Story Brunch
Years had passed and I had not returned to those dense forests of North East where my tribal wife, Sukira lived. A year after I returned from the surveying camp, I got placed in a power plant company. Two years later I did love-marriage with one of my engineering classmates and we settled in Gurgaon. Life was going fine, but memories of Sukira, my marriage with her, and her sacrifice for my sake used to haunt me occasionally but my life had become too busy to pause and think.
One year after my marriage I was shifted to site work from the design division of the company. The company was launching a new hydel power project in the Northeast, in the same town where I had gone for surveying camp during my college days.
I moved to the town of Mindanao over the weekend. My stay was at a company guest house, the windows in the east opened to the green forests. My marriage with Sukira, the night spent with her, my escape, all became as fresh as morning dew. I would often open the window after returning to the guest house and look at the vast stretch of the jungle for hours, uninterrupted, imagining how was Sukira then, and what happened to her after I escaped, thoughts were troubling and bewildering me at the same time. I had betrayed her.
My 5-months long posting was going to end and I would return to the crowded lanes of Gurgaon once again. I was given a week’s holiday for transfer. But something stopped me from booking immediate tickets to Gurgaon.
It was Sukira calling me, once again in the forests from where I had escaped.
I enquired about the hamlet by the side of the nearby agricultural university campus and the way to it and took a bus ride to reach the campus. I could not have entered the hamlet directly, if any tribal recognized me, it would be the last day of my life.
I started asking about Sukira in the market near her hamlet. Incidentally, I met a school teacher who would go to a newly opened school in Sukira’s hamlet to teach children.
To my delight, he knew about Sukira. I did not tell him about my marriage with her. He narrated the hard days through which she had gone after marriage with an outsider, whom she helped escape the day after marriage. She was ostracised by the tribe as a punishment and was living in the hut all alone, the same hut where we had spent the wedding night, with Sukira in my arms.
But then, to my surprise, he told me about Sukira’s five years old daughter whom he used to teach in the school. We had got married exactly 5 years ago. We had consummated the marriage the same night, unintentionally. Her care, concern, and beauty had pulled me close to her, both mentally and physically and we could not stop from embracing each other and making love eventually that night, the night after which I had run away from hamlet.
Sukira was mother to my daughter.
A feeling of guilt and remorse engulfed me. My wife and daughter had been living all alone, with no one to take care of them. I got the urge to see Sukira, and my daughter too. It was morning time and I knew where Sukira would go for a bath, after all her bathing spot was the reason behind our forced marriage by the tribal King.
I rushed towards the spot with pace, my eyes looking for Sukira desperately. I reached the spot and hid behind the vegetation. After an hour’s wait, I saw Sukira appear, as beautiful and fresh as she ever was, with her daughter holding her finger, walking by her side.
I wanted to rush and hug both of them, I wanted to take Sukira with me, and my daughter with me, but I got reminded of my wife back in Gurgaon. It was not possible.
When they reached the waterfall, it started raining. I could not gather the courage to meet Sukira. What would I say to her after all? How would I face my daughter? I kept watching both of them play in the waterfall, my eyes hankering to capture the image forever, my heart crying due to helplessness. I captured a few moments with my camera. Half an hour later both of them walked out of the water and faded away from my view. I kept standing in the rain, tears rolling down my cheeks.
I made a promise to myself to take care of Sukira and my daughter, to take them back home one day. I did not know how, but I could not have left them there forever.
After all, Sukira was my first love, my first wife, and the mother to my first child.
I returned to the concrete colonies of Gurgaon the next day, far from Sukira in the pristine jungles of Northeast, with a promise once again to bring her to my home.
To Be Continued…
