The Call Of Regret

By Sreemanti Bag

Three murders in a row! Yet unperturbed. She sat in her favorite cafeteria sipping her not so favorite black coffee with a dollop of cream. She wondered how her black coffee felt so sweet to her taste buds while jotting down her memoirs in her favorite red diary and wondering, why she carried the murder weapon along with her instead of disposing it off and why her instincts drove her to her favorite cafeteria right after the murders instead of hiding in a safe sojourn.

“Rubbish….” A harsh voice echoed from within a page of her diary. “You are just not worth it. You are out of the project.” The page drenched with tears as she remembered how rudely her boss threw her out of a very ambitious project which could have changed the course of her career.

But Rina could not afford this loss. Her husband Ravi’s business was running at a damn loss. He had a mammoth bank loan to repay. Rina’s salary was too meagre in comparison to this. Only the project could have given her some opportunity to save her husband’s drowning fate. She had no option other than bending down at her knees in her boss’s residence one fine morning.

Mr. Raghavan threw a quick glance at her needy eyes and said in a jestful voice, “How dare you creep into my house at such odd hours!” Rina broke down into tears!!!. She bowed down and begged and muttered every possible prayer to convince her boss to get her back to the job but all went in vain. When Rina prepared to leave, she was called back, “Better come at night.”

The night was the most horrendous night of her life when quite hesitantly, reluctantly and above all…. unwillingly she had to give in to the demands of her boss for a one night stand. “Anything for you, my love, Ravi”, She wrote in bold red letters in her diary before creeping into the unwilling act.

The next day she woke up all in sweat. Her fingers were trembling in sense of guilt when Ravi caught hold of those and thanked her. “Sweetheart… it’s all for your sincere efforts last night that I am hoping for a financial recovery again.” “But why your fingers are so icy cold while you are all in sweat!!!!..... Are you doing fine? Do you need some medicines or shall I call a doctor?”

Rina hid her tears behind her dupatta and stared vacantly through her specs . “My love”, she uttered in silent words “It’s none other than the outcome of my last night’s sin which I would probably hide from you for the rest of my life. Though it broke the sanctity of our marriage, yet I did it for your benefit only. Hope you would be able to forgive me even if you come to know about it someday.” But aloud she said “Hubby darling, it’s just a little indigestion and lack of sleep last night, please don’t worry about it. Please have your favorite aloo paratha in breakfast and allow me to leave for office.” “I am not in a mood for food right now”, said Ravi and would have it together once you come back with a good news.”

Rina walked into office hoping for an offer letter with a hefty pay package but she was taken aback when Mr. Raghavan almost refused to recognize her, and as if he had a complete whitewash of last night’s memory. “Once fired, is fired forever”, thundered Mr. Raghavan “How dare you enter my cabin with such arrogance as if I promised to re recruit you! Security, please show her the door.” She was ousted out of the office like a street-beggar.

In sheer anger, Rina rushed back home. Ravi was sleeping, so could not listen to her angry steps. “Prepare to breathe your last, Mr. Raghavan”, she scratched on her diary with red ink. Her anger flared up like a volcanic eruption. She picked up the vegetable knife from her kitchen and without losing a moment, returned office.

“Madam, nobody can go inside sir’s room now, it’s his strict orders.” The security warned. Rina held the security guard by his collar and slapped him five times. Her uncontrolled anger has endowed upon her some superpower. She banged the lean security guard on the wall and adamantly surged inside.

“Prepare to breathe your last, Mr. Raghavan”, she repeated the bold red line of her diary verbally, “So, Mr. Raghavan, why am I seeing fear in your dirty eyes? Where did you lock this fear up last night when you forced me into a sinful act with a false promise? Had you ever thought of such a nasty consequence, Mr. Cheater”, she screamed. Rina didn’t lost any more time and before anyone can come to his rescue, she took out the knife from her handbag and plunged it right into his chest…. Blood ran down the expensive Armani suit.

Rina was in a complete state of delusion after the incident. None of her senses were working. She jumped out of the cabin -window off the first floor, hurt her knees and legs with minor bruises and somehow managed to escape without being caught.

Ravi, the love of her life, her childhood sweetheart and husband of four years was the only solace she could think of at the moment. After incurring constant losses at his business, he has taken to alcohol of late. Rina returned home, embraced him snugly, and hid her tear-filled face within his shoulder. She could smell alcohol in his mouth while she tried to put a peck on his lips.

She had a surge of emotions at the moment. She thought that confession to the most trusted person of her life would be best way of repentance rather than hiding of facts. “Sweetheart, please forgive me.”, she cried, “I had done a sin. I had broken the sanctity of our marriage.” In a single breath, she narrated as much as she could starting from her losing the project and trying to justify what led to her infidelity. “Please try to understand, it was all for you my love, to save your honor, our family pride and the future of our kids that I was compelled.”

Ravi put a tight slap on her saggy face and pushed her on the floor by a vigorous jolt. “Don’t even try to touch me, you bitchy woman!” Yet Rina continued her confession, “I admit I have done a mistake but please don’t be so harsh to me. It’s for you only…..” Ravi interrupted, “You idiot, you slept with your boss for a night and trying to make a fool out of me by giving fake justifications!” and started breaking his wine bottles. Rina thought it was any husband’s natural reaction to his wife’s extramarital fling. But she was shocked at Ravi’s unexpected statement “And yet you could not bag the project? Duffer, if one night was not enough, you could have tried for few more nights with your boss. What was more important to you? Your flinching conscience or our drooping economic status?”

Rina was dumbfounded. She discovered a stranger in her eternal love. Ravi showered her with slangs. “You lost the project out of your idiocy! If that was your intention, you could have opened it out to me. I would have urged you to bed the rich and influential s every day. I have no objection to any act done in want for money.”

Rina was fathoming the most dreadful nightmare of her life. Ravi’s words were humming in her ears as portrayal of betrayal, more grievous than the one night she sacrificed to her boss for her husband’s well being. “My love,” she started penning down in her diary, “since childhood, I have always done all things that would bring you happiness. The justification for right or wrong lost its priority in search of your smile. But it took me more than thirty years to realise that I have put in all my efforts for a selfish giant. You have utilized every bit of my emotions to curve out your own ambitions which you could have easily done by your own honest efforts.” “I was blind in love,” She cried silently as drops of warm tears drenched the thick bold red lines of her self realization.

Ravi was going on with his ugly chit chats. Rina lost her patience. She picked up the same vegetable knife she carried into her boss’s cabin and stabbed Ravi several times with it. “Goodbye my love,” She yelled, “Goodbye to the fake love I have nurtured for years” and busted out in tears.

Blood went pouring in, Ravi lay in a gory bloodbath screaming for help in distress but the loud music in the background from a neighborhood wedding party probably obscured his faint cry. Shattered Rina went on crying but didn’t even throw a second look at her dying husband. The only thought that pacified her was that kids were not at home. But how unmindful she became to forget the presence of her four-years younger sister Sheena who had flown all the way down from Kolkata to Mumbai two days back to write a postgraduate entrance examination.

“Di, you murderer, you brute, you killed my bro-in-law. I would call the police right now.” As Sheena prepared to dial at the local police station, Rina regained her senses. It’s high time to wipe out the only eyewitness of her crime. “Stop”, she shouted “Do you think I don’t know why you are always in support of your brother in law! Do you think I am a fool and blind? I am well aware of the affair running between you two. I have secretly kept a track on the messages and chats you exchanged! I only kept my eyes closed and lips sealed in faith that it’s my illusion, not my beloved ones’ fault. But today is the day of bitter realisations and their rectifications as well.” So did she with a spurt using the same murder weapon as the in the previous murders. Sheena lay on the floor bleeding torrentially.

The day disappeared into dusk. As the dying sunlight lit up her cheeks and the glimpse of frothy ripples by the Juhu sea-beach soothed her raging heart, Rina kept mumbling to herself, “why would a Presidency-college economics graduate like me commit criminal offences and take up law in her own hand?” But her mind has become fearless. Now she is even ready to surrender. “Now, I have nothing left with me except some REGRETs. Nothing more to lose as well”, she wrote in her diary. “The world around me would now not pity even if I lose myself”.

Suddenly she stood up with a mood swing. An avid cricket fan, she muttered- “Three down, one more to go. That completes the vicious cycle.” She sprang up from the chair, took out the knife from under her scarf, and started stabbing herself several times all over her body before anyone else in the café could come to her rescue.

Two days later on a sultry morning Rina opened her eyes for one last time on the bed of a super specialty hospital thronged by her colleagues, relatives and a host of journalists waiting outside.

To her utter surprise a very familiar voice screamed to the top of her voice in ecstasy “Di is out of coma” and others rejoiced by clapping. Her blurred vision could make out only one face stooping down as if to touch her breath, “Sheena---how come is she alive!”, Rina tried to recapitulate feebly. “I pierced her body through and through with my knife, then what made her survive!” Her eyesight became faint as she realized her last moment was nearing.

The doctor interrupted as she dragged Sheena away from Rina’s bed---- “There’s no reason for celebration, Ms. Sheena. I fear your sister has not much of life left with her. I know you had observed two-days’ fast for her recovery but still keep least hopes of any miracle.” Though Rina could not see anything, her trembling fingers could feel the warm touch of a very familiar hand- the hand which caressed her, embraced her, fought with her, slapped her and put on the wedding-ring on her ring finger four years back. She had no doubt it was Ravi. Her pale nails were drenched with Ravi’s roaring tears.

Strings of surprises one after the other for the dying lady!....... “How did I miss all the targets?” Rina thought and why are they showing so much love and affection for the one who tried to kill them!

She felt utmost curiosity to know if Mr. Raghavan was alive as well! “Thanks Mr. Raghavan”, Ravi’s shattered voice chimed amidst the silence. “Thanks for all your support, Sir. If you would not have been kind enough to arrange for the funds from the company even by keeping your own position at stake, I could not have met up the expenses for Rina’s treatment.” “It’s all for your genuine love Mr. Ravi.”, said Mr. Raghavan “I have seen how always you stood strong by your wife’s side right from the day of your marriage till she passed into coma.”

Everybody seemed to observe a premature condolence as Rina used last of her energy to pray God to let her know what led to the untwisting of events! How come all the sinners survived her fatal attacks while she herself lay in her death-bed! The doctor said in a low voice, “Mr. Ravi please don’t be so upset. You did all those which were within your limits, even tried to surpass it. But it’s not your fault. You can’t always be cautious with patients of schizophrenia.”

“Schizophrenia!” The very word jolted Rina. Whom was the doctor referring to as a schizophrenic!!! But her weak heart could not yield to further exclamations. “Doctor…pulse….BP…. falling down…” “Nurse, Arrange for CPR, Adrenaline….quick….”. All these incoherent intermingled words she could make out for the last time. Her query remained unanswered forever. She had left the world of mortal humans with a purse full of unknown REGRETs.

A few days after Rina’s last rituals were over, Ravi and Sheena went to visit Rina’s psychiatrist in search of the same answer which Rina fervored to know in her last few breaths. Ravi carried Rina’s red diary and went through the pages hurriedly. “Doctor” he said in a broken voice full of REGRETs, “I knew my wife harbors some psychiatric problem since her childhood but never in my wildest nightmare ever imagined that it would take her to such a fatal end!!” When we were kids she nurtured some weird behavior but that was under pretty control until she reached her teens. The psychoses started flaring up when she reached her adulthood and was gradually getting exaggerated.”

“Jiju”, uttered Sheena, “Though it’s an extremely personal query and I know, it may hurt your emotions badly at this point of time, yet I am begging you to satiate my query---- Why Jiju u married my Di even after knowing about her mental disability?”

Ravi’s expressions seemed like as if some filthy dirt has been thrown right onto his face! “Sheena, you are much younger to both me and Rina. You belong to a new generation. You would never be able to understand the “till death do us part” bonding of childhood love!” Sheena had no words of consolation. She looked with curious eyes to the bereaved soulmate and apologized, “Sorry Jiju, I had no intention of hurting your feelings. I could never develop such heavenly bonding with my Di as you did mostly because, as you know I was brought up in my uncle’s house. But Now I understand why my parents made me shift to my uncle’s place, that’s just to keep me away from my elder sister’s paranormal activities.”

Dr. Ratna protested. “So long I have given a patient listening to all your conversations. But please don’t be so rude to term schizophrenia as paranormal. I’m Sorry Mr. Ravi, I tried ardently but it was too late. The therapy should have been started much earlier” Everybody sighed. Ravi almost whispered, “It’s all my fault. I thought that it would be a social stigma for my wife if we start consulting a psychiatrist and now I REGRET it as I firmly believed that my genuine love for her will cure her so called psychiatric problems. But I lost it out at the end. Then he broke down.

Dr. Ratna patted warmly on his shoulders, “Ravi, it’s not your fault. Rina always had big dreams but found no means to fulfill them. She was like any other average middle class Bengalee lady with all limitations and restrictions. Whenever her dreams crumbled, she made up imaginative stories in her mind to satiate her own cravings which she would never get in reality. In her fantasy world even her nearest and dearest ones became villainous characters whom she could hold responsible for her unaccomplished missions.”

“As I went in details to her case history, I found that she managed to do average at her school and college, completed graduation somehow. It was all Mr. Raghavan’s mercy that she got a decent job. But when she failed to get promotions and salary hike at her office for years when even juniors surpassed her by their superior performances, she maligned her boss’s character in her imagination and thought him as the only obstacle to her prosperous career. Her unstable mind niched out the story of a one night stand with her boss and she even murdered him in imagination to appease her deprived soul always hankering for power of position and money when in reality she did not even have guts to do so.”

“Similarly, Ms. Sheena had always been a topper right from school and a show-stealer in all events. She had always given Rina a tough competition in every sphere of life in which Sheena always emerged the winner. Though the two sisters lived miles apart, yet Rina had always envied her sister as their relatives and common friends admired Sheena while they ignored Rina. Hence her mind started becoming unscrupulous at thoughts of removing Sheena forever from every sphere of her life. When Sheena gradually started growing a cordial rapport with Mr. Ravi as her post graduate entrance examination was nearing and both belonged to the same academic field, Rina started feeling neglected by her husband. Rina fantasized extramarital affair of her husband with her younger sister. She wished if Sheena had no existence at all. And hence on the doomed day she sculpted out imaginary homicidal attacks on Sheena”.

Sheena threw a gruesome look at the doctor. “It’s not my conjecture, the doctor replied”. “It’s all what I summarized from Rina’s diary.” Ravi consoled a crying Sheena. “It’s true dear, even I read from her diary that she thought you have been to our house for two days when you were still at Kolkata.” “But the most disbelieving thing to me is that in spite of showering her with so much love care and support all the times, how could she imagine of killing me only because I did not have enough money to buy her a plush apartment, an SUV car or diamond necklaces which she always hankered for! She always pushed me to start my own business when I refused, she started thinking I already own a family business. Even then, when her needs remained unfulfilled, she imagined my business was running at a loss. She held me, the person who valued her the most, guilty for her financial constraints.” And Ravi broke down. “In her imagination she killed all those she found her culprit” the psychiatrist gave her last note for the day “but in reality she only ended her own life.”

The next day Sheena went to the same café which Rina mentioned in her diary, sat on the same chair on which Rina sat on the doomed day, took out Rina’s diary and went on to finish an unfinished sentence smudged with Rina’s blood.

“I wanted a hell lot of things” Sheena wrote on behalf of her late sister. “But I never realized what I have is more than enough and kept on REGRETting, the most precious possession every man longs for--- ‘love’ but I never ever realized that… or may be at the very end I did hear the call of love from the ones I always misinterpreted but was too late to answer it and all I could afford now is nothing but the luxury of REGRET.” and then after sipping her coffee shouted, “Waiter, one more sachet of sugar please.”

By Sreemanti Bag