Pinto Has An Idea

by Rajeev Saxena

  Pinto said, ‘You should spend enough time with your father-in-law so that there is no regret later. I won’t be able to stay that long because of my work with Manna. I promise I’ll join you a bit later for a couple of days.’

  ‘Thanks, Pinto. I’m lucky to have found an understanding husband.’

  ‘I know. I’m nice and “understanding”—but only if I don’t join politics,’ Pinto laughed.

  ‘That’s true, seriously.’

  Lavanya picked up the phone and called Asim back. As she was telling him Pinto had booked tickets for herself and Harsha, her voice cracked, thinking of Pinto’s generosity again. She wiped the tears away and hoped Asim didn’t hear her falter over her husband’s name.

  Lavanya and Harsha reached Kanpur, rushed to the hospital and found Manisha sitting outside the ICU ward. She cried, ‘Thank God you made it. Your Papaji was asking after you and Harsha all the time.’ Lavanya consoled Manisha, ‘I’m here now. He’ll be all right.’

  Harsha interrupted innocently, ‘I don’t like the smell here. Take Nanu home. I want us to play together.’

  Manisha cried even more.

  Asim was full of regret. ‘I know my dad won’t survive. He is a broken man. I’m the biggest cause of his grief. Even at this stage, he does not speak to me.’

  Lavanya had nothing to say. Harsha stared at Asim. ‘Mummy, who is he?’ she asked.

  Asim left in silence and Lavanya breathed a sigh of relief. She did not have to respond to Harsha’s embarrassing question.

  Manisha sat by her side. ‘Beta, I won’t hide anything. Mothers are always more lenient with their kids no matter what mistakes they commit. When your Papaji broke all relations with Asim, I felt devastated.’

  Lavanya looked at her without bitterness, ‘I understand, Mummyji. I’m a mother also. What’s the point in going into all that now.’

  Manisha continued sorrowfully, ‘Let me say what I have to today, beta. I kept in touch with Asim without your Papaji’s knowledge. I called him to his father’s side when my husband fell ill. But he still hasn’t forgiven his son. I beg of you—would you please convice your Papaji to talk to Asim at least once? It’s a request from a mother.’

  ‘I’ll try my best, Mummyji.’

  Yogendra had tears in his eyes when he saw Lavanya, and so had she.

  He hugged Lavanya and said, ‘Beta, our family has given you a lot of grief. I know that I’m going to be alive for only a few more days. If possible, please forgive my son before I go.’

  Lavanya’s heart felt heavy. Her father-in-law had always been good to her, but as an old-fashioned head of the house, he had maintained an aura of reserve. He had never hugged Lavanya before.

  Lavanya’s voice broke as she looked at the beloved old patriarch of the family. ‘I can’t bear to see you in this state, Papaji,’ she wept. ‘You have done so much for me. You could have abandoned me, but you took me in as a daughter instead. I am so thankful to you for my new life. And this is your granddaughter, Harsha.’

  ‘Does it mean you have forgiven my son?’ Yogendra asked keenly, stroking Harsha’s hair.

  ‘Papaji, does it really matter who apologizes and who grants forgiveness, after so many years? Your son wants to talk to you. Please talk to him.’ she begged.

  Whether it was good clinical treatment or the visit by Lavanya, Yogendra recovered in two weeks and came home. The doctors were still not sure how long he’d survive but still, he was home. And with his loved ones. People said Harsha’s wish had come true—she had wanted him to come home and play together with her.

  In Pune, Pinto was so busy with Manna that he couldn’t keep his promise to visit Lavanya in Kanpur. Lavanya called, ‘It is embarrassing for me not to have you here. Women are gossiping.’

  ‘Come on. As long as I don’t care what people say…’

  ‘I know about your activities from newspapers,’ she told him accusingly. ‘Manna is making you a hero. Don’t take advantage of my absence to go that way. Did you deliberately send me away so you could be free? Papaji is doing ok now. I want to come home. Harsha is also missing school.’

  Pinto said, ‘Things are very busy here. My work with Manna is in full swing. I should not let the momentum die.’

  ‘You are totally on the route to becoming a full-time politician, I can see. Do you think I’m a fool? You know what I want. Don’t take me too lightly.’ Lavanya strongly voiced her concern.

  Pinto pleaded, ‘Don’t believe the newspapers. You know how inaccurate their reports can be. And for the last time I’m asking you, what’s so wrong in being a politician?’

  Lavanya was positively rude this time. ‘I don’t want to go in for the same discussion again and again. You know my reasons for doubting that profession. I didn’t marry a highly educated person to see him sink to the level of a politician. Use your skills in the areas where you should. Remain a scientist. And meanwhile, come and take Harsha and me home. You know Asim is also here. It feels odd.’

  Pinto kept arguing, ‘What’s so bad about educated persons becoming politicians? You want only morons at the top?’

  Lavanya had her final say. ‘Politics is very risky. You have a daughter to take care of. I don’t want to keep arguing on this. Maybe I’m not logical but you... will... not... go... into... politics.’

  Pinto wasn’t going to give up. ‘And if I do?’

  Lavanya said, ‘Then you know what I’ll do,’ and hung up.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I

  t was not Pinto’s intention to take advantage of Lavanya’s absence to follow his own wishes. Somehow, he felt hypnotized by the political pull of his circumstances. He continued his work with Manna, who first tapped the parties in Maharashtra to sell Pinto’s proposal, before going nationwide. The parties considered the proposal, but there were several ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ imposed on its implementation:

  ‘We cannot force speed on the judicial process.’

  ‘This system of ‘points’ you are recommending may not be easy to follow through on. We need more time to work on the nitty-gritties.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll be able to curb corruption just by reducing the number of VIPs?’

  ‘What’d happen if some of our leaders give up their security cover, in fear of the point system, and they were assassinated?’

  Manna realized that even if some of the parties he’d approached included Pinto’s proposal in their manifesto, they’d put the actual execution of it on the back-burner. Generally speaking, their hearts were not in it, even though they were mentally convinced. So Manna formed a completely new entity called the Clean Party, became its president and named Pinto as its patron.

  Pinto’s proposal about the VIP point system was the highest priority on their manifesto. The message was catching on well across all communities, the poor, the rich, the urban, and the rural.

  Pinto became so busy with his political activities, dharnas and back-to-back meetings that he totally forgot to return Lavanya’s calls till a good two weeks later. When he did call, her phone was switched off. Asim told him that she had left the house in Kanpur almost ten days before, and was surprised and a bit panicked about why she hadn’t reached home. Pinto called his daughter’s boarding school and was surprised to learn that Harsha was there, but he failed to trace the whereabouts of Lavanya. A distraught Pinto drove straight to the school, his mind in a whirl of questions.

  When he agitatedly interrogated Harsha, the moment she was brought to see him in the visitors’ room in her school, she said, ‘Mummy was extremely upset about your project and said again and again that she would not go back to you. I thought it was just one of your regular fights.’

  ‘Oh,’ she added, feeling inside her shirt pocket, ‘she gave me a letter for you’.

  Pinto grabbed it, tore open the envelope and read it quickly. The letter seemed to have been written in a hurry. Maybe, what with looking after both her in-laws and Harsha singly, she didn’t get enough time.

  ‘I
spent some lovely years of my life with you,’ the letter read. ‘I’m really thankful to you for that. But now, I feel that we are no longer on the same path. We are like the opposite shores of a river, which will never meet. I respect your decision to go into politics. At the same time, I cannot live with a politician. I did my bit to convince you. Maybe, if I forced you to, you’d agree with me, but I don’t think that would be justified. Why should I take away your freedom? At the same time, why should I give up mine?

  ‘Remember how I joked all the time about you being a selfish scientist? All of your inventions centred around you. This time I want to be the selfish one. I didn’t want to lose you. I wanted you to give enough time to Harsha, to me, and not to strangers.

  ‘With God’s grace I have skills that I can use to make my living. I don’t want anything from you. Please, just take good care of Harsha. I know you will. I don’t want to leave her like this. But one of us has to be there for her and I feel you are in a better position to support her.

  ‘You must be wondering how a mother can bring herself to leave her daughter. You know, a mother can do anything for her child’s better future. I’m confident that she will always do what is best for her, even without my guidance. Which is why I can bear to leave her.

  ‘You and I have a love-and-hate relationship. I know we both love each other. But I hate you as well, for putting your own interests above mine, and I don’t want to see you again. Do not try to find me. I will not tell you where I am. This chapter of my life is closed. Only time will tell if I come to see Harsha or not. But again, please keep her as we always did, like our little princess.’

  Pinto sank into the nearest chair, limp with shock. He didn’t know that a simple chain of events could turn into such a mess. A blessing in disguise was that Lavanya was safe. He had imagined all kinds of horrible things: that she’d met with an accident; that she’d been kidnapped by a new political opponent. Fortunately, it had been none of those. But where would he find her? He tried to sound calm to Harsha as he reassured her about her mother’s well-being, but the girl knew from the look on his face that things weren’t quite right.

  Pinto set determinedly out on his search for Lavanya. He regretted that she hadn’t warned him—or had she?—of the step she was contemplating to take. Why did she have to do something so drastic? Like anyone in a desperate situation, he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t make the news public. His only consolation was in talking to Lavanya’s foster family and close friends.

  He tried all possible social networking IDs, phones, friends but it was of no avail. After a couple of days he rang Yogendra’s family again to find out if they had any news. An aunt of Asim received the call and said, ‘Yogendra is in ICU again. Don’t get upset but let me tell you something. Asim and Lavanya had been seen to mingle too closely for anyone’s comfort. You should look into that angle as well while searching for her.’

  Pinto was puzzled and asked, ‘Where is Asim?’

  ‘I don’t know but he isn’t in Kanpur.’

  That was strange. Pinto refused to believe Lavanya would have any relationship with Asim, whom she really hated. Maybe the aunt was just a regular family gossip. On the other hand, it occurred to him that there was rarely smoke anywhere without fire. He longed to hear the truth from her, face to face. He was ready to give up politics—if that was her only concern.

  Meanwhile, the Clean Party was getting tremendous public support. Manna started preparing for the elections, which were just a year away. Pinto’s feet straddled two unequal boats. He was working hard at strengthening the party’s hope in the polls, but his greater focus was on searching for Lavanya. He knew she’d written the letter on an impulse. She would not be able to stop going to see Harsha, so he kept checking with his daughter often. But it was of no help.

  Harsha said, ‘Mummy will come to see me one day. I know that for sure. For now, I’m putting all this behind me, and preparing for my annual exams.’

  His friend Imran one day commented thoughtfully, ‘Lavanya really liked Puttu’s samosas a lot. She ordered their samosas through Goodsnet almost every day, other than on Fridays, when she kept a fast.’

  Imran collected the information from Puttu’s shop and shortlisted around ten female customers who fit the criteria. He went to all the addresses; most of them were apartments. One of the addresses was Montessa Apartments, on Karve Road. Someone called Pallavi had frequently been ordering samosas there. The security guard gave a description of Pallavi’s roommate, which was very close to Lavanya’s.

  Imran sent a message to Pallavi from the lobby of her building: ‘Puttu has introduced a new type of samosa and he has come to promote the product door-to-door.’ Imran sat waiting for Pallavi to come down. To his surprise, it was Lavanya who came downstairs. She was living with Pallavi as a roommate, having found her ad on the internet.

  When Imran requested her to come away with him, her response was, ‘I do not want to talk to Pinto. I told him not to look for me. He didn’t keep to my wishes. So I’ll leave this place as well, and Pinto will never find me again.’ After conveying her decision, she exited the lobby, got in an auto rickshaw and disappeared. Imran didn’t know with whom he was angrier—Lavanya or himself—that he’d come so miraculously close to her, and she’d gotten away all the same. It was a close encounter but could possibly be one of the last. He felt most frustrated because he feared he’d let down a friend.

  ***

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  S

  ix months had gone by. Memories are of different longevity for different people. Pinto and Harsha, too, felt differently. Harsha had sort of come to terms with the situation. Pinto hadn’t given up, though he kept everything a secret. Neighbours were told Lavanya had taken a job in her hometown, Kanpur.

  On the more public side of things, elections were to be held in Maharashtra in six months.

  Pinto thought several times that he should publish an appeal in the newspapers to Lavanya to come back home. But Manna was very careful about Pinto’s image, especially now that election time was approaching. ‘It’d bring a bad name to our party,’ he warned Pinto. ‘You have a role to play in this country. I understand that your personal matters are of extreme importance but there is no guarantee that Lavanya will come back after reading your notice. After all, she disappeared from right in front of Imran once.’

  Now only Harsha was Pinto’s family. He’d visit her every week, sometimes more often. He asked, ‘Beta, why don’t you leave boarding school and live with me?

  But by this time Harsha was so well adjusted to boarding school that she didn’t want to quit. ‘I have so many friends here. I like it here,’ she told her father.

  On a specially permitted visit to Harsha’s cubicle in school one day, Pinto found Lavanya’s purse on Harsha’s bed. It brought back a flood of memories and he was touched that she still had it. He had bought it for her on their first wedding anniversary, and she’d quickly put in her little items of make-up and perfume to establish her ownership. He felt like picking it up to smell the old familiar scent but was too afraid, lest he be caught in the act. Harsha, too, looked nervous. Suddenly, Lavanya came out of the adjacent restroom. She was startled, but in a moment, composed herself. Pinto floundered for words to say. He didn’t want to miss this opportunity to prove to Lavanya how much he had missed her. ‘I’m so lucky to have found—’ he began.

  But Lavanya was cold. ‘I knew this was going to happen one day. I visit Harsha every month, but I’ve instructed the school authorities to keep my visits secret. They know nobody can snatch away that right from me.’

  ‘But who would want to do that?’ he protested. ‘I want Harsha’s mother to be around her always. She needs you, and I need you. Just come back. I won’t ask any questions.’

  ‘What do you mean you won’t ask questions,’ Lavanya flared up, instead of softening. ‘Do you have any right to ask questions? What is the point in living with you when you don’t have time for me?’
<
br />   Pinto stopped being conciliatory. They were fighting again.

  Pinto began to spit out some of his own accumulated venom. ‘What kind of person leaves her family to do as she wishes? What kind of mother leaves her child? Were you having an affair with Asim?’

  Lavanya’s reaction was heated but her voice icy, ‘I don’t know why I should answer any of your questions. But hear me out for a change: I was visiting Harsha every month. I told her not to tell you. Also, Asim had a break-up with Alex. After our fight over the phone, when I shared my decision with Asim’s mother that you and I would no longer stay together, she wanted Asim and me to date again. Papaji didn’t like it but Mummyji pleaded with me so I went out with him once. But, why I am telling you all this?’

  Pinto tried to describe his own predicament. ‘I was so afraid I’d lost you. I searched for you everywhere. I didn’t want to lose you.’

  ‘I don’t live in Pune anymore. I don’t plan to live with you anymore. I’ve gone to a place where you can’t find me,’ she said before turning to her daughter. ‘Harsha darling, I’ll not be able to come to you that often till your father stops hunting for me.’ With that she zipped through the crowd of boarding school parents and disappeared.

  Pinto had no clue what to say to Harsha. Now he understood why Harsha had not shown as much anxiety as he had over the months She’d known all along about her mother. He realized it was not her fault for being secretive. Lavanya had made her promise not to tell.

  Another three months passed. The Clean Party was faring very well. All the pre-poll surveys had forecast a massive victory for his party. Pinto was projected as the candidate for the chief minister of the state.

  Manna managed the campaign efficiently. He collected funds from the masses but sidestepped any big donations. They had to be very careful about their party image. The opposition parties were busy conducting sting operations in order to malign the character of their opponents.