The Unventured Passions

Can't Stop Thinking

Through open windows that welcomed the passage of the silvery moonlight, the dining room was alive with the vibrant hues of the night. If you aren't having fun at the dining table, you aren't doing it right, Bondita would always say as she encouraged all the Roy Chowdhurys to sit and share their food atleast once a day.
But that particular night was different.
Manimala had fed the baby and patted her to sleep as Bondita and Anirudh sat silently at the dinner table.

"Tonight again." Anirudh looked up from his plate. "You said you would talk to him. This is not acceptable Bondita!" Displeasure and disapproval was evident in Anirudh's voice.

"I'm sure he isn't doing anything wrong." Bondita murmured as her fingers rolled the rice absent-mindedly on the plate.

"I can't believe you are supporting him. His absence at night has become a regular for the last two weeks. How can you be so sure that he isn't getting involved in anything inappropriate."

"Inappropriate? You mean getting involved with the Krantikaris is inappropriate to you?" Bondita raised her eyebrows at her husband.

"Why would you even say that? Do you really believe I despise them?" Anirudh paused.
"There are so many distractions in the city Bondita... I meant if..."

"Don't you trust your brother?" She asked him without letting him complete his sentence. "Because I trust him. And, I believe Batuk won't do anything inappropriate which you won't approve."

Anirudh finished his food and looked at her almost untouched plate.
"Why aren't you eating?"

Bondita let out a sigh.
"Barrister Babu, do you think those young men, those Krantikaris who are out there fighting for our country... Do you think they have eaten tonight?" Bondita's eyes gleamed pearls as she pressed her eyelids only to visualise Satya's bright green eyes smiling at her.

"No. But you wasting food is not going to fill their stomach Bondita." Anirudh tried to reason with her as she finally wipped her tears and started to eat.

"I was just reading the evening newspaper, and guess what an amazing thing has happened this morning." Anirudh tried to sound cheerful trying to evade menacing thoughts from his wife's mind.

"What happened?" She asked plainly.

"It's Satya Sen again." Anirudh's face shone up brightly as the name arose a havoc inside Bondita once again.

"Wha... What about him?"

"As usual he successfully fooled the entire British police platoon and vanished into thin air." Anirudh stood up picking up their plates as Bondita finished her share of food.

"Oh." Bondita's heart palpitated in a strange uneasiness.

"It's in your University actually." Anirudh kept the dishes away and washed his hands.
"It's in the newspaper." He pointed towards the folded evening bulletin kept on the couch.
"One of the arrested Krantikaris tipped the police off about his whereabouts. The police had chased him inside the university but then he entered one of the club rooms and never came out."

"Drama club!" Bondita let out a soft giggle as Anirudh furrowed his eyebrows .

"How did you know?"

"You said... Umm... He must have taken a disguise." Bondita fumbled uncomfortably making Anirudh smile at her.

"Come here, sit beside me." He patted the couch beside him and gestured her to sit.
"So, Bondita... Don't you worry about this man... He is too good to be caught."

Bondita sat beside him and leaned her head against his shoulder.
"Isn't he a prince?" She asked.

"Yes, apparently. His family is the Raipur Royalty. But after the police had raided and tortured his old ailing grandmother to death, he is said to have never returned back to the palace."

"Killed!!" Bondita almost jumped. "That's terrible."

"Hm... It was two years back. He was studying in the Calcutta Medical College. His professors vouched him to be gifted. But he dropped out in the final year after this terrible tragedy."

Bondita took the newspaper in her hand and brought it up close. A faded small photograph was printed along with the news. Bondita ran her fingers on the black and white photograph. A thin pale figure with a head full of curly hair. Very different from the muscular man whom she met only that morning.

"That's him. His only photograph available to the police and press, from the college ID." Anirudh paused.
"No body really knows how he looks Bondita... So you stop worrying about this man and focus on your studies I'd say."

"Hm." Bondita hummed again, resting her head on his chest once again as her heart cried out for the man whom no one had ever seen, except her!

...............................................

Raimoti had tried her best to distract her tormented heart as she finally sought refuge to her much loved poetry. The entire day, after returning home, she had tried to reason with her heart, tried to reason Batuk's behaviour, but the more she pictured Batuk's quivering lips on her shoulder, the more she relived his soft touch on her waist, her heart cried out.
It was around eleven at night, and almost three hours that she had sat by the window of her room on the second floor of their grand mansion, with a book in hand, engrossed in the deep melancholy of Irish Poetry.

"I won't cry a river in the name of love, I'll drown yet I'll smile in it. I'll win my love but not by losing myself... " She mouthed the words as she closed the book and leaned her head against the wall, her eyes lazily drifted outside the vast never-ending darkness outside the window, stretched to the horizon.
"Why can you not love me, Batakrishna Roy Chowdhury? Am I that unlovable?" She sighed deeply once again as she got up to close the window to evade the cold breeze of the night flowing inside from the backyard garden. But, as she held the glass window sills, a twinkle of a glowing light flickering from the backyard dazzled her eyes for a moment, alerting all the senses at once.
It was impossible to penetrate the front security, and this backyard garden shouldn't be known to someone from outside unless...
Without wasting a single moment, Raimoti quickly pulled the bedside drawer, took out a pair of binoculars and pressed her eye against it.

"Batuk!!" She gasped.

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