Page 115 - Till the Last Breath . . .
P. 115
‘Are these cigarette butts? He burnt you?’
‘More times than I can remember. Every time I didn’t score well in a
coaching-class examination, he would thrash me mercilessly,’ he said. ‘And
this one is a belt-buckle wound.’
‘Didn’t your mother say anything?’
‘I think sometimes she wanted to. But she was used to it. I think she
thought I deserved it,’ he explained. ‘Plus, I used to get beaten up once a
month. Or less. The frequency wasn’t any higher. Sometimes, it was just a
few slaps. Everyone gets those. But he constantly kept me in fear. It was a
nightmare,’ he said. For a moment, he wondered what made him blabber so
much that night. Was it the joint? What was it about this girl that gave him
verbal diarrhoea all of a sudden? He hadn’t shared the agonizing details of
his troubled teenage years with anyone other than Kajal. Everyone who
knew him was aware that Dushyant hated his monstrous parents with all his
heart, but no one knew where it came from.
‘What happened after that?’
‘Nothing. I put up with their bullshit till the first semester. They stopped
sending me money after I finished third in class. So, I started earning on my
own. Then, I didn’t need them,’ he claimed.
‘How did they react?’
‘They struggled to understand what was happening for the first few
months. I didn’t call them. I didn’t ask for money. They came to my college
a few times to check what had gone wrong. Eventually they found out that I
had started smoking and drinking. Dad whipped out his belt again, but I
fought back. I was much stronger …’ His voice trailed off. He felt Zarah
lean into him. Suddenly, he became conscious of her physical proximity.
‘And?’
‘They have softened up a little. I didn’t talk to them for six months.
Sometimes, they had to come to the hospital after my episodes of drunken
madness. They still try to tell me that I am a failure and how they wished
they had brought up a dog, not a son. But I have a choice now of not
listening to them. I exercise that. They are dead to me.’
