Hari was experiencing strange fatalities. Since the day of tragedy, his bodily functions were peculiarly marred and left him confused. It was his wife Priya who observed the morning after “funny that you should sleep the whole night on your side and lay like a mannequin”.
To this, he rebuked sharply “whatever do you mean wife?”
Priya, looping her long thick braid into an unbelievably perfect chignon above her neck, remarked “oh dear. You will soon find a job, and this will all be behind us. That accursed factory is not the only one in this town” piercing the sharp end of the bow shaped hair pin through her braid, continued “but to see that you are despondent to the point of an insomniac bout is alarming”.
“I fail to understand. Woman, but I slept peacefully. In fact, I dreamt about gouging tunnels through the rocky mountain to lay underground track for railways.” Hari was speaking in a murmur. Shadows of leafs lolloped over one another in beautiful caresses on the bed sheet before his pillow. Awkwardly, he asked his wife “what time is it?”
It was about 11 in the morning; Priya hurriedly approached her husband, sat by his side on the giant mattress and lovingly embraced his palm into hers. She was about to rub against her cheek, the floral envelopes of her fingers intertwined into his, when she dropped it and uttered an audible pain. Wearing a mask of confounding agitation, she spoke, with tears fogging her vision “why? But why should you punish yourself. You mustn’t. How am I to reconcile the tragedy of my love so weak that it cannot becalm you from the merely transient loss of your job”
“Woman, what is the matter with you this morning?” Hari loved his wife. He could not bear that his unconscious meddling with something of value has caused grief and pain to her. He bethought that perhaps it was the oncoming of the baby; the hormones that were reeking her conscience of sorrowfulness.
Not to be. Priya, drawing the blinds on the curtain, shut the sunlight out. The shadows of the leaves were presently gliding through the folds of the curtain in a sea of sunlight much like mast ships on an evening sea. “you willingly burned yourself in the sun since morning. The skin on your wrist is as hot as on the grills on this window” inconsolably welled with tears, she spoke between sobs and coughs “why are you punishing yourself? Staying awake the whole night? I can tell. You merely laid on the bed, only now, in the present position. Unless of course you managed to sleep through the night without moving an inch. Do not patronise me” She flopped foolishly onto the floor; watched him from a distance. Squatting with the elbows firmly raised over the knees, her eyes peered through the forehead that was cupped between her palms.
Hari was not alone. The tragic boiler malfunction at the nuclear reactor facility had affected the workers in ways beyond recognition. Post diagnosis, it was found that the radiation emitted on the tragic day had affected the peripheral nervous system, inhibiting the functioning of nocicpetors. For hari and other unfortunate workers, tragedy struck by causing irreparable damage to these sensory receptors. Perception of pain was no longer possible.
Normally, a person switches his sleeping position consciously or unconsciously, through the night. But in case of hari, his brain no longer felt the need to perform this action, for the impetus was lost. Pain was no longer an impetus. He laid there in the sun till 11 in the morning; his central nervous system did not find it necessary to alert, nor did he find it inconvenient.
Ten years later, Hari was to remember the present day.
(continued)
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