Someone You Love Is Gone by Gurjinder Basran

Author:Gurjinder Basran
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2017-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

BEFORE

“Is it true?” Amrita’s father asks. He’s staring out the window, his back to her. When she doesn’t answer, he turns around. “Is it true? What they say about you and the boy, Pyara?” His voice is loud and assaulting.

“What do they say?” Amrita glances back at Dadi ji, who sits quietly on the settee in the corner of her father’s study.

He slams his hand against the desk. “You will make me say it?”

“We have done nothing.” This is partly true. There has been nothing physical between them since the kiss. Nothing but words and restraint. “We are friends. There is no shame in that.”

“Ha, no shame,” Dadi ji says, snickering. “The servants gossip, and the village is clucking like chickens satisfied by the sordid details of our failings.”

Father shoots his mother a look. “And tell me, daughter, what are people to think of this friendship? This familiarity? This sneaking around like thieves in the night. Did you think no one would notice? What are they to think?”

“I don’t care what people think.”

“Well, you should. And what about what I think? Do you care about that? Do you care about our honour?”

“Of course I do. I never meant to hurt anyone.”

“You never meant it? You were never meant to behave this way. All I gave you—an education, privilege—you threw it away.”

“I didn’t throw it away.”

“Stop talking!” He walks over, grabs her by the ear, pulls her close. “From now on you will listen to me.” Her body bends toward his, his heavy breath in her ear. “From here on, you will do as you are told. Understand?” He pushes her away and she nods fearfully, cowering in the corner until Dadi ji coaxes her away to her room.

Over the next days her father doesn’t take his meals with Amrita; he barely even acknowledges her. She hears from the servants that, without explanation, Pyara has been told his services are no longer required. “What did you expect?” Dadi ji says. “Did you expect us to be happy? Do you expect forgiveness?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”

“No, you weren’t thinking. Your head is too full of movies and silly books. You have to face reality, Amrita.”

“But what is to be?”

“Your father must do what he believes is right, and if you want his forgiveness, you must follow and do whatever he asks of you.”

Later that evening Amrita throws herself at her father’s feet, a dutiful act of humility and respect. He says nothing, stepping away as if she were an animal. In the next days, his only response to her continued apologies is silence. And over the course of the following month, despite her attempts to atone, she is confined to the house. She is lost to him.

“She belongs to someone else now, as is the way with all daughters.” This is what she hears him tell Dadi ji the night he summons her once again to his study.

She sits in the cane chair across from his desk, waiting for him to say something.

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