Hey you! Can I have your comics?” Sumit started. The girl was smiling at him. “You’ve been hanging on to them like grim death all this time…and you’re not even reading them!”

Sumit handed them back.

“Mind if I come over to your side?” said the girl. “I’m bored with nothing to do except watching the sunset…It’s lovely but I can’t keep on staring at it like you!”

He couldn’t help laughing at her frankness. She was just like some of the girls in his class who wanted to talk all the time. “Were you making up poetry by any chance?” she asked. “You looked so solemn and faraway and…”

“No fears! I can’t write poetry to save my life!” They were soon chatting away merrily, discussing school, books, music and friends.

Rita was a year his senior but that didn’t make any difference.

“Is anyone coming to meet you at the station?” Rita asked suddenly. “We could drop you…”

“I’m sure my father will be there at the station,” Sumit said.

“Who was the lady who came to see you off?” asked Rita curiously. “Your aunt?”

“No,” said Sumit, stumbling and choking over his words. “It was my mother.”

“Your mother? Why did she stay back then?”

“She teaches in a school there.”

“Oh really? And comes over for the holidays, I suppose? I have an aunt who does that.”

Sumit’s voice shook as he answered. “She never comes to Calcutta at all.”

Would there be a stream of question now? Ones he would not be able to answer? Questions that would fill him with resentment, anger, embarrassment and humiliation? Was it foolish to have blurted out the truth like that? A moment passed! Or was it more? Then Rita said in a perfectly natural voice — “Are your parents separated?”

Sumit nodded silently, hoping fervently that she wouldn’t ask him why or how it happened. Did he know the answer himself?

Yes, he did! An answer of sorts…however vague! It was only last evening. He had been out for a walk with his mother and Raja. He had thrown his ball to Raja and was running after him when he suddenly stumbled against a stone and fell down heavily. For a moment everything went dark.

Then suddenly he felt his mother’s arms around him and a voice tense with worry cried out, “Are you hurt, darling?”

Sumit had replied, “No, Mama,” resting his head against her shoulder for a brief moment. Then he straightened himself and stood up. “Why…Mama? Why did you?” he had whispered, quite out of the blue. He had no expectation of her understanding what he really wanted to ask. But she did.

For a while they just walked in silence. Then she said, “You mean, why your father and I separated?”

“Yes,” Sumit whispered.

He had seen any number of films and TV serials about broken homes. But in those, almost inevitably, one of the parents happened to be a villain — either drunken or ruthlessly ambitious, selfish, callous or an immoral character. But neither of his parents were like that. What could be the possible explanation?

To be continued

Swapna Dutta’s short story, The Journey first appeared in the children’s magazine Target edited by Rosalind Wilson. It was later published in the short story collection, The Carpenter’s Apprentice, by Katha, a Delhi-based non-profit organisation and publishing house.