Expectations
You ever feel weighed down by them?
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Dear Leo,
Dad’s not well.
Please don’t get worried. It’s not as bad as it sounds. I’ll get to that. I kind of wrote you a very hurried email and forgot to mention what happened after. After that, I’ve been very busy and I could only get a minute to write down my thoughts now.
The day after I wrote to you, we had visitors as Mom had said. I came out of my room to see this fat, balding uncle in a faded shirt and jeans sitting on the couch in the living room. Mom and he were poring over a large tab. He was scrolling up, and talking in a brash tone.
“Madam, I’m trying to get you the best cases only, you just have to choose.”
I cleared my throat very loudly.
“Why should she choose? Shouldn’t I?”
The man grinned awkwardly from Mom to me and then back at Mom. Mom was of course glowering at me.
“It’s only because you’re too busy to come sit with me and figure something out. At least, have a look, there’s…”
I stormed over and took the pad from his hands. He did not object.
“This is what you want me to do? Pick at random from this list of people I’ve never met?” I was not exactly fuming, but the man could see he had come at a bad time, namely a time when I was at home.
“Please, Madam, please.” He spoke to my Mom as if he refused to acknowledge me. I had half a mind to crack his skull open with the tab. A small thought popped up in my head. The horn was in my room.
Mom took it out of my hand and gave it back to him. That stopped me. I walked out of the room. Last I heard, he was still trying to talk up someone from Diana Power.
I went to my room, grabbed my Devi and mask, and left home.
I know, I know, you’ll say i should have been a little understanding, I could have at least listened, but honestly, I hate how Mom keeps trying to blindside me with this. It’s just not done. I wish she would actually sit with me and talk about it. But no, she is very, very excited to go the arm-twisting route.
I was walking somewhat aimlessly along Jeevan Jyoti, when I felt the back of my neck itch. It was a false alarm, no voice piped up in my ear, but it got me thinking of Betaal instead of Mom. That conversation with Aarti had really shaken me up. If even half of what she had said was right, I needed to have a more detailed conversation with Betaal about the terms of my employment. On the other hand, if I let slip that I knew any of it, I might be let go of, and I wouldn’t actually be able to investigate any of it. Which was my first instinct of course. To really look into the story, to follow the leads, to blow the story wide open. A bad habit from the old days, and more importantly, extremely at odds with my sense of self-preservation. It didn’t matter, of course. One way or another, if any of what Aarti had hinted at could be proved, I knew I’d be the first person to try to get that proof to Aarti. I just didn’t know what SATARC would do with the information. That worried me too. I knew that I could get at Aarti’s proof by just turning her Devi back to her. But that would mean painting a target on my back, and letting SATARC go after Betaal and the Protector. And in that little battle, I wasn’t sure who I wanted to back right now. And I didn’t know what Aarti expected from me, if she still believed I was not actively working for her.
So yeah, if you have ideas on how to crack a SATARC-encrypted Devi, I’d love to hear it. Meanwhile, I guess I could just keep my eyes and ears open.
They weren’t open enough clearly, at that moment though. My Devi was ringing and I almost hadn’t heard it. When I answered, Mom’s voice came through, somehow both tearful and angry in two words.
“Dad collapsed.”
I’m not trying to make this story more dramatic, but it’s just that, the order of events, the way they happened and the way I perceived them, that’s important to me, and I’m trying to tell it to you that way.
By the time I made it to Amba Hospital, Dad was already in a room, safely in bed with a nurse fussing over him. Mom was staring daggers at me. Apparently, a little after I had left, Dad had tried to come to the living room and collapsed in the doorway. Mom and the broker had called an ambulance and carried him downstairs.
The disappointment that I had not been there was writ large on her face. But at that moment, she was being maudlin.
“I remember the first time they brought him home.” She was saying, as if she had been waiting for me to show up so she could recount this tale of woe. “Just some colleagues who said he had had a stroke while at work. None of those colleagues ever came by ever again.”
I don’t know if you remember this at all, but she’s not very wrong. I actually don’t remember any of his colleagues visiting after he got confined to the home. I barely remember going to his squalid government office many years ago.
“34 years he worked for them, this is how he is still suffering for it.” Mom was going on.
I didn’t say anything, hoping she would eventually run out of steam. Instead, I went and sat by the side of his bed. When I held his hand, he slowly turned to look at me. The nurse looked at me for a second, nodded and left the room.
“Leo?” His reedy voice echoed in the huge room. See how he still remembers you though, it’s sweet.
“No, Dad, it’s me.”
“You look different, Leo.” He continued to say, as if I had said nothing. Maybe it was just my perception, but he seemed even more emaciated somehow.
“You look so...so tired. I expected you to do better.”
I sighed. It was weird, I know. It hurt that he expected you to follow him into government service, and I felt validated when you did no such thing. But then it hurt to know he had no such expectations from me.
“How are you feeling, Dad?” I tried a different approach.
“I don’t remember it all, Leo. I’ve lost so much of my mind. They took it away.” He gestured vaguely at the window.
Mom sobbed a little. Pretty sure she took that comment as a supporting proof for her unbiased hatred for Dad’s work. Sounded more like the ramblings of a man with no real ability to recall the past. He couldn’t even recognise me.
I felt a sort of anger course through me, but it was all empty. Surging and falling, like a withering waterfall.
I patted his hand and let it fall back onto the bed. I got up and sat next to Mom, eventually letting my head fall on her shoulders. She patted my head, then twisted the knife.
“Don’t you think your father would like to see you married before he leaves us?”
I didn’t say anything, but I felt the weight of one more expectation fall on my shoulders. I feel like it’s all a bit much, don’t you think?
It’s always easier to take on expectations, it’s a lot harder to look people in the face and watch that despair when they see you’re not up to the task. Betaal didn’t have a face, but I felt it in his voice, when it became abundantly clear I was not going to be the star pupil he had hoped for me to be. Dad looked at me with the expectations he clearly had for you; Mom, with expectations that she had decided were meant to be mine.
To say nothing of the expectations I had from me, to somehow unmuddle this mess I’d been dropped into.
Talk about Atlas, am I right? (Please don’t make any jokes about shrugging, I just don’t think I can take it.)
Love
N
P.S. I might take a look at the list the broker fellow forwarded to me. God knows I need a distraction.