Once a secret, always a secret!

Once a secret, always a secret!

Prina Pandey had been a very successful business woman. She was a Brahmin by birth but Banya by mind. She seemed to defy all those stupid logics which claim to prove that women lack business sense. She was happily married with a very co-operative and understanding spouse named, Piyush. The society where we live in, considers those husbands to be ‘an-understanding-type’ who manages to somehow allow the women of the house to work outside, and allowing for business was a step further to be qualifying for the title of ‘super-husband’. Of-course, no question could be asked on why are ‘women-allowed/non-allowed’ and why couldn’t be it a normal affair.

Prina had a daughter, Piu, who also seemed to be quite considerate and never let her tantrums become a barrier between Prina and her work. Piu’s grandma would often quote, “Our dear Piu is just like her father. She has no complaints for anyone.”

Prina would often smile and wonder whether she had the ever complaining and grudging nature. Then, she would let go the matter, thinking it to be an utter waste of time. She was not workaholic, but her sincerity could never be questioned. She tried her best not to leave any scope for complaints and tried her best to maintain the work-family balance.

But life posed challenges to her every now and then. Her company had undertaken a new project in one of the remote area of Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh. Her boss insisted her to take the initiative in representing the company there and to see to it that the deal gets done. She knew it was a bit tough challenge, but saying no to work was the rarest of rare event in her life. She thought ways and means to convince her family and most importantly her Piu. As expected, she did overcome the challenge and convinced everyone without much persuasion.

The day when she reached the city, she had her mind occupied with arranging the logistics in the new city. She had been the only one appointed for the project in the city, so the entire city appeared to her like a stranger. On the second day when her mind was free from the miscellaneous tensions, heart became dominant. Prina started missing her child and the city of Delhi where she resided. She convinced herself that by the time Diwali approaches, she would be back home. It meant she had to be in this remote place for another six months. Her husband and her little one didn’t come along with her as that would mean missing Piu’s school and carrying someone to look after her. It was a short term transfer and she had been assured to be back to her hometown after she is done with the project.

The work was going on in full swing and she hardly found any time to talk to neither to her husband nor to Piu. Not that they had plenty to talk about. On some rare days when she thought to fulfil the ceremony of talking to her better half, the conversation ranged from financial matters and the money crunch at home or the recent news of some relatives visiting. This annoyed Prina on one hand and on the other hand motivated her more towards her work. Her daughter Piu was happy in her own world and somewhere in her mind Piu had convinced herself with the thought that longer the duration of her mom’s stay away from her, the more the number of gifts for her.

Days passed by quickly unlike what Prina had expected. The last week in Bhopal office was the presentation week. It was the Presentation day for Prina. She had been preparing the slides the whole of previous evening. On the day of the presentation before leaving, she checked her purse more than thousand times that the pen-drive was located in its dedicated place. Only after being 100% confirmed, Prina left for office.

During the meeting, when Prina was asked to start with the presentation, she put her hand confidently inside the pocket of the purse without even looking at it. She had checked hundred times and there was no scope of doubt.

“There it is”, she said holding to the pen-drive tightly between her first two fingers.  While she put the device into the laptop, she kept discussing the matters related to work and tried to give an informal start before the slides begins. The official laptop had been infected with several viruses and took time for the external device to open. After several minutes, suddenly out of the blue an old photo of her appeared in front of the projected screen hung on the white wall. The matter of worry was not just the photo, but the company she had in the photo. It was the picture of her college days when she had secretly visited the Gwalior Fort with her boy-friend, Aarush.

“I… I…I am sorry!,” Prina stammered. The best she could do was to minimize the picture in jpg format. She realized she had taken out the wrong pen-drive, and in the room full of official colleagues, who were luckily known to her for the last 6 months only, she felt embarrassed. She had not maintained any close associations with any of these colleagues and fortunately no one knew anything more about her apart from the fact that she had a well-knit family and a cute little child in the capital of the country.

Inside her purse, the pen-drive carrying the presentation peeped out. It seemed to wink at her naughtily. She composed herself and quickly took it out and completed the formality of presentation. The smiles on the faces of the audiences were something Prina had to bear with. Even after the office, the teasing looks of the colleagues were another tough challenge for her. She tried her best to make her blush be more visible than her exposed guilt. She even tried hiding her real emotion with words, “My daughter often does these mischiefs.”

Everyone was convinced that the photo boy was actually her husband but the truth was that the face of the poster boy landed her to the time when life was just ‘Prina and Aarush’. She held her mobile tightly in her palms so as not to reveal the actual photo of her family. Other people didn’t bother much after sometime but Prina had the flash-back reel going in her mind continuously.

After returning home, she explored the entire pen-drive. It contained several photos of theirs. Each photographs had plenty of secrets hidden within it and it was deliberately stored in the USB device, so that no one caught hold of them. It was “Prina and Aarush’s secret”. She thought, “Life was so different then. The carefree life and the rosy picture of the future were so apparent then.” It was much later when she realized that decisions of life involved the consent of parents which were largely based on caste, age and salary of the person involved. The three questions which were banned to be asked by a morally educated person (taught to a child in the moral science class) formed the basis of any marriage! What an irony!

The first instance was to delete these and format the entire device, but something within her stopped her from doing so. These photos were so full of life.  The more she watched those, more she felt a pinch in her heart, more she felt an inquisitiveness to know about the whereabouts of the poster-boy. The most dangerous thought which dominated her mind was to think in the direction: what might have been the shape of her life had the poster –boy been her company. She knew there was no point floating in futile imaginations, but she couldn’t stop herself.

All these drained her energies. The mixed feeling of rage and guilt eclipsed her power to think rationally. After a while having decided something she moved out of the room towards the market. That day she spent quite a big amount on the shopping of mainly Piyush and Piu. Was this a way to reduce the guilt she was passing through, she didn’t at all had any idea.

After coming from the market, she booked the tickets, packed her bag and took the next flight for Delhi.

One of the staff noticed her leave the room and said to the other one, “Today, madam really missed her family, especially after the office episode, so much that she decided to rush to home immediately. It is a good decision taken by her. It’s festive time and her family must be anxiously waiting for her. It is really difficult for women to leave family and do work.” Prina overheard the conversation and felt a little calmed as her character had been well-protected.

When Prina reached home, Diwali preparations were going on in full swing. No one questioned about her early visit. Everyone assumed the same reasons, as was provided by the staffs that saw her leaving. Piu rushed to her to find the stuffs, she had demanded long ago. She was happy at Prina’s surprise visit and happier to find gifts much more than demanded. Her husband hugged her with a formal touch. The touch reminded Prina of Aarush’s, which was alive in her heart.

Both the pen-drives were peeping from the sides of her purse, giving her the feeling that she was exposed, and her mind was being scanned. She felt that the entire story of her pleasant past and guilty present is being recorded by the past and the present pen-drives respectively. What scared her most were the thoughts of revelation of past stories to the guy standing before her with the salt of betrayal; and revelation of the present guilt to the poster guy who had no significance in her life. This would create havoc in not only her life but also in the lives of the entire family. She rushed to her room and kept the pen-drive in a new secret place, this time with high level password protection and sealed her past forever and breathed a sigh of relief.