Short Story: The Footprints of Tomorrow

(by Puneet Gupta)

The sonogram was perfect. "Everything was going to be just fine," everyone told him. He wasn’t sure if all this was for real. For the first time since she first found out was he actually nervous, unsure. The long nights of pacifying Kaamna and the endless anticipation of the moment, coupled with the perennial sermons from his mom on 'how to take care of a pregnant wife” was driving him to the edge. Now with the baby due any day, it would all be over, soon.
"I don’t want this baby!” he had told Kaamna with a wary uneasiness. "I think it’s too early for us to become parents". He had not had to deal with the stream of tears or the melancholic sobs of an expectant mother who now wasn’t too sure of her motherhood, for he had stormed out of the room when she tried to argue otherwise. This was eight months back.
It was 2:48am, on a Tuesday morning that marked the arrival of those tiny feet and the hairless head, weighing a healthy 8 pounds. The ward nurse had brought the news. "Mubarak ho, many congratulations Sir. It is a lovely baby girl". He felt a surge of something inside, an emotion he had never know. Emotions fogged his eyes and he rushed to share the moment with Kaamna.

The coming and going of relatives, telephone calls, medication, congratulatory bouquets, paperwork, sweets, and the hospital discharge procedure kept him off work for the rest of the week. They had named her Ujjwala. Kaamna had wanted to call her Sukriti, but at the end, he had his way.
They were due to get a health check up of the baby done the next week. Little did they know that this would be the last trip together as a family? Ujjwala passed away three days later. A case of pneumonia gone astray! He remembered with remorse his own words - "I don’t want this baby!"

A normal couple would have cried, held hands and shared some sleepless nights. But Kaamna and Rajeev chose to "deal with the situation" in their own smart ways. While Rajeev busied himself with work, often working longer shifts on the pretext of the upcoming audit, Kaamna filled her days by visiting the nearby slums to teach children and adults. At supper, their conversation revolved around the day's work, bills that needed to be paid, repairs that needed to be made to the house and calls that needed to be returned. Awkward silences and long uneasy pauses became rampant in all their night walks. Deep within, each of them understood the need of the other for that solitude and quietness. Ujjwala was never mentioned, yet never forgotten...

It was during one of her field trips to Danubari, one of the jhopad patti area around the cities oldest railway tracks. The day's agenda was to train the basti people about the importance of sanitation. Stench, flies, rags and dung piles greeted her on the way in. While she was still orienting herself to gather the crowd and start her presentation, she felt someone tug at her sari. She turned around with a sharp reflex, for she had feared it to be a dog. Instead, she stood there looking into the most beautiful hazel eyes of a little girl, whose tattered, greasy clothes somehow seemed too unfair. "Yes, unfair was the word," she thought to herself. Presently, she was drawn out of her reverie by a thud. The easel mounting the poster boards had just given way. As she hurried to straighten it up, she looked back at the girl, only to find her running into one of narrow gullies, finally disappearing out of sight.

She visited the basti again next week, with brooms, disinfectant, garbage bags and her posters. Her eyes darted all around her while supervising the cleaning of the well, logging of drains and installation of wire gauze over the sewer. Just about when she was about to leave, she heard her name called out. She turned back to see Meeta beckoning her, urgently, to come into the dwelling. Meeta Rao was a friend and coworker at Roshni, the mobile school for the underprivileged. Sensing an emergency, Kaamna ran as fast as she could, to find Meeta bent over the little girl, shaking her up, sprinkling her face with water and shouting for someone to call a doctor. Later during the evening, at the hospital, Birju Lal - the panwallah - told Meeta and her about the little girl, Chutki. Chutki's dad was a carpenter and mothers a construction laborer. When the child was about a year old, her mother died in an attack of diarrhoea. Her father left the basti a few weeks later, leaving behind the child, sleeping alone in the cot. Chutki was now 18 months old.
That night, Kaamna did not sleep well. She kept on tossing an turning in her bed. The grief of Ujjwala's absence on her bedside choked her, threatening to belie all the self control that she had so gracefully mustered thus far. She got up quietly and went to the terrace, looking into the moonless sky, darkness so profound that it seemed surreal. A train whistled through the night, and she fell asleep on the lone rocking chair by the parapet.

...

As the days passed, Kaamna had the strange feeling that the whole world was conspiring against her, making her feel the void of her womb with such atrocity that was cannibalistic. The other day, Mrs. Parekh from the third floor invited them over for a birthday party of their 2 year old. Her aunt had just called about her daughter's wedding the next Sunday and Rajeev just finished reading out to her an email from his sister in Mumbai declaring that she was pregnant. She would see school kids dressed up as jokers and potatoes for school fancy dress competitions on her way back from the morning jog in the park. Women from neighborhood were busy discussing the dance program at Mrs. Lalwani's, the apartment supervisor's, baby shower.

Wary of her own feelings, Kaamna shut herself up. No more morning walks, no more social work and no more grocery shopping. She feigned illness and stayed in her room, busying herself with the mindlessness of daily soaps on TV. But even there she would find hideously made up and grotesquely overacting females fighting for their children. Yet the hazel eyes of Chutki continued to raid her dreams, tearing her self control to shreds.

As the summer sun soared in the sky, her uneasiness welled. She would snap at Rajeev for the most inconsequential things like leaving the tap dripping after he had used the wash basin, his jokes at the dinner table or the cartoons he watched on TV. She felt that Rajeev was losing his mind - he looked more and more pale by the day and too distant for her to approach. They had not been intimate for months, either in their conversation or in bed, and Kaamna felt deprived of her only chance to bringing back Ujjwala. After a while, she stopped caring.

While Kaamna was occupied with finding herself, Rajeev was trying to get lost. He had seen Kaamna's restlessness since the visit to Danubari. He had noticed how she slipped out of bed at night. He had heard her silent sobs from outside the bathroom door. He knew her grief, but failed to conjure a trick that he could set things right with. Like the magician at the circus who

could make things vanish. Only if he could make their loss disappear into oblivion too! But no matter what he did, it didn’t work. If he put on Tom & Jerry on TV, Kaamna would call him silly and get upset. If he tried to help her clean up the bathroom, she would scold him for leaving the tap flowing. After a while, he stopped trying. Ujjwala's loss, the failed attempts towards normalcy at home and the saccharine sympathy from colleagues soon drove him to seek peace from other means - a few visits to the local pub, a light conversation with someone at the bar, a gentle shove into trying the needle and the insuppressible urge to go back and feel the sting in his veins when the sweet venom was injected.

His appetite ebbed and he felt weaker in body and in mind. His work suffered, strewn with many a errors, and his supervisor advised him to take off for a few weeks to recuperate. It was the first time since Ujjwala's loss that he had spent that much time at home. He went and saw a doctor, who prescribed some patches and meditation to help him get control over his addiction, which fortunately had not been long enough for any severe withdrawal symptoms. Weighed by his guilt about violating his family’s faith, he confessed it all to Kaamna later that evening. She didn’t cry, nor shout but just sat there next to him on the sofa. When he finished telling her, she just put her hand on his. For the first time in months, they talked about Ujjwala, about her going away, about the pain, about their hurts. Rajeev cried as they talked - like a five year old who had hurt himself while playing on a swing. Soon, her tears joined his and they sat in silence late into the night. Outside, it began to rain, announcing the arrival of monsoons.


Outside the city, there was a small ashram called Ananda Kuteer. Bhaskar, the young chap in administration department at work had mentioned this place to Rajeev over lunch, launching himself into a long yet animated description about the healing powers of the place, particularly for relieving stress. Rajeev had seen Bhaskar rave about the place with such a sincerity, like a follower who known no greater truth than his God. So much so that even the driving directions were still etched in Rajeev's memory! Over the next few days, the couple spent time meditating by tall banyan trees, taking long walks along the rivulet, making their meals on a small chulha in their cottage and reminising about their days together before marriage - the time when the future seemed to be so full of promise.

Cleansed, calm and reconnected within, they returned to the humdrum of the city, with a new resolve. They knew that this was their only shot at parenthood, and both Rajeev and Kaamna were nervously excited by the prospects. But no one else seemed to understand. Kaamna's other had shrieked into the phone and wailed in the name of all fifty six gods that she worshipped. Her dear papa maintained a stoic silence for some time then finally heaved a sigh and told her "What can I do if you have already decided?" Rajeev's sister (now three months pregnant) was more diplomatic, and told "If that’s what you want, I wouldnt discourage you. But do think again". This was the last phone call they made to any of their “well wishers”.


They brought Chukti home the next month. It was not as difficult as they thought. Since Chutki's father was nowhere to be found, and the basti-wallahs in Danubari had no legal guardianship, they both just needed to contact the Shameem Nagar police station for adoption formalities. The inspector, a friend of Mrs. Lalwani from fifth floor, was very resourceful. And with everyone from Birju Lal to Meeta endorsing Kaamna, the paper work was all drawn out within a couple of weeks. Chutki came into their lives like the drops of dew bathed in the light of the morning sun. She sparkled their hearts every time she set her eyes on them, or held their hand. She adapted fast, not once sulking to go back. Though somewhat unsure of what to do with herself for the first few days, she picked up the little tricks of being cared for within a week. Well bathed, scrubbed and free of grime, she looked like an angel in the new pink frock that Rajeev had bought for her.
She was almost two years old now, and was making her way towards language - learning to talk.

She learnt to say "shooo" and "bhapp" before the words "amma" and "kaka"came to her... words that sounded like a divine music riding on the drops of mist rising from the base of a virgin waterfall to her parents’ ears. Kaamna had set the spare room by the balcony into Chutki's playroom, and they spent most of their afternoons playing while Rajeev was at work. They would go to the park in the evening. This Sunday, Chutki was busy playing with her water colors. She had painted her palms with green and pink colors and was patting them on the white marble floor, admiring her art work with great fascination after every few strokes. Rajeev meanwhile, was busy painting the base of Chutki's feet with vermillion red color, for Chutki would topple over if she tried doing it herself.

Such was the emotion that Kaamna felt in that moment, that she gathered the child into her arms, drew her closer to her bosom and kissed her head. Eyes clouded with tears, she looked at Rajeev, while she cradled Chutki in her arms. She knew it was time...and she knew Rajeev understood too. It was time for them to let go... She looked down into those hazel eyes and said "Chutki, your new name is Ujjwala... Ujj..walaa. My baby, my Ujjwala.?" Unaware of what her mother was telling her, Chutki freed herself from Kaamna’s grip and hopped away into the living room, leaving behind her a trail of red footprints...


Rajeev moved closer to the base of the sofa, still sitting on the marble floor, lowered his head into Kaamna's lap. She instinctively ran her fingers through his hair and he fondled the little finger of her left foot, where she wore a leaf shaped toe-ring. Rising, he kissed her hand and said "Kaamna, those… those are the footprints of our tomorrow..."


(The End)