An untellable secret
(Some secrets may better remain secrets for ever)
Kotra Siva Rama Krishna
The other narrations in the dairy were also in the same way. Menaka finished them all fast and got off from the bed. She put the dairy in its usual place and started pacing across the room.
It seemed to her that the pieces of the puzzle were about to fallen into place. A simple thing , a simple logic was missing. If that was found out. She started thinking furiously.
Point one. Nirmala and Ranganath could not have children for ten long years. Then how suddenly they gave birth to Nirupama? But instances like these were happened. After years of longing, after losing all the hope, women do become pregnant.
Point two. Niranjan, a surprising and interesting character. Why he particularly settled in this village after his retirement? He liked this small town. No surprise. This is s a beautiful town. Many people wanted to settle here.
Point three. Nirupama wanted to keep her suffering as a secret. Why she did not want it to be known to anyone else? Why she wanted to maintain this damned secrecy even with her very dearest and close people also? No answer to this so far.
Point four. Nirmala’s peculiar madness. There was no strange in her becoming mad like this. But she was only partly mad. Why did not she become totally mad?
Menaka did not know why but she concentrated on the last sentence. Why did not she become totally mad? This only started making rounds fiercely in her mind. Her whole concentration remained on that.
Then something struck her consciousness just like a thunderbolt! She just stopped wherever she was then. Her mouth agaped and eyes became wide. Unintentionally looked at the photo of Nirupama and it was as usual.
Why did not she get this thought before? She thought. As she concentrated on that most she was becoming herself more and more convinced of that. She had decided in herself to talk with her uncle about this as fast as possible.
***
“It is after a very long time we both met like this.” Nirupama said to Sukanya.
“You are absolutely true.” Sukanya said. “You don’t know how much I am longing to see you. Why did you leave me like that?” Sukanya angrily asked.
“I did not leave anyone of you. I am with you all the people all the time.” Nirupama smiled.
“If it is so why cannot we see you all the time?”
“Oh, forget. That is not necessary. I have come to you and you are talking with me now. Is it is not enough?”
“Yes, enough.” Sukanya nodded her head.
“Now come with me. We are going to the beach.” Looking into the eyes of Sukanya, Nirupama said.
“There is no sea in our town. There is no beach. If we want to go to beach we have to go to a long way.”
“No. Now there is a beach in our town. It is so beautiful. Come with me. We can see that.”
Both started from there. Sukanya surprisingly found that Nirupama was flying in the air. She was not walking on the floor.
“You are flying in the air!” Sukanya said with surprise.
“You too can if you want. Just try” Nirupama said.
“No I cannot.” Sukanya nodded her head in negation.
“Don’t say like that. Just try.” Nirupama encouraged her.
Then Sukanya tried to make herself fly into the air. Surprisingly she floated into the air without any effort.
“How it has become possible to me to do like this?”
“If you stay with me anything is possible to you. Now see we have come to the beach and the sea.”
There was really a huge sea and the beach but there was no one in that beach. There were huge boulders in it and Nirupama led Sukanya to one of them and made her sit on it and she sat beside her. It was such a huge boulder. Sukanya looked into the face of Nirupama. She was so happy.
“Do you like it?” Nirupama asked her.
“A lot. Thank you very much.” Sukanya said.
Suddenly there was change in the face of Nirupama. “I did not want to leave you people. But I have to.”
“What do you mean?” Sukanya startled on this change and asked her.
“Yes. I have to kill myself and go away from you people.”
“Why did you do it like that?”
“No. I cannot say that to you people. I don’t want it to be known to anyone else.”
Sukanya remained silent looking into the face of Nirupama.
“But now you people want to make it public by somehow or other. Cannot you stop that?”
“Your dad wants to know about it.”
“No. Especially I don’t want he knows about it.” Nirupama said with force. She once again looked into the eyes of Sukanya. “You must stop it. You are my good friend.”
“No. I cannot. Your dad is hell bent to know about it.” Sukanya said.
Suddenly Nirupama’s face became red with anger. “You are not my friend. You are my enemy. You also want to know about that, don’t you?”
“No, it is not true. I am not interested in knowing about it at all.”
“No. You are lying. You want to know about my dirty secret. I do kill you now and take with me.” Then Nirupama suddenly pounced on Sukanya and seized her neck. The next moment she started squeezing it.
“Please….Don’t kill me. I…..am….don’t……I can’t” Sukanya was choking.
Then she felt light slaps on her cheeks and found her mother in her room. It was middle of the night.
“What is happening? Are you dreaming?”
“Yes mom. Very frightful dream.” Sukanya sat on the bed.
“Not only on this day. Every day in the middle of the night you have been disturbing yourself. You are talking in your sleep.”
“Is it is so? I don’t know at all.”
“Every day it is like this. Hearing your sounds, I have been coming into your room” Her mom paused for a moment and then asked. “It is that Nirupama again.”
“Yes, of course mom.” looking into the eyes of her mother Sukanya said.
“You are thinking only about her after her death. You need some psychologist’s help Sukanya. You terribly need a psychologist’s help now.”
“No, mom. I don’t need any psychologist or psychiatrist’s help.” Sukanya fall back on the bed and closed her eyes. “Just sleep beside me. I don’t want to sleep alone now.”
Her mother Latha gently placed herself beside Sukanya and put her hand on her. She understood that her daughter feared herself a lot.
“Hear me Sukanya. Tomorrow we sure do go to that Niranjan. I heard he is indeed a famous psychologist. He sure tells you how to manage with your mind. You are indeed obsessed with the thoughts of Nirupama.”
“Alright mom.” Sukanya mumbled.
As she was completely dropping herself into sleep, Sukanya remembered Niranjan’s words. ‘You and your mother are going to see me soon.” She felt awe.
***
“You are indeed having rare capabilities.” Once Sukanya and her mother Latha settled before Niranjan, Sukanya said to him.
“It is not at all so. I am just an ordinary psychologist.” Niranjan smiled.
“But you could say that I am going to visit you just in one or two days with my mother and I have come like this.”
“I am not thinking that it is a great feat at all.” Niranjan said and looked into the eyes of both “It just automatically popped into my mind and I said that.”
“What happened?” Sukanya’s mother asked her. Then Sukanya explained to her that her coming to Niranjan with Menaka and Niranjan’s saying that Sukanya would visit him with her mother in one or two days.
“Indeed very much fascinating!” Latha admired him.
Niranjan did not want to say anything on that. “So, your daughter cannot escape from the thoughts of Nirupama.”
“Exactly. She is dreaming her everyday. Talking about her in her sleep. She obsessed with those thoughts. That Nirupama was a very good girl. I liked her a lot. But now she is no more. What would be the use in thinking about her all the time so?”
“Stop thinking about her is betraying her.” Sukanya said. “You know what a good friend that Nirupama to me. How can I stop thinking about her?”
“This is the way she is talking.” Latha irritatingly said.
Niranjan smiled and said. “You both are right in your way of thinking.” Then he said looking into the eyes of Sukanya. “You need not stop thinking about Nirupama. But there is no necessity to think about her all the time.”
“I too don’t want to think about her all the time. But I just could not stop my thoughts.” Sukanya said helplessly.
“Here the real problem lies. No one can stop thoughts intentionally.” Niranjan said. He looked into the eyes of Latha and said to her. “It is impossible. Your daughter cannot stop thinking about Nirupama. To that matter no one can stop their obsessive thoughts relating to anything. If we do try to stop them they become even more strong and fierce.”
“What is the way then? Should my daughter remain a victim to those thoughts? Should she get those dreams all the time?” Latha anxiously asked.
“No, it is not so. I am going to tell you the best way to deal with those thoughts. First listen to me carefully.” He paused for a moment and then said. “Okay. More and more thoughts have been coming into your mind regarding that Nirupama. You are not doing those thought voluntarily but they are just coming into your mind so. What is the problem? They are just thoughts and they cannot do any harm to you.”
“I cannot understand what you are saying.” Sukanya confusedly said.
“You sure can if I do explain to you a little more.” Niranjan said. “We do hear all sorts of sounds all the time around us. Do we bother about each and every sound? Disturb ourselves about each one of them?”
“Never.” Sukanya nodded her head in negation.
“Take your thoughts in your mind just like that. They are just like the sounds around you. Don’t try to stop the thoughts that come into your mind at all. You need not even observe them. Just let them come and pass.”
“They are forcibly coming into my notice. They are demanding my attention.” Sukanya understood what he was saying.
“Then acknowledge them and let those particular thoughts linger in your mind as long as they want. Don’t stop what you are doing then. If you are reading your class book don’t stop reading it while not trying to throw away those obsessive thoughts.”
“How can I concentrate on my studies without getting rid of those irritating thoughts?”
“Sure you can if you try.” Niranjan said. “Don’t feel fear to the thoughts. Don’t feel fear to dreams. What are dreams after all? They are your unknowing and subconscious thinking. You think in your sleep also. But you don’t know you are thinking because your surface awareness is sleeping then. So that thinking turns into dreams and appears like scenes to you.”
“Really is it is so? People do think while they are sleeping also?” Sukanya asked him with surprise.
“While they are dreaming, yes. There would be no thoughts in deep sleep. It is unconscious thinking projects as dreaming in fact.”
“But how do we think anything unconsciously? Thinking means we have to apply our mind. How do we apply our mind unconsciously?”
“Observe yourself everyday for sometime. You can see how many number of thoughts come into your mind without your knowledge at all. You suddenly caught a thought and surprise yourself when you have started thinking about it.”
“You are right. On some occasions I found myself thinking about something seriously even I don’t want” Sukanya enthusiastically said. “From now on I do even more observation.”
“You are welcome to do it. You are not going to regret what you would do. Observing your thoughts is always a nice thing. It is indeed a sort of meditation.” Niranjan said.
(I hope that you enjoyed upto here. I shall publish the next chapter as soon as possible. Please don’t forget to rate and review.)
