down on his drinking and started travelling out of the city on long weekends, on his own. Over the months, he even made two trips to their Mukteshwar house.
Ronojoy wasn’t doing too well, though. In the wake of the tumultuous events surrounding Ma’s death, his life drifted into a void. Far from rebounding from that emotional low, he found himself engulfed in an even greater darkness. His sessions with Doctor Mirza continued but they didn’t seem to help him much. He lost interest in his work and it became a chore, though he persevered with it. At least, it filled up most of his day. He started having an occasional drink on evenings when he felt particularly low and very soon he was drinking pretty much every day, though he kept this from the doctor. He met a woman through work; they were in touch for a while and she seemed interested. But after a while, it felt like too much effort and he stopped returning her calls. Apu Kaka got in touch with him after he returned to America. Ronojoy replied politely to his mails but it didn’t blossom into any great affinity between them.
The brothers met sometimes on a Sunday, about once or twice a month. The crisis seemed to have brought them together, now there was a drift again. It was Sujoy who would express concern now about his brother’s drinking and general manner. Once, they went up to the hill house together. There, they took a walk on the same forest path that Baba had taken them along on. It was nice enough, but memories lingered. Every corner of the house reeked of Baba’s presence. And Ma’s. Sujoy stopped by the piano one evening and said, ‘Ma shouldn’t have moved to the Ashram. Music may have helped her heal.’ This made Ronojoy sad but also happy; it was the kindest thought his brother had had of their mother in years.
Ronojoy slept in the attic during their stay; he felt a bit conscious about drinking in Sujoy’s presence. There, as he lay one night in a state of semi sleep, the incident in the attic from their last visit with Baba floated up in front of his eyes. It had happened nearly three decades ago, yet it appeared so distinct that Ronojoy had the impression of it literally playing out in the present.
It had been late at night, when Ronojoy’s eyes had opened for a bit. He saw, with some surprise, his father seated at the foot of their bed. The light from the stairs fell on Baba, he looked a bit dishevelled. He was staring intently at Sujoy’s face. Ronojoy watched him through half-open eyes, Subir hadn’t noticed that he was being watched. He stared for some time, then reached out and swept Chhotku’s hair away from his face. Ronojoy thought his father was crying. Unable to keep watching secretly any longer, he whispered,
‘Baba, why are you crying?’
Subir’s eyes widened in surprise. He seemed to be in a state of great emotion. In a broken voice, he rasped:
‘What shall I tell you, Bochka? Little Chhotku is not your brother,’ before convulsing into sobs.
Ronojoy, thinking his father had got something muddled up in his head, replied, ‘Na, Baba. What are you saying? Chhotku is my brother, how can he not be?’
There was a brief silence, in which Subir seemed to compose himself. At least enough to be able to say, ‘Yes. Quite so. What a silly thing for me to say. He is, of course. And you must always look after him as his older brother, okay?’
Then he rose abruptly and left the room.
Dida’s words came back to him, about how Sujoy’s anger as a child was almost as if he had known the truth all along.
It was actually Ronojoy who had.
Denial, suppression or forgetting – which game of shadows had the mind resorted to, to shield a twelve-year-old from carrying such an enormous burden?
More time passed. Ronojoy’s problems with sleep got worse. He now needed a pill every night and even then, it was uneven. Often, he would wake up in the middle of the night and sit staring for hours at the flower painting on the wall. Sometimes, his gaze would fall on the small glass bottle on the bedside table, full of the pills that tried to put him to sleep.