Love or Vengeance ???

Ward no. 19 , 10:45 am. Few of us flocking a patient, interrogating him, asking him silly and incomprehensible questions, as if under the blow of these questions the patient will break down and somehow will come up with the name of the disease himself from which he is suffering.

Few others of us have throned themselves on the side of the bed in an abnormal geometrical figure which we will be embarrassed to say was intended to be a circle.(no doubt why they didn’t take maths)this crooked circle was blocking the way of the desperate patients to the toilet.

Few, well only two were sitting with a lost look on their face and were looking for something in their books which I am sure even they didn’t know what they were looking for.

I entered the ward, yes 15 min late and tried to form a part of the interrogating team, then the oblong circle where I found the discussion too boring(same old blame game, politics, college administration grudges, cribbing, etc) and then finally tried to find the something interesting the rest two of them had found in their books(one was looking at the contents and the other at the index). Not amused I looked around the ward for something interesting.

And then a man’s wailing. I turn around and see a black, shriveled man at the edge of his bed at the verge of falling. Maximum possible movement was occurring at his head and the rest of his body was paralysed, limp. but in desperation even by this little movement and putting whatever was in him into that movement he was successful in dragginghis limp body from the centre of the bed to its edge which in his case is very long distance.he can’t speak and the only sound he can produce is a cry.

His eyes, sunken, dark, empty wre desperately looking at the door. Perhaps they were speaking.they had that childish fear in them which appears when left alone. This fear alone had given him such strength that he had scaled that enormous , impossible distance from the centre of the bed to the edge and he is about to fall.

Then came running through that door the figure whose momentary absence was killing him of loneliness. She was clad in an ordinary sari and a mangalsuta.she helped him back to the centre of the bed showing affection and care of a mother, wiped off his tears. She asked him what for he was crying but without any expectation of an answer kept pampering him. She knew the answer already.

But she was too young to be his mother.

She is Manorama, the wife and the dried up figure on the bed is Suresh the husband and this the love story of Manorama and Suresh.

Suresh is a soldier, now not so much of it. He has turned black, reduced to skin and bones, you touch him and everything pricks, his eyes are hollow, face expressionless, can’t speak, only cries for communicating anything like a child, his whole body is limp.

Yes, you are right. He has AIDS and is dying, not today but sometime soon.

And yes, you are right again. Manorama is also HIV+ve. Where did she get it from? Any guesses? You are right again.

Well suresh was HIV+ve all the while. He was living with it when he married Manorama. this gruesome fact was not disclosed by either suresh or his family. Crime ?

Manorama used to look at her husband’s nails. They were so black. But suresh told her that he had alwaya had them. Every month herbal medicines reached their home by post. But suresh told her that they were for his stomach which was always upset.he did whatever he could to hide it from her and in the neantime wrote for her the same destiny that he had chosen for himself. Crime ?

Then an attack of paralysis to suresh…..hospital…..tests…..and the tuth. Manorama’s universe collapsed. It was worse than capital punishment for her. The deadly disease was a gift from someone she had loved. She was going to hang for someone else’s crime, or in a different way she was murdered.

Anger? Hate? She didn’t even get the time for them. She was shocked.
Did she leave him? No.

She saw her love reduce to nearly a vegetable. she cried not for herself but for him.
Now she is with him day in and day out, caring for him all the more. but why is she doing this, why doesn’t she leave him.

Maybe this is his punishment. She is treating him all the more with love and care than before.for suresh would have expected her to leave him , run out on him.that would have given him pleasure, the kind of pleasure people get from pain.he would have found pleasure from the fact that he is left alone when he is in pain.

This feeling of an outcast, loneliness, nobody to care for him would have made him happy. It would have given him a reason to hate the world and would have found happiness in hatred. The fear of dying with which he would have lived alone would have given him pleasure. So much pleasure that he would have killed his guilt for the crime he had committed. In the search of this pleasure he would have gone to such an extent to even blame Manorama for leaving him alone to die.

But Manorama won’t let him have his pleasure, kill his guilt, hate the world and make her responsible for all this. She will make him realize his crime day after day by remaining with him, by caring for him. This is his punishment- love. unconditional love.

He is now dependant on her for everything, needs her all the time around him so much so that he cries when she goes out of sight. He feels lonely in a minute. He feels he is being left alone to die. he is like a child.

And the ultimate punishment- forgiveness. Manorama has forgiven him his crime. She has forgiven him for taking her life. The reason? What could it be?

Suresh never wanted children of his own. Now she knows why. She has forgiven him because she would have died a thousand times if she were to see her child suffer.

But she has her child now- Suresh. And she loves him very much. Unconditionally, like a mother.

Manorama hasn’t informed her family for they would have taken her away from him. She’s not at ease with her in laws either. They are up every month for suresh’s salary and she fights with them because she has to take care of her child.

She says to Suresh” se Mr. Suresh Kamble , what all your wife has to do for you. This will remain happening if you do not stand up for me. I want you to get up and stand beside me.”
And Suresh Kamble just stares at his mother like every child does.

This love story like any other great love story will end in a tragedy, but unheard.