We all come back......

It had been raining all day. The drops fell in desultory manner, pitter-pat,patter-pitter,on the tin roof. Riana watched in silence, unable to drive away the feeling of aimlessness from her mind. It wasn’t just her mental faculties that seemed to be jammed; it was her entire mechanism that refused to budge. Lethargy had consumed her, almost wholly, and she’d submitted to its ungainful consequences.

Inside, the television droned on. Mostly news .She couldn’t bear to listen to another trashy remix video with scantily clad models cavorting to tunes, which once had filled her Sunday morning drawing room along with the warm winter sunlight. Now they were just perverted shadows of the originals, mocking the voices and the genius of all those years ago. Her father had religiously collected old records with a fanatical precision, labeled them, alphabetically, chronologically and even partially. His favorite singers were the always the ones stacked right in front. Kishore Kumar, Mohammad Rafi, Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck. Cliff Richards, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Don McLean. She ran her stout finger over the edge of the shelf. The dust shivered for a bit, rose and settled down again on the relics. These songs were eternal, just like the dust on them.
Riana’s memory of her father was faint, and mainly supplemented through old discolored photographs. Her father had been thirty-five when he married her nineteen-year-old mother. All she remembered of him was his faint scent – a mix Old Spice and cardamom. Riana liked to believe that whenever she went through her father’s old records, or his books or the clothes he’d worn for the very last time, she could detect that faint smell till it filled her nose, and then head, only to leave her intoxicated for days.
Today would’ve been his fifty-fifth birthday.
With a faint trace of a smile on her face, Riana Shirin Sengupta dug into a piece of rich chocolate cake.

“Happy Birthday to youuuuuuu…Papa” she cried in choked voice. He smiled at her, from across the giant-sized mahogany table, his fingernails drumming the varnished wooden top.
“Thank you my love,” he whispered,” but…don’t let mama know, or she’ll stop my coming here.”
With this, the faint shadow of a fifty-five year old Akshir Sengupta glided across the room to the front door and turned back to look at Riana, just the way he had, nine years ago. Frantic crowds had slaughtered him, that very day, nine years ago, for marrying a Muslim girl, almost half his age.
He’d been in his way, to buy a rich, chocolate cake….

“Thank you Papa, for bringing back the cake…”