FICTION

Bitter Sweet

By

Amit Herlekar

John woke up early. The clock on the side table showed 3:00 AM. It was still dark. He looked very restless and disturbed. He observed the space around him rubbing his blood shot eyes intensely with his fingers. The window curtains were fluttering, letting in the cold breeze which chilled his arms and made him shiver slightly. The room was dimly lit by moon light falling on the street. Sitting on his bed, he kept staring at the window preoccupied in darkness surrounding him.

A few minutes later, he heard someone entering his bedroom. He turned around suddenly to see who it was. “Hello son.” said an elderly male voice. “Don’t look worried, it’s me, your father.” It was an old man limping towards him. John keenly observed his features. The old man appeared much younger than he actually was. He recognized it was indeed his father.

“Why have you come here? What do you want?” he asked his father curiously.

“I have come to see you son, to talk with you, to know how you are going along with your life and to meet your family. You know it’s been a long time. I can’t remember the last time when I stopped by your house for a cup of tea. After all we’re friends, right John?” said the old man.

“No, Stop it!”  said John. “We are not friends. We can never be friends. What makes you think we are friends after everything you did to me? I was a slave to you. You never looked upon me as your son.”

“I know what I did to you son. It was for your own good. It made you what you are today. That makes me a proud father of a highly successful businessman. I have come here yet again to beg forgiveness. John, I understand the suffering you have been through. I am extremely sorry for that! I am sorry that -”

John interrupted him unable to control his rage. He lost his temper and got off his bed shouting with fury. “Stop! Don’t be sorry! You can never be sorry for what you have done, and I won’t allow you to be sorry. You never cared about me. You never tried to know me. You were too proud of what you did to me. You hardly noticed what was growing inside me. It was nothing but revenge! Now you are paying for it. I swear I’ll make you pay for it for the rest of your life!”

“Now you are only allowed to listen to me father.” John continued. “You are not going to talk anymore. Am I understood? And mark my words carefully so that it will stop you from seeing me again.” He encircled his father as if he was about to attack his enemy.

John tried to control his emotion but he could not. “All you ever wanted was to have a good job which pays handsomely, get settled in life, raise a good family and nothing else. You never cared about my happiness or any of my interests. You drove my friends away and made me feel disregarded within our family. You made me sacrifice my joy. I have been in a glass jar all these years – a glass jar made of barbed wires. I was deprived of taking decisions. You compared me with others although every man is unique in this world and your humiliation left me in irrecoverable agony.”

His eyes were filled with tears even though he had a very strong heart. “If you wanted to compare me with others, why didn’t you give me the same comforts that others already had? No! You didn’t want a son; you badly needed a race horse. And now when you have successfully made me achieve everything you ever wanted, look at what you have created with your own blood: a living monster!”

The old man could not take any of this. He began to lose all the strength he had. He stumbled across the room clutching his chest. “Dear son! Please John! Stop this murderous rage. I can’t stand this anymore. You are a grown-up now. I am not supposed to hear my son talking to me like this.” the old man cried pleading for mercy.

John interrupted again. “Come on father. Who was a grown-up when you were treating me just like the way I am treating you now? And you whine that I am not on my best behaviour? I lived with you for twenty two long years, right from my birth till my graduation. Can you even imagine the amount of dreadful pain I suffered growing up as a kid? How can I ever forget those days when you bitterly hated me for what I was? You refused to speak to me for months merely because I did not perform well in college tests and when I used to spend holidays at uncle’s place. You made sure there was no such thing as happiness that I deserved. I know what went through your mind. You stood by the belief that no underachiever is eligible to enjoy his life; despite having all the luxuries; he is supposed to rot and rise from hell to understand the true meaning of life.”

Tears were streaming down his face. He continuously wiped them away. He wanted to let it all out this very morning. He was liberating his miserable past which was oozing with unbearable pain. He couldn’t control the flow of thoughts gushing through his mind. “Tell me father, where did you lose your love for me then, when I was playing around you? Can you give me back my childhood now? Now you know why I don’t love you anymore. You complain that I am not speaking to you for the past five years. After going through all the bitter experiences, whatever good you did is so conspicuously invisible to me. You feel proud about my achievements now, but where was this pride then, when you made disgusting faces at me? Why did you think that I should suffer the same way you did during your childhood, just because you didn’t enjoy it?”

Every word from John’s mouth came out as a deadly stabbing weapon aimed at his father’s heart. He crumpled down on the floor. But this did not stop John. He shouted, commanding him, “You are not supposed to cry father. You need to go through agony and understand every bit of it and become a survivor like me. Yes! I am a survivor. I survived you! Have you seen the kids of today? If you try your trick on them, you will either see them in hospitals or they will end up living on drugs. It tested my perseverance and made me stronger and colder at heart. But here is what troubles me even more. When you go back, you don’t even realize that you ever did a mistake raising me. You believe that because of your ways, I am a successful man. How ironic?! Apply your mind father! Despite the tremendous amount of stress I carried all these years, it was I who cleared all the tests and graduated gracefully. It was through my efforts that I earned this job. It was definitely not you! How can a parent feel so disgusted about his own child? Either because he is a heartless man or the child does not belong to him. Which is it for you?”

“What I did, I did to make you proud! Now tell me how proud you are father? Tell me! Tell me…” John continued his cries for long time. It woke up other people sleeping in adjacent rooms of his mansion. He appeared to have lost his grip over reality. Someone was knocking the door continuously. It was a female voice asking him to open the door. Soon the knocks turned into bangs. The voice shouted “Open the door John. Let me in. John? John?” All he heard was his own words and everything else was deaf to him. Moments later, a person barged into the room. It was his sister, Melissa. She turned on the lights. He was surprised to see her. She saw him smiling at her. “Hey Melissa! Good morning sweetheart! Look who is here; it’s our father. Say ‘hello’ to him.” He seemed to be under control suddenly. But Melissa held his face gently in her palms and said “Look at me John. Stop shouting! Look at me. Focus! Can you see me? John? … John?” She continuously slapped him lightly to get his attention. He tried to come out of his mind under siege. He squeezed and blinked his eyes. Then he started sweating profusely. His eyes rolled inwards. Within few seconds he fell unconscious to the floor.

Melissa wasted no time in calling the housemaid for help. Both of them lifted him and put him on the bed with utmost care. Melissa telephoned his doctor who lived next door. The doctor said he would be arriving shortly. Then she immediately checked his desk drawer and gasped “Oh my God!” His medicines were untouched. Feeling guilty, she slowly moved towards his bed and sat beside him. She caressed his forehead with tearful eyes.

Melissa felt sorrow and pity for her dear brother. Their father had passed away ten years ago and John hadn’t spoken a word about his conflicts and disagreements with him to anyone. They remained unresolved and locked in his mind. Only Melissa knew about his condition.

John loved and respected his father as much as he hated him. He was extremely scared of him, as any kind of disagreement ended up in punishments. John was now forty years old and he had been suffering from Schizophrenia since his father’s death. He never let out his emotional and mental problems which made him live in a shell. As he grew older, he couldn’t control it. It had to burst out someday. He used to work as the Chairman of a successful bank in New York. Eventually, the symptoms began to show up at his workplace. Then he was put under constant supervision and medical care ever since.

The doctor arrived and gave him a shot. John woke up at 7:00 AM. He acted sanely later on. Melissa was asked to look after him carefully.