The Invisible Father

A Short Story about, well…

She often wondered whether time had stopped. Aeons had elapsed since she’d met him, or so it seemed to her. She tried not to think about the future, but that was all she could think of. As if to dampen her spirits further, he seemed rather aloof on phone calls. Could it be that he had found out the truth about his father? Or the circumstances of her departure from his father’s life.

The thought nauseated her. The cookie in her mouth turned to ash. Anu picked her mobile phone and opened the photo gallery. Sarthak was staring at a water fountain, turned away from the camera. A flop of blue-black hair was falling over his forehead, and Anu felt a jab. She touched the screen, stroked her son’s face through it.

She’d taken the picture on the first day of his college. In some ways, Anu had known that college would change Sarthak. After all, it’s a child’s first brush with the feeling like a faux adult — no curfew, no food restrictions, and most of all, the luxury of unsupervised time. Adulthood is an enchantress, at least at the beginning.

Yet alarm bells clanged inside Anu’s mind when Sarthak didn’t return for the winter break.

“But we are going to the hills, bacha. I sent you those links –didn’t you check?”

A sigh. “I did, Ma. They’re nice, but I need this internship on my resumé. And it’s paid.”

“Right, it’s paid,” she repeated, bristling. “Great. So you won’t be home for your birthday?”

Another sigh. “I don’t think so, Ma. But I’ll be with the guys. We’ll do something there.”

Why was he sighing so much all of a sudden? Did all kids start sighing at their mothers when they went to college?

“I don’t know, Sarthak. It would have been nice, just the two of us. We can still — ”

“Listen, Ma?” Sarthak cut her. “I know this is not the best time, but — didn’t you say that he lived in Bangalore? My Dad. I was wondering, did you ever keep an address?”

She felt as if she had ingested a needle by mistake, and now it was poking its way out of her chest. Now, she understood what the internship was about. It was a quest to find Daddy.

“Yes, yes” she said, blinking back tears. “I’ll text you the address.”

And Sarthak had gone to meet his father.

If Anu could place a time when things had changed between them, it was right after that consecrated internship under his father. Sarthak became creative around excuses of not returning home. And when he was here, he ate at her with huge, questioning eyes. But he never said anything, not a word.

First, the silence felt like itself, just pure silence. Then, it took an ominous sheen, like radio silence. Then, there was utter stillness, like someone had plunged the house underwater. They couldn’t hear, or speak. Oddly enough, they could still breathe.

In many ways, Sarthak and Anu had grown up together. She had him when she was 18, almost a child herself. She equated her pregnancy with a prolonged out-of-body experience. She broke open her family trust fund — attracting a hefty penalty — when she stormed out of her father’s house, insisting she only had 7 months to go away. She scribbled her first incoherent poem between the contractions.

Then, Sarthak was born. And he was such a perfect companion, even in those painful days of the start. Too composed for a toddler, too wise for a teenager. Like a sweet grandfather, he blew gentle smiles at Anu as she labored over her poems. She went on to publish six volumes of twisted poetry, and Sarthak was the one who narrated at the readings.

Now, she was a poetry editor — a life that demanded just as much quiet as it did when she’d been a poet. Silence had not been a problem though. Anu believed that she had lived her fill before her time. A rich heiress, her teenage years had been full of parties. At the delivery table, it became clear to her that she had, indeed. Laughed her fill, talked her fill.

Now, she longed to speak. So she had sent a text message to her son.

‘We need to speak about your father.’

Sure enough, Sarthak had come the next day. Here he was, still watching her with his huge peeled-lychee eyes as she poured tea into cups.

“He was lovely,” she said, stirring the sugar, “Your father. He had a special charm, made him a universal favourite.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I didn’t — “ Anu stopped. Had she really left? What could she say that would hold true after all these years? Was there any ultimate truth of a relationship? Truth was built on reference points.

“We broke up. I think.”

“Why?”

“It’s not easy to talk about these things for me, bacha. People fall in love, and then they break up. My reasons may not sound good enough. But I did what felt right then.”

He put his hands on the counter, lacing his fingers. Short, stout, with fingernail’s like the toes of an elephant. His father’s fingers. “So you never broke up,” said Sarthak.

Anu took a long sip. “I don’t know. We never really talked after I found out I was pregnant.”

Sarthak’s forehead creased. “What about the letters?”

A gasp gathered inside Anu’s throat. She buckled it down. “What letters?”

“Dad’s letters, Ma. All the letters he wrote you.”

“I — Well, I never read them.” Anu frowned into her cup. It sounded like an excuse now, after all these years.

The truth, or something close to it, was that she had been imploding until Sarthak was in her arms. Then she was eternally calmed. After that, it had been too late to think about the father.

“I want those letters, Ma.”

There was an ugly pause.

“Oh, I don’t know where I kept them.” Anu’s gaze flickered to the ceiling. She didn’t remember if she kept them at all.

“What do you mean? You have to find those letters, Ma. I need them, I really do. You know what, I’ll help you. We can start right now.”

Anu watched her son in bafflement. A slither of envy crept in, tightening her throat. She banged the cup on the table, sending hot splashes of tea all over.

“So, this is what your father’s told you about me. To find his letters. See how much he cared for you then.”

Sarthak’s face twisted into a horrible grin. His tears stayed in his eyes, refusing to fall down.

“You don’t know my father,” he bit out in a seething whisper.

“Oh, I knew him alright.”

“Did you? Do you? Did you know him all those years that he spent writing to you? And then — “ Sobs choked Sarthak as he bent over the table for support, closing his eyes. Fat tears dropped in two plops.

“Then he killed himself, Ma.”

***

Note: This story won the Chandigarh Literary Society Short Story Competition 2020