The emotion, followed by scar- PART 3

WRITTEN BY NANDA NAIR A

The room was empty. He was damn sure that she had slept in that room the previous day but now she wasn’t there. It was easier to imagine that she disappeared into thin air. With a sweat beaded forehead he rushed to the main door, just to see that it too was unlocked from inside, giving a clue that she left the house. To make sure that she actually left the house, he went back to her room to check whether she took anything with her, or whether she left a note for him. A bag, along with his wallet that contained dome 8000 INR was missing. The fact that she stole his purse was the least bothering aspect. Running back to the main door, he panted. He tried recalling whether anybody else in his or his wife’s family had any mental disorder. As far as his memory says, there’s none that he is aware of. Well it was true that Sangeetha used to mention about the over-terrifying dreams that she had, but it wasn’t extreme at all. Then he searched all around the house, all the washrooms,the kitchen,the storeroom, the garden - just because it was hard for him to digest that fact that she had actually left the house! But all his search ended up in vain. Seeing the panic in Anand’s face, his neighbor Mohammed reached out,

"Hey! What’s bothering you? Seems like you are drenched. Besides, your dog couldn’t help stop barking the previous night. Thought there must have been a thief or someone, but then when i reached out of my window i just saw your daughter in the veranda. weird , still what was it?”

That was a solid hit.

“Mohammed! Tanisha is missing. She had taken a bag and a purse along with her. Was the girl you saw yesterday night equipped?”

“Well, i am not sure about that! Call the police, anand! Don’t waste another second.”

Dropping the hose that he used to water the plants, he called out to his wife to close the tap connecting the hose. Then he quickly ran over to Anand to help him out. Anand was all in tears now.

---

All the formal works were done. It was almost two days since Tanisha left her dad. She was the missing case that came all over the news. Anand’s mom, brother and many other cousins were all in his house. Neighbours were all equally terrified and bewildered at the same time. It was hard for them to imagine a girl that was almost their kid’s age went missing one dreadful day. Police came over to pick up details and evidence, like whether she had a boyfriend/lover with whom she could have eloped. But at the end they couldn’t fix the puzzle. The only clue they had was that she was suffering from a syndrome.

For days Tanisha's disappearance appeared all over the news, social media and newspapers. People came over to help Anand through his hard times.

When it came to real terms, the institute in which he had taught wanted him badly. Being a private institute they had the choice to ask Anand to take a break, the beginning of losing his job! Before they could approach him, he asked his brother to write a letter to the institute asking for retirement. And that was the end of his joyful career. There was nothing more to break his already shattered heart.

Slowly everyone was accustomed to the missing case. Initially they had got information that a lady named Tanisha had boarded a train to Mumbai. But tracking that information was in vain. Then through CCTV cameras the police extrapolated her path, until the CCTV that stood in the beginning of a pocket road. For almost 5 km afterwards there were no camera settings to record her path. Like millions of other girls who go missing each year, Tanisha's case too became insignificant in the larger world. But for Anand she was his world. He couldn’t imagine a world beyond her. He regretted not treating her quickly. He complained himself for being a bad dad. His brother, later on, decided to stay with him for at least a brief period of time. Meanwhile his family returned to Lucknow.

Anupam, Anand’s only brother, was the one to look after him. They had lost their mother to cancer and after to suicide. Their father, Vishwanand's eldest son is Anand. Later on he went on to have Anupam, Preeti and Pallavi. It was when Anand was in college and Anupam in 12th that their mother succumbed to a major heart attack. Being an extremely obese lady, health wasn’t her cup of tea. It was Anand's uncle who took care of him for a brief period of time until Anand got into a job as an assistant professor in physics and married Sangeetha, a proposal suggested by his uncle, Vaishnav. When Sangeetha left Anand, the relationship between Vaishnav and Anand also broke.

TO BE CONTINUED....