Skip to main content

Forgiveness

Fiction

“I’m sorry, mum,” said little Nancy.  She apologised for everything from spilling the milk to forgetting to kiss her goodbye before leaving for school.  Just the opposite of her father. 

Sheetal smiled wryly as she remembered the day he said goodbye to her husband.  “You are so arrogant.  What do you think you are to possess such a Himalayan ego?  You commit all kinds of blunders while dealing with people.  You don’t know how to behave in a society.  You make a fool of yourself in every party after taking the first drink....”  It was endless list of omissions and commissions.  “And you never apologise even if you know you committed the most heinous offence.  Learn to apologise, that’s the least you can do!”

“Mum,” asked Nancy while the car was moving away from her father’s house, “what does ‘apo...’, ‘apol...’, ‘apolg...’ mean?”

Mum looked into her eyes for a moment and kissed her cheek. 

She repeated the question a number of times in different ways on various occasions even weeks after they had started living in their new house.

“It means to say sorry, darling,” finally Mum explained to her the meaning of ‘apologise’.  She used the word ‘sorry’ very generously after that as if her mum’s ultimate delight lay in that word.

“If dad comes and says ‘sorry’,” Nancy asked one day, “will we live together again?”

Nancy missed dad, Sheetal knew.  Dad was very fond of her.  He was her playmate in the evenings and on holidays.  They would play with her toys.  She would climb on him, tickle him, pull his ears...  He would smother her with kisses...

Sheetal knew that Gaurav loved her too.  But he could never express it the way he did it with Nancy.  He was clumsy whenever he had to deal with adults.  And he concealed his clumsiness by creating an air of arrogance.

The arrogance hurt most of the time.  It was blatantly insensitive.  He blamed her for everything because of that arrogance.  His ego could never accept his own mistakes. 

If he dropped the glass from his computer table, she was at fault for not taking it away after he had finished drinking the water.  If the computer hanged it must be because she visited some “idiotic” site.  If he trampled on her toes, it was because she came and stood in the wrong place.

“At least once, once in your lifetime, can’t you say ‘sorry’?” she asked him once.  “I won’t talk to you unless you apologise.”  He had slapped her when she argued with him over the school he had chosen for Nancy.  She didn’t want that particular school which was meant for the upwardly mobile social classes who always loved to buy a better car than their neighbours.  His view was that his daughter should be proud of her school.   The argument started.  On the meaning of pride.  And ended in the slap.  A slap is the last word of the person who is incapable of carrying forward even an argument, let alone a discussion.

The apology never came.  But Sheetal forgave him, nevertheless.

Forgiveness has limits, however.  She had reached the end of the tether when she walked out with Nancy.

She knew Gaurav would miss Nancy.  She knew he wouldn’t be able to live long without her.

She was right. 

Gaurav came one Sunday.  With an abundance of Nancy’s favourite sweets and snacks.  And a bouquet of orchids for Sheetal. 

When Sheetal brought coffee for him, he was playing with Nancy and knocked the tray accidentally. 

“I’m sorry,” said Sheetal as she tried to balance the tray in her hands.

“Oh no, it’s my fault,” said Gaurav taking the tray from her hands.

What!  Did he say it really?  Sheetal looked at him.  Into his eyes.  He was looking into hers.  Did she see a new light in those eyes?  She thought she did.


Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 19, 2014 at 2:59 PM

    Nice, real and appealing story. Ego can burn houses and they were lucky to get back. I loved the line 'Forgiveness has limits, however'. In the end I was left with Sheetal would be in a very good feeling because when you forgive someone without anything in return and then time passes and the other person realizes is more solace than holding grudges.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 19, 2014 at 7:52 PM

      Holding grudges ruins us, Shweta. You're so right. It's the worst thing a person can do. And the other is the ego which burns houses, as you put it so beautifully. Male chauvinism is nothing more than ego chauvinism, the answer of the person who cannot take a discussion beyond his ego...

      Delete
  2. RanjanaNovember 19, 2014 at 8:34 PM

    Good story and the right message. Very well narrated, or rather pictured.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 19, 2014 at 8:54 PM

      Thanks, Ranjana. I'm trying the classical advice of Henry James, I think, of "showing" (you said, "pictured") rather than narrating. I'm simply delighted by your comment. It takes me a step ahead in story telling.

      Delete
  3. Ravish ManiNovember 19, 2014 at 8:43 PM

    Beautiful piece. Concise with emotional peaks. Well... I'm confused what the word 'thought' in last line mean - whether it's a happy end or not?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 19, 2014 at 8:56 PM

      Human interactions are complex, Ravish. That's what I wanted to show. The ego is the hindrance. If we let go the ego, we all know the reality: that we love. Yet "thinking" may come in between all the time. That's life and it has to go on...

      Delete
  4. All Top SecretNovember 19, 2014 at 9:37 PM

    very nice..........

    ReplyDelete
  5. Kokila guptaNovember 20, 2014 at 12:52 PM

    Beautiful, positive and most importantly real ! Emotional without being teary and provoking thought without being preachy ... Great !

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
8 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more

Kailasnath the Paradox

AI-generated illustration It wasn’t easy to discern whether he was a friend or merely an amused onlooker. He was my colleague at the college, though from another department. When my life had entered a slippery slope because of certain unresolved psychological problems, he didn’t choose to shun me as most others did. However, when he did condescend to join me in the college canteen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette, I wasn’t ever sure whether he was befriending me or mocking me. Kailasnath was a bundle of paradoxes. He appeared to be an alpha male, so self-assured and lord of all that he surveyed. Yet if you cared to observe deeply, you would find too many chinks in his armour. Beneath all those domineering words and gestures lay ample signs of frailty. The tall, elegantly slim and precisely erect stature would draw anyone’s attention quickly. Kailasnath was always attractively dressed though never unduly stylish. Everything about him exuded an air of chic confidence. But the wa
9 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
16 comments
Read more