Autopsy

AUTOPSY
(Short-story)

KOMMURI VENUGOPALA RAO
(Rendered from the Telugu by D. Anjaneyulu)
In the mortuary of the General Hospital, an Autopsy was in progress. The Professor of Pathology, Dr Sridhar, was deftly dissecting the body. The woman student, serving him as assistant for the day, was briskly taking notes, as he held forth with zest to the students crowding round him:

“Such advanced cases of Syphilis as this are indeed rare in this age of antibiotics. Look at the patches on the kidney. You can feel it and see the consistency–so firm it is. It is wood-hard, I say. Here’s the liver–the brain–and the uterus. You feel the lymph glands here, typical shot appearance – what a wonderful tertiary stage it is.

The autopsy was over in another hour. Sridhar washed his hands and came out, after instructing his assistants on the safe keeping of the dissected parts of the body for display in the museum.

Outside the mortuary, five or six persons were found sitting under the trees in the hospital compound. Sridhar guessed that they must be waiting for the body. There will be no peace for these men or for the soul of the deceased until the body was consigned to the grave. Funny people. The substance of the body has already been taken out by him for the museum. It is only the empty shell that is left to them for the funeral rites.

He has no faith in God. No superstitions or sentiments either. Attachments mean nothing to him.

Stepping into his room, he washed his hands once again and was about to open the carrier for lunch. The telephone on his table rang and he took up the receiver.

It was the voice of Dr Ramaa. “Congratulations, Doctor,” she said.

“For what?”

“I have just examined Sridevi. She is pregnant...prima, you see. She is weak, you know. Needs care...good food and all....you didn’t know that she was coming to me, I suppose! She wanted me to examine her, as she was not sure......Third month...”

He was hardly able to hear any further. A thousand fears assailed him. The receiver shook in his hands. “My God,” he said, in sheer fright.

He stopped the car under the portico. Ignoring Sridevi who was coming out, he went to his room without a word and slumped into the sofa.

She might have anticipated his reaction. She was silent for a minute. Coming softly behind him, she said: “The news has upset you. I know.”

He turned towards her and looked vacantly as he always did. His looks were always so except or rare occasions.

“Sit down, I shall tell you,” he said, obviously to comfort her.

“It is all right. Please go on,” she replied, still standing.

“First be seated.”

Sitting on the sofa opposite him, she looked at him inquiringly.

“Sridevi, Dear,” he started consolingly. It was the Professor of Pathology, Sridhar the materialist, speaking. “Don’t you be upset by what I am going to say. It is five years since we got married. Out of which, two were taken away by my foreign trip. Professional career seems to take precedence over our family life. You see, I may have to go to the States again in another couple of years. This time, you will be with me, Dear. I have not so far felt the longing to become a father. Nor do I have any illusions about the achievement of fatherhood or its joys. I dislike the new burden. It will only come in the way. We are not too old as yet. Tell me, do you like this happiness to vanish?”

Sridevi suppressed a sigh. On hearing him, two questions rose in her mind: one, what is happiness? two, why was he telling her all this now, when it was too late?

“What do you think?” he said turning to her assuming she has understood him.

“What is there to think of?,” she said, smiling feebly.

“Nothing,” he rejoined in disappointment.

“Nothing.”

“Never expected this impediment so soon,” he murmured, twisting his fingers. Curbing an inconvenient smile, she slowly rose and sat by him. She placed her hand on his shoulder, comfortingly. He turned towards her. The familiar vacant look again. Spoke in his unruffled voice: “These sentiments and affections do not suit me. Dear! A straight and simple course of life is what I want, which will be quite in my control. I don’t like unexpected developments and forced attachments. You know me well. I have an allergy for the pangs of separation and the public display of mutual affection. Also for the weakness which makes one gloat over something as “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone” to the extent of letting it coming in the way of life’s progress. The strongest thing on earth is this weakness. This is the age of revolution in science and technology. The human brain should stretch itself like rubber and not snap like a piece of rope, my Dear.”

She could not control the flood of her tears.

“I am amused to see people cry.”

“You are heartless,” she said trembling slightly angered. “Perhaps, you are right,” he replied, rising. He did not change his clothes or even have a cup ofcoffee as was his habit. He moved slowly to the corridor, where he lit a cigarette and began to look out.

“May be this heartlessness has done me some good. I could not otherwise have become a professor at this age. Had I not been harsh in counteracting this aberration called love, I might have remained an ordinary graduate. You know the truth.”

She didn’t reply. Her subdued cry broke the silence.

It was winter. Cold winds were blowing from the south. The earth and the sky had become cool. It was then getting dark. The gentle fragrance of the roses, lilies and jasmines the eucalyptus and the camphor trees in front of the bungalow was being wafted across to him, as he stood there. All these plants, flower-beds and trees were the fruits of Sridevi’s labour in their cosy bungalow tucked away in a quiet retreat in Maredpalli in Hderabad. She was a slave to sentiment. For Prof. Sridhar, dialogue would be easier with the dissected limbs of dead bodies and microscopes than with the flowers and the plants. He was not so sensitive to the sight and smell of the latter. He was, however, particular about keeping the brick and mortar bungalow, with its mosaic flooring always neat and tidy.

Throwing away the cigarette after sometime, he said without turning : “Constant endeavour is my ultimate goal. All these hurdles cannot block his way to reach the great peak. It is quite easy to reach it, if only you would listen to me. You are now pregnant. But, you are not keeping fit. I am not sure if you can give birth. It is sheer foolishness to risk your life for a little lump of flesh. Do try and understand. I do not like it in the present circumstances. It is not too late now...I am a doctor and it is not impossible to have this removed.

The silence of that minute was marred by the silence before the raging fires of hell. The calm before the storm, the quiet moment as of hesitation before the great deluge, before the fiery eruption of the volcano. And then a loud crash.

Startled, he turned . Sridevi was there, senseless on the floor.

There was dim light from the lamp in the bedroom. It was past twelve in the ticking wall clock.

Sridevi was in bed, but not asleep; covered in a blanket up to the neck, she was contemplating with closed eyes. The sight and thought of her husband, since the incident that evening, was giving her the creeps. She could not visualise him as her husband, but only as a professor, as an automaton. She could not sleep the whole night.

Her pillow was getting wet with her welling tears. She opened her eyes a little to look towards his cot. He was sleeping on his side, as was his wont. Evidently sound asleep!

He was always so. He and his personality. One did not feel like reaching up to him. One would prefer rather to slip down.

He was then about 35 years or so of age. Tall and slim, strong and healthy. No lack of composure in his shining eyes, no sign of tiredness in his bright face. No streak of grey in his thick black hair. It was no ordinary achievement that he had become a professor at this age.

Sridevi turned her face away and closed her eyes. She remembered his mother’s words to her before marriage: “He docs not know how to secure the object of his desire. Nor realise its true worth. I fear he might find himself left alone. Please have some consideration for this poor old woman and let it not turn out that way. Hope you don’t dislike this man of stone.”

She reassured the old lady and fulfilled her desire.

All talk of sin and spiritual merit used to leave Sridhar cold. He could say: “I can’t lay great store bythese things. Birth and death are not the beginning and the end of life. What I want is living. If this living be made of steel, it should have no cracks or leaks. I have been a materialist ever since I came of age. But I am not, on that account, devoid of all feelings and affections. I have my own interests and preferences. But they have nothing to do with sentiments and superstitions. They are those that help my intellectual development.”

“Such as?” she enquired, half seriously.

“Such as you, for instance. I cannot deny this fact. The thought is pleasing to me.”

She was able to understand him to some extent. To that extent she was not enthused. To the other extent, she was not repulsed either. He is a man of no illusions. He is unused to protestations of love or building of castles in the air. He works hard for the results in view. He does not relax. He takes good care of the things he wants. He is a man of restraints, not of extremes. He is not given to outbursts of joy or sorrow. They seem ridiculous in his eyes. He can plumb the depths of life and taste its sweetness. But he would not consider them strange or wonderful.

She took care never to expose herself before him. She knew how to maintain her dignity. She could not help breaking down that night, as it involved their very personal relations. There was no room for pride or dignity here.

But Sridhar was not sleeping, as Sridevi seemed to think. He was only thinking.

After a great deal of thinking, he said to himself, “All right; let her have it her own way.”

“I am sorry, Doctor! This is a case of hydrocephalus.” said Dr. Ramaa, the Professor of Midwifery. It was seven months after and all the investigations were complete.

Sridhar was slightly shaken.

“The findings from pelvimetry are favourable. The foetus is healthy so far. Seems to be a rare case. I shall give a trial labour and if it does not work, we shall resort to craniotomy. What do you think?” she went on.

Sridhar nodded. But after a moment’s thought, replied: “Why risk trial labour, Doctor? Why not proceed with craniotomy straight away?”

“I feel somehow that delivery would be possible. There is no danger for Sridevi. You may rest assured,” she said confidently.

He wanted to insist on the foetus being destroyed by craniotomy. But she wouldn’t listen. He wished her good-bye and came out.

He lit cigarette after cigarette. Minutes were burning away mercilessly.

For the first time in his life, he felt the agony of passing minutes. He realised what Sridevi meant for him and knew why man was not an automaton.

“My God! He must be an unhappy fellow indeed who does not know the sweet pangs of sorrow,” he thought within himself.

The telephone bell rang and he took up the receiver.

“Normal delivery. It’s a boy. Both mother and child are well”, said Dr Ramaa Devi. She did not congratulate him. Nor was there any suggestion of joy in her voice. He knew the reason.

“Thank you, Doctor”, he said quietly, replacing the receiver on its rest.

The child is fair, skinny with slender limbs. The head is out-size, with protruding eyes, formless nose and mouth.....He is growing in the house.

Whenever he saw the child, Sridhar remembered that there was no such specimen in the pathology museum.

Sridhar wondered how this child had survived. Normally, babies of this type tended to die in the womb itself. Their crania will have to be cut into pieces to take them out of the womb. It was possible for this child to be born alive because his head was not too large at that time. Not only was he born alive, buthe is growing and laughing.

Sridhar knows that they will turn out to be imbeciles, if they survived.

Once or twice, he gazed at the child as he would at a specimen in the laboratory. Never fondled it. How did he take Sridevi into confidence about its prospect.

Sridevi called the child Karuna. She knew something of the truth about the child, if not the whole truth. It was a congenital anomaly, caused by the accumulation of fluid in the brain.

Sridevi had a faith in God. She believed in the wages of sin and spiritual merit and the doctrine of ‘Karma’. That was why she accepted the situation as being the “fruit of her sin”.

She would always cling to the child, petting him and fondling him and kissing him. What does the child know, or anybody for that matter, how much of her suffering had gone into his making.

She would never talk about the child to the husband. Nor ask him to take him in his arms. She would not even like to be seen by her husband while fondling the child. Her life with the husband was neither better nor worse than before.

She purchased lots or dolls for Karuna. She would become a child herself to play with them.

She never allowed the child to be seen by guests and visitors. She used to rush inside her room to hide him away. She was not only afraid of their seeing him; she would not be able to stand their sympathy.

Once Karuna was taken ill. He was running temperature. She was terribly upset and rushed to her husband.

“Baby is having fever. Will you please come and have a look?” she laid.

He went into the room and examining the child, asked her not to worry. It might be a mild attack of bronchitis. He would get her the medicine.

The whole day he treated his child as a doctor would his patient.

In the night, he woke up to a rustling noise, only to see, in the dim light of the bedroom lamp, his wife feeding the child with the feeding bottle. The clock showed twelve.

“You shouldn’t do that, Sridevi! No feeding between 10-00 p.m. and 6-00 a.m. Please stop it,” he laid.

She did so, and lying by the side of the child, tried to lull him to sleep.

But the child would not keep quiet. He began to raise a big howl. Not knowing what to do, .he said, “He won’t be quietened. I shall give him the feeding bottle,” she said entreatingly.

“Are you doing the same thing everyday?”

“To stop him from crying.”

“Why have you turned out to be so clumsy, Sridevi, with all your education?”

She did not reply. As the child did not stop crying, for some time, she took him out to the corridor and began to walk to and fro.

Two days later, the child was to normal.

One day, she came into the hall from her room, to find Sridhar intently watching the sleeping child. She could not understand what he was examining for so long. Was he contemplating the gross appearance of a specimen relating to his subject? The thought gave her the creeps. She came silently from behind and pulled the blanket over the child, “It is cold,” she said.

Sometimes, his friends would come to see him. “What is this, Sridhar,” they would say, “Why don’t you show us your son?”

“He is not a healthy child,” he would reply. “There is a disease by name hydrocephalus. In America, one in every 500 children is born with it. You might have seen a couple of them here–outsize head, protruding eyes and disproportionate hands and legs,” he went on in a lecturing tone. “Come in and see him for yourself,” he said, getting up from his seat.

“It is all right, please don’t bother,” one ofthe friends had to say, embarrassed.

“No, no, doesn’t matter; do come in,” replied Sridhar leading him in.

Sridevi was listening to all this. She got the creeps. It was all so revolting to her. What is the etiquette? And what was its absence? She took the child and shut herself up inside the room.

“Open the door, Sridevi,” he called, knocking at the door, “Some friends are here; they want to see the child.” There was no reply from inside.

“It is all right,” the friend excused himself, “We shall take another chance.”

The mother inside holding the child in her hands, caught the words, from a distance: “She is an educated lady, but a sentimental fool.”

The child grew in course of time. He had learnt to lie on his belly. Sridhar watched the process of the child’s turning as in an educational film strip.

Once, the child had slipped off his bed, hitting his head on the floor, sustaining a bleeding injury. The mother suffered untold agonies the whole day. Sridhar felt so exasperated, as to say: “I am sorry for having to tell you again and again. It is not good for you to develop this attachment so much.”

It was beyond Sridevi to be able to weigh the relationship between mother and son in the scales of profit and loss. But she did not argue with him. She kept silence.

One day, he called his wife aside as on business, and looking at the child, playing on the cot, said: “Don’t you think his head if growing larger and larger, day by day, Sridevi?”

Sridevi lifted her head to look into his face. There was a streak of red in her eyes. “I have been thinking of asking you a question for a long time,” she began.

Unused to the harshness of this tone, he looked up helplessly.

“When would it possibly dawn upon youthat you are the father of this child?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. It was unnecessary. She took the boy inside.

Sridhar, who was a stranger to these attachments, stood speechless.

It was not all well, after some time. The fates did not look kindly upon Sridevi; The child began to wilt in due course. His gaze became unsteady and his crazy laughter unknown. There were lots of other complications in the stomach, throat and brain – leading to fits. The end came after a struggle for three day’s. The soul had left this uncouth form perhaps, in search of a more presentable one.

Sridevi was shedding silent tears with the child’s body in her lap. Not a word escaped her lips. She did not blame anyone.

After a long pause, Sridhar approached her to say: “How long can you sit like this? Let me take the child away for the last rites.” She lifted her head to look into his face and handed him the body.

Sridhar received the son’s body in both his hands and took it to his car. Placing it in the seat, he moved the car out of the bungalow.

Sridevi was out of her wits for three days. She did not eat or speak. A vague sense of grave injustice was gnawing at her vitals from inside. She was getting weaker and weaker.

Contrary to his normal self, Sridhar sat by her for hours together and tried to console her. He tried hard to bring her some relief. At last, he said: “Sorrow is the worst of man’s foes. This is a truth worth realising.”

Wherever she turned inside the house, in every room, she was confronted by the same form–outsize head, small hands and small legs and an inarticulate mouth–which seemed to cry out to her, Mother! Mother!”

Her heart sank within her.

“It is not given to me; not given to me,” she thought herself.

The little mouth said: “Was it my fault, mother? Whythis punishment, then?”

“Punishment not for you, my child, but for me. It is no punishment, in fact. It was my reward and fortune.”

The mouth said: “Don’t you worry, mother! It is better that I am gone; than to suffer the harsh gaze of all the onlookers!”

“I shall burn them, I shall curse them; I shall see the end of them.”

The mouth replied: “Don’t do it, mother! Why should you endure all this hardship for my sake?”

“My God! What a heartless woman am I What would have happened to me if I were born so?”

These inner thoughts and conflicts and agony of grief used to shake her to the depths.

“My God! Our forefathers were right. Hell does exist,” thought Sridhar to himself as he burnt away cigarette after cigarette.

Sridhar’s new specimen on hydrocephalus had a special place for itself in the Pathology Museum.

“Congenital hydrocephalus; the phoetus would normally die with intra-uterine life. This is a rare condition. It has lived for five months.” That was how Prof. Sridhar introduced it to his pupils.

He had no sentiments or superstitions. But he developed a special attachment to this specimen. It was his practice to spend an hour every day in the museum. While walking to and fro, he would automatically stop near this specimen. He would stand gazing intently at it for full five minutes. Day by day, the small body with a large head began to make a secure place for itself in his heart.

Standing before it was a thrilling experience for him. The specimen was an aid to scientific knowledge. But it was part of his blood, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

The vague feeling grew upon him without his being aware of it in the beginning. He used to think that everything was mechanical. But with this new thrill, and the upsurge of emotion, he realised that he was in the grip of an unseen force, that he was being conquered. He felt ashamed…..Deciding not to stop at that place, he tried briskly to walk away. But his feet would not obey him. They would suddenly call a halt right at that spot. And then the eyes would turn on the same direction, and he could not help the intent gaze......On the rare occasions he succeeded in going past, his feet would retrace their steps on some pretext. In an attempt to obviate the problem, he decided not to step inside the museum hall. But he did not succeed even fora single day. The more he suppressed it the more it grew upon him. The museum hall exercised a pull that his heart could not resist. He was tried and had to admit defeat. His eyes and legs used to function automatically, without his knowledge.

He had never experienced this state of mind before in his life. There was a raging conflict within him. He was angry with himself.

He was being convulsed by one impulse after another–first it was the thirst for knowledge, followed by a conflict, attraction, affection, and infatuation, all ending in identification. Sometimes, he would see that form in a dream. He had started to babble in his sleep.

It took days, even weeks for Sridevi to come out of her shell and note this curious change in him.

One day he was lying on his bed, looking up at the ceiling. She came and sat by him. But he did not notice her presence until he felt her hand on him.

He was startled and looked at her.

“Please tell me,” said she softly.

“About what?”

“A change has come over you,” she replied, “You are suffering for something. You are growing thinner and paler. Also becoming absent-minded. Talking in your sleep. What is it all due to?” Putting her hand on his chest, she inquired affectionately of him.

He was taken a. “Really? Have I changed so much?”

“A unique event in the history of the world, you have really changed so much. I am not able to believe my own eyes.”

“I am not able to why, Sridevi!”

“All right. You needn’t give me the reason. But please be your normal self again. Don’t you create any doubts that shall my own confidence.”

He kept quiet for a long time, looking into her eyes, before saying: “Shall I put you a question, Sridevi?”

“By all means.”

“Am I an odd person?”

She was startled and looked into his face. The hand that was softly stroking his chest stopped suddenly.

“Were there not many occasions when you hated me and despised me?”

She came to in a flash, realising that it was not a question, but an arrow that had left its bow.

She pulled herself together and replied to him in a tone of entreaty: “I had never expected such questions from you. I could put up with everything including your behaviour, training, etc., but not your present question. Please, for Heaven’s sake, don’t ask me this question in my life. Pardon me, if I had hurt your feelings.” So saying, she left the place.

He heaved a sigh. Sridevi did not know what he had done, what will happen if she came to know it? Will the volcano erupt?

It was the signal for a cataclysm. The earth was cracking up. Volcanoes were erupting, gushing up lava. Oceans were swallowing up the world in a tidal wave. Hurricanes, and whirlwinds, downpour and deluge and an earthquake that marked the end of the world.

There was a sudden, anguished cry from him. Sridevi, who was looking out from the window into the sky beyond, came running, “What is the matter, my Dear?” she asked him anxiously, bending over his face.

He was shivering–body bathed in cold sweat. The voice of Sridevi sounded to him as from another world. He opened his eyes with an effort.

“How are you, my Dear?” she said, putting her face close to his.

“I had a dream, Sridevi! It was catastrophic,” he said feebly.

There was a dark cloud on his face. “You are thinking too much,” she said “and that’s why…….”

There was silence for some moments.

“A week since I was taken ill. Isn’t it?”

She nodded agreement.

“I have never been ill for so long. May be that’s why...”

“Do you think so?”

“The thinking may be due to that......”

“You should not become impatient. You must rest completely for another two days before becoming a normal man.”

“A normal man,” he repeated the words with a faint smile on his lips.

“Why do you smile?”

“Because of a doubt.”

“About what?”

He did not know how to explain it, but replied, “Whether I shall be a normal man again.”

She felt the ground shaking under her feet. “Don’t say that please!” she entreated him with a lump in her throat.

“Sridevi,” he called.

“Yes.”

“Look there, out of the window.”

Not able to follow him, she said: “What is there to see?”

“Quite a lot. The glory of the setting sun covered by the clouds, the winds laughing at me. And the mocking cluster of trees.”

Sridevi’s heart grew sad and heavy. “Please, for Heaven’s sake, don’t you talk in this strain.” She could speak no more. Silence reigned again.

“Today is Saturday.” said Sridevi rather hesitantly. “I am thinking of going to the temple in the evening. Shall I go?” she said with bowed head.

“By all means! Why hesitate?”

“But you will have to stay alone at home……”

“That doesn’t matter, Sridevi, I am better.”

“Very well then...But you must not get up from your bed. You are still weak. I’ll be in an hour,” she replied with obvious anxiety.

Minutes passed. Sridhar did not feel like staying in the bed. He slowly got up. Feeling all right, he stood up. Felt confident and slowly reached the corridor and leaned against the wall.

The sky was getting heavily overcast. The sun was hardly visible in the West. Heavy rain was indicated.

Sridevi had gone on foot. She might get wet while returning. He grew agitated.

Once before, standing in the same place, in the same weather on a similar occasion, he said: “I won’t let the child be born.” Or words to that effect.

But, in fact, the child was not only born; he grew; and died.

“No. He didn’t die.” A strange voice seemed to cut in harshly.

He was startled. Yes, his body did not die. He had preserved it close at hand in the interest of his profession. But this profession cannot be properly defined. It is not a profession fit for a social man.”

“I am not dead, father! They have locked me up. Put me in a lotion. They all gaze at me through the glass. Their sharp looks are burning holes into my large head.”

A week has passed……a full week, my god! This life has locked up his body. So many days…….how could he endure it? How did he survive?

Not merely astonished. He shed tears ofblood.

“You are a stone, a slab ofstone.”

The mind was propelling him forward, “The flesh is weak, it is weak.”

“That is why I say. You are a stone, a slab ofstone.

“Weak with fever. Too weak.”

“You won’t die. Stones have no death.”

“Yes, stones have no death.”

The heart and the legs beat in unison; the brain did not work. He had a cold sweat in that shivering cold. “I must go, I will go.”

…….His black Ambassador moved from the portico ofthe bungalow.

He entered the museum, and switched the light on. The whole hall was floodlit.

There it is……..his………! He took a couple of steps. All of a sudden, the lights were off. Something wrong with the current. He could see nothing in that pitch dark.

“Where are you, my child!” groaned the heart.

“I am here, Daddy, here. They have locked me up here. I am stifled.”

“Just a minute. I am coming, child.” Prof. Sridhar, who was above all sentiments, was groping and toddling.

In that growing darkness, he was surrounded by the fearsome images of a variety of diseases–of women and children and old people, of heart cases and cancer, of tuberculosis and syphilis–hundreds of the primaries, collected by him, which were part of his mind’s treasure-house.

“Daddy! Daddy! I am here, Daddy.” Someone seems to be calling him out from all the directions. He was groping and fumbling for the way…….

Tuck ...Tuck ...Tuck ...came the sound of footsteps.

“Who’s there?” he shouted, stopping there. Was he frightened by the sound of his own footsteps? It was all silence again. He started to move.

“Daddy! Daddy!” The call was sad, piteous and heartrending.

The sound of laughter.

“Who’s there?” he shouted again.

“Here Daddy, I am here!”

He reached the place. His groping hands reached for the glass jar. He was sure he got it.

“Is that you, child?”

“Yes! Daddy.”

Unexpectedly, his hands lifted it up. He was struggling to take it near him and embrace it; his hands were trembling.

It was growing too heavy for his hands. He was hugging it to his breast...His hands were giving up the struggle...

A sudden crashing sound, followed by desperate cries of “My child! Mychild.”

The lights were on again. Sridhar was standing and trembling all over. All that he could see was a lump of human flesh, surrounded by pieces of broken glass, covered by the liquid pharmalin flowing all over the place.

Sridhar bent down to take his son up in his hands. He looked intently at the body for a minute. “I shall do you justice.” His mind was rocked with anxiety. He took the child on his shoulder and walked out.

The attender and the watchman stood dumbfounded at the sight of the Professor taking a museum specimen into his car. The, car moved towards the cremation ground.

Having made a clean breast of everything, Sridhar was crying to his heart’s content with his head in his wife’s lap. What a great relief it gave him–this grief!. What happiness! Sridevi was shedding tears silently, passing her fingers through his hair.

He did not keep anything from her.

“I want to be a good father, Sridevi. I want to be a good father,” he said.

If matters had not turned out this way, Sridevi would have told him, as he had planned to, “Let me have an induced abortion.”

But now, the situation was different. It was a rebirth all over,

“Your dream will come true in another seven months...” The words sounded the melody of shehnai in his ears.