Unseen felicity
U Sharma
Babesha, Thimpu, Bhutan
“What am I to do with the CD? What could the three-worded message “one must see’ mean? Where should I take it and see what is inside it?” he asked a series of questions to the empty ceiling, forgetting that its an inanimate object.
He straightened his ears for the answer, and to his blissful disappointment there was none. No response. He skillfully shoved the CD into the drawers of his Mahogany desk, being a little wary of him.
“I am unfortunate of all the things and of all the days. My VCD had to get spoiled to no repair. My discovery of the CD this morning is merely a mare’s nest,” he whispered, making sure that his wife got no clue of his discovery. He had no ostensible reasons to avoid his wife except that she was loquacious.
“Should I take the CD to ram, Shyam or Hari?” he asked to himself, looking at the drawer on the desk.
Shyam was a bachelor and lived in a rented flat. To Mahesh, Shyam would be the right person to talk about the discovery of the CD. Thus, he made up his mind to tell him all about it. He shoved the CD into the pockets of his jerkin and walked towards Shyam’s house.
“Oh! No. No. No. I shouldn’t tell him anything. I must be selfish, albeit, in reality, I am not,” he murmured to himself. He kept on walking, anyway, at a slow pace being a staunch believer of the saw, “slow and steady wins the race.”
If I tell him about the CD what, if there is something invaluable in the luck of this confused Mahesh from God and, what, further if I have to share the jackpot with him? I can’t afford to be generous,” he said at a lowly voice in the air, rotating his heavy head around to see if anyone was following him. He felt absolutely wonky and restless. He was having kittens to know the contents of the CD but, at the same time, at any cost, didn’t want others to know about it.
“I must go back. I will not tell him anything,” said he, turning back to return home from halfway, foolishly simpering at the vast vacuum ahead of him.
“The discovery of the CD created a combination of bliss, anxiety and fear in my mind. I wish I had not seen it ____ I shouldn’t have picked it up. That is a clunker that I had committed. The possession of the mysterious CD not only affected my usual morning walk but also hindered my work. I must not prolong, I must see the contents,” he said, maintaining a steady but bewildered pace towards home.
“But how do I see and where?” he groaned. He paused walked and stood for a while like a startled deer. The three-worded message on the CD cover swayed in front of his inner eye.
“I had decided to take another route this morning for the regular walk. And, I wonder what made me take that memorable, yet, a frightening one. I just ponder and wonder how my plans for the whole walk went awry this blessed morning.”
He carried on walking. He remembered the Almighty.
“If a person is to be benefited, even God gives a helping hand d with booty,” he whispered, recounting Count Leo Tolstoy’s words “God Sees the Truth but Waits.”
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He turned back. There was no one at the vicinity.
“Has God dropped the CD for my benefit? No vehicle had plied on that misty road. The road looked as virgin as a pristine plateau o this cold January morning. The camber hosted a thick sheet of glassy mist that further accumulated at the edges. To my astonishment, there was no mist on the D. The morning sun had not even touched the bluffs above and below the road. There was, but, to my surprise, a narrow trail at one edge of the road indicating that someone had just walked along before me. This is 21st century and it can’t be God’s deed. But, again, there was no one in the vicinity as well when I picked up the isolated CD,” he spoke as if there was an avid listener in front of him.
Mahesh felt terribly restless. He started thinking of ways to get rid of the CD. The easiest way he conjectured he could do was to inter it under the ground so that nobody would get the touch of it.
“If I don’t discard it, it may open the Pandora’s box in my life.”
He resumed walking. “No, I shall not discard it ____ I shall not. I must know the contents in it. The three-worded message may be carrying a substantial treasure in it. Who knows……?” he said to himself, sweating to the Arabian Sea .
He heaved a sigh of relief as he reached his house. He sat comfortably on a sofa and looked at the Mahogany desk.
“Sharing is loving,” said he, thinking of his wife, who then, was packing a load of laundry.
“I must tell her. Be it good or bad I must have to disclose the whole kit and caboodle to her, sooner or later, for she is my better half,” he mumbled, adjusting his glasses.
“Whether I should tell her or not, I shall decide in office later,” he whispered, suddenly changing his mind. He stood up from the seat.
While in office, his mind was neither at rest nor at peace. He decided to leave the office half an hour earlier than the scheduled time. Back at home, he was at the verge of disclosing the discovery to his soft-spoken, stoic darling who was sitting next to him on the couch sipping coffee.
“Hubby, why are you early today?” asked the concerned and caring wife, elbowing him to take the coffee.
“It’s getting cold,” she reminded him.
There was a short hush in the room.
“I am no feeling well. My head has been getting heavier and heavier since lunch break. I couldn’t even look at the computer monitor as there was shedding of tears,” said he to his wife who expected something concrete and substantial. Yet, she believed to his out-and-out lie.
“How is the ache now, any way?” she asked, showing a deep concern and touching his forehead with her palm.
“I know I spoke an out-and-out lie to my wife. My barefaced lie might knock her sideways,” he whispered with an iota of guilt, looking at his stolid wife, who was staring at him as well. She looked baffled and god smacked.
“Darling, you didn’t tell me anything during lunch time,” she said, trying to squeeze out something realistic from him.
“It wasn’t that heavy, then. I thought it would vaporize. On top of all, I didn’t want to sadden you,” he replied ironically. In reality, he did have a mild headache and he alone knew the whys and the wherefores.
“If Shakespeare had truly meant his words ‘Frailty, Thy Name Is Woman,’ then shouldn’t disclose the discovery of the CD to her,” he grumbled to himself.
There was an absolute hush in the room pro tem. His wife walked to the kitchen carrying the empty cups.
“What if my disclosure reaches the neighborhood before the first cock-a-doodle-doo?” he whispered, looking at his wife, who was coming towards him from the kitchenette. She came and sat next to him resting her hand on his broad shoulder.
“Darling, let’s go for a walk up to the children’s park. I am sure, that would up to some extend ease your headache,” said the loving wife, playing footsie with him like a raunchy belle.
They walked to the park casually that was half a mile away from where they lived. The park was thronged by children. Couples and aged ones sat and watched the children play and frolic. Some kids were flying kites while some others played Frisbee. There were still some who were playing blind man’s buff in jolly moods.
The inseparable duo of Mahesh and his wife sat on a raised area on the lawn.
“Should I tell her about the CD?” he asked to himself, looking around. There were many people sitting around as well.
“What, if the strange ears record our conversation?” he expressed his intimidation to himself. They stood up and walked back towards home after an hour of fresh air alfresco and a meaningful relaxation of minds.
The next day, Mahesh entered into a Chinese restaurant en route from his office for a cup of tea. His mind was stuffed with the flashes of the three-worded message on the CD cover.
“Excuse me,” he called a waitress.
A smartly dressed girl, roughly in her late teens, approached him with a winsome simpering on her well-curved face. She stood in front of Mahesh and said in a polite way “What can I do for you, sir?”
“A cup of coffee and a packet of fortune cookies,” he said to the waitress, smiling back at her.
Mahesh had just started eating. He heard the very three-worded message ‘one must see’ radiating from the adjacent table. He quietly jerked his body but, at the same time, resembling a startled mongoose.
“These people must have seen me picking up the CD. But, again, there was no one in the vicinity. Even if they saw me picking it up, may be from a hiding distance, how could they have seen the three words on the cover?” he asked a series of conundrums to himself.
“Haven’t they intruded into my sitting room _____ and to the Mahogany drawers?” a silly puzzle hit him. He found it doubly intimidating.
He sipped three heavy draughts of coffee at a go. His eyes fell on the mirror on the wall of the restaurant.
“Oogh! Ten eyes are focusing on me. I am in danger. Yes, I am caught; I am, perhaps, trapped for worse,” he cried hysterically.
He called the waitress and gestured her to ready the bills.
“I must leave this place before things get networked,” said Mahesh in a hidden voice, avoiding the ears of five persons seated on a table next to his. He footed the bills and skedaddled from the scene.
Without letting the grass grow under his feet, he headed for home. He blamed his weakness.
“I must have uttered the three words by mistake. That’s why, most ostensibly, those ten eye on me.”
“Darling, last night you were uttering three words again and again in your sleep_____ may be in your dreams. Do you remember anything?” he remembered his wife telling him that morning.
“Do you remember or recollect the words?” he had questioned her back, trembling as if he was experiencing an earthquake of high reading on a Richter scale.
“ONE MUST SEE,” she had pronounced, clearly remembering his sleepy words.
He had looked bewildered and experienced goose-pimples all over the body.
“May be it all happened in a dream. I don’t remember anything,” he had said, trying not to give an ounce of clue to her.
He walked home hotfoot, his body fully drenched with sweat.
He reached home doubly goose-pimpled. His wife was brooming the floor. He opened the drawers, being a little wary of himself. The CD was in situ. He heaved a long and heavy sigh of relief. He sat on a chair with a loud thud that almost made his wife scream.
“Did I really speak in my dream?” Mahesh asked his wife, who was, then, sponging the window glasses.
“Yes, you did,” said she, without looking at him.
There was a pin-drop silence in the room for a while.
“Did any visitor come in my absence?” asked he, breaking the gloomy silence in the room.
“Yes,” answered the wife. “There were five of them.”
Mahesh almost jumped in panic.
“Enough! Enough!” he told his wife to stop. The wife couldn’t comprehend anything. It was all Greek to her.
“Darling, why did you ask about the visitors?” questioned the bespectacled wife, looking a bit lugubrious.
There was, again, a silence in the room. Only the tick….tick….tick sound of the wall clock could be heard.
“I couldn’t perform my duty well today like the way I usually do. I thought may be someone from office came to enquire as what was wrong with me,” said he, looking a bit febrile.
“Oh! No. No. No. They were my friends and yours too,” said she, fixing the great circles of black and white at him, with a twenty-twenty vision.
“But, you know…….,” she said, adlibbing.
He straightened his ears.
“What’s that? Why can’t you spell it out?” he pleaded, sweating profusely. He looked as if he was undergoing a frisson.
“One of the friends asked me if I knew what was inside the ‘one must see, box,” said the subservient wife with an innocent tone in her voice.
He looked at her eyes with a deep inquiry.
“What did you tell him?” he asked her, trying to bring her close to him and winning her confidence. He mustered courage and at the same time prepared himself to bear the burden of the likely answer.
“I said, ‘yes’,” she replied. She smiled at him.
“This is nothing new to me. I am accustomed to such words, for my loving husband speaks these words even in his dreams,” I said to the friend.
Mahesh blinked his eyes a couple of times upon hearing his wife’s true disclosure. He wiped the sweats of his visage with his palm, leaving some beads of dirt on the broad face.
“I am in trouble. Yes, I am in a trouble. I must prepare——-,” he spoke in frenzy.
“What do you have to prepare for, darling? What you have said is all Hebrew to me,” asked the wife, exposing inquisitiveness. Her ignorance looked innocent. Mahesh remained quiet, pro tempore. And, so did she.
“I mean I will have to consult a doctor and have my health checked up,” said he, feeling guilty of the barefaced lie. He knew his wife didn’t deserve such a cruel treatment. Yet, he had to make use of the sangfroid he possessed and remained calm.
Next day, Mahesh reached his office in time. He picked up a daily newspaper and started browsing. His eyes fell on an announcement that read: “CD butterfingers! Anybody who can give the details will be highly rewarded.” He assumed an experience of another earthquake of much more intensity in his mind.
“How can the news of the CD that is in my drawers, locked and safe, reach the media?” he asked to himself. The whole day turned out to be a sinister one for Mahesh. The words on the CD cover echoed into his deafening ears.
Back at home that evening, he checked the drawers. The CD was untouched. Sans letting his wife know what he was doing, he locked the drawers.
“Darling, I am not feeling well. I am going to take rest. Wake me up a little earlier tomorrow morning. I got to be in office half an hour before the normal time,” said the uxorious husband and went to bed.
“What he said is bunkum. Everything is Greek and weird to me,” she said to the reticent walls.
The next morning, Mahesh left for office a little earlier. He had hardly covered half the distance, when he spotted a CD case without the CD in it. The words ‘one must read’ were very much there. He jumped in consternation. The road looked deserted on that cold and blustery morning.
“I had checked the drawers before I left the house. The CD was very much there and it was sealed to no access. My wife was in the bathroom with the laundries. I had locked the drawer. Now the empty CD box is on my way and the CD per se, is missing. Who could have taken it out from the secured drawers?” he spoke to himself.
Nobody could hear his foolish complaints except the vast emptiness around.
Then, he realized that he had left the key on the lock itself.
“I must call my wife and tell her to keep the key safely,” he whispered and walked into a near-by telephone kiosk. He dialed his residence number. There was no response. The ring got through three times but his wife didn’t respond.
“Looks like, she hasn’t finished washing. Who could have intruded into my room; taken the CD box from the drawers, removed the disk from the cover and kept the empty cover on the road here? It is apparent that somebody is hatching a conspiracy against me,” he spoke, looking lost.
He started sobbing. He didn’t touch the empty box_____ he read the three-worded message three times. He walked to office. No sooner had he stepped in than the telephone rang that was on his desk. He picked up the receiver with fear and apprehension.
“Mahesh, do you know about Binod’s whereabouts and the progress of his mission?” came a voice, which he figures out to be that of his cobber, Shyam.
Shyam was a close friend and someone whom Mahesh could anchor on.
“Binod? Yes, he’s my brother______ own brother and he’s not with me. Why? What’s the problem?” asked Mahesh, preparing himself to hear something unpleasant.
“If you want to know about your brother in detail, come to my place right now,” said Shyam, from the other side.
Without shilly-shallying, Mahesh walked into Shyam’s house. It was just a jaunt to his friend’s house. The weather was cold. It was showering thin flakes of snow outside.
Shyam had already inserted the CD inside the deck and had kept the empty case on the table. Even a person with a tunnel vision could read three words on the CD cover.
“I have trusted him but he has proven a foul person____ a terrific scumbag. Today morning he must have given me a surprise on the road. But the surprise is at the cost of intruding into my house and breaking the drawers. What is Shyam trying to do? The empty box was on the road this morning and now it on his table. What could be his intentions? Do I trust him?” said Mahesh to himself, feigning to act as if nothing has happened to him.
All of a sudden, he rummaged around his pockets for the keys to the drawers. Then, he remembered. He had unintentionally left the bunch with the lock itself back at home.
“Shyam must have intruded into my house after I left. My wife, probably, had to come out of the washroom. He must have seen the keys attached to the lock. And, he must have, quickly, opened the drawers, taken out the CD and run out. He must have taken a short-cut to the main road. Knowing that I was still behind, he must have unsealed the box, shoved the CD into his pockets and kept the empty box on the road, giving me an unseen challenge apparently with a wanton intention,” he spoke to himself, resting his head on the palm, being seated on a plastic chair and showing a lugubrious expression on his broad face.
“I am sure there is bugger-all inside the drawers,” whispered he further, standing up from the chair and bumbling around the room.
“What’s wrong, friend? Don’t worry. Whatever he did, he did a great and splendid job. Your brother really does deserve accolades and a laurel wreath. What have we done being on our land? Do you know, Mahesh that Binod’s mission is applauded everywhere? His mission has become a subject of closed-door debates in towns and cities. Just ensconce yourself and analyze the recordings on the CD,” said Shyam, trying to console and instill new spirits in Mahesh.
“What you have just said in length is all Hebrew to me. Tell me or just explain the whole shebang later. But, what surprises are you trying to give me by taking the CD from my desk? I can if I want, indict you with so many allegations and not let you fly the coop,” said Mahesh, picking up the empty box from the table and at the same time passing a bon mot at Shyam. He really blew his stack with Shyam.
“What bunkum? Now, you will see the reality and sans doubt you will see the mission of your brother,” retorted Shyam, playing the CD on, boasting of having no compunction.
Silence enveloped the room. The two friends sat and watched the recordings in awe. In a little while, Mahesh broke the ice.
“Binod, my brother, you are great. Now I have sussed and realized where you had been all these years. You are a true son of the soil and I now know that you are leading a pious mission of bringing to an end the decade and half years of hardships of the silent sufferers,” said Mahesh, standing from the chair and saluting his brother on the screen.
“I sure do miss you something fierce, my brother,” he said, wiping the tears of bliss on his eyes.
He patted Shyam on his shoulder for good reasons which Mahesh knew alone. He didn’t tell Shyam why he patted nor did Shyam ask him.
Before one can say Jack Robinson, Mahesh reached home the febrile Mahesh found the key hung on the lock as he had left.
“I made a mistake by patting you, Shyam. I am sure you will bag the reward. I never knew you were so pernicious,” he said, without taking care of the pitch of his voice. He didn’t realize he was behaving like a kook.
He pulled the drawers of the desk. The sealed CD was in situ. It was not touched even by a long chalk.
The cock-a-hoop discoverer with steel-rimmed spectacles and squishy brown hair sat by the side of the desk on a wooden stool and pondered for long.
“Thank you, Shyam. You are a rare friend. I salute you, too,” said Mahesh, shedding the tears of unseen felicity.