The Summer'S Revenge (An Unfinished Love Story)

Part 3 - The Summer Revenge

The windy summer seemed to mock people's face, as they kept waiting for someone to the creek near the rock where once Shilpa used to sit. Even the rock itself seemed to have shrunk a little since Shilpa had last vacated the same.

"I wish this rock would recall it's occupant at any cost. Otherwise, how shall we get our respect of helping the person who used to sit on the rock?"

The people of the nearby houses kept wishing to each other, even when they knew that Shilpa hadn't come yet, but at the other face of the coin, they looked worried also that what would have happened to Shilpa when she had left with that rich boy in that car at the end of spring.

"You don't reckon, she is in danger or has been hurt? What can we do? Shall we try to give her disappearance news to the newspaper?" They kept speaking to each other as if their conversations would bring her back. Then in the mid-summer, it happened that the car returned and Shilpa came back to have the last visit with these people.

The car stopped at the same gate, from where Shilpa’s last vacation had begun. She looked at every face and they all seemed to be waiting for her, applauding her presence, as a minister has crossed their rocky village.

"We thought you were in trouble…we wondered where you had been…so we wished to search you, but we couldn't find you at large...” They said these words before Shilpa could even step outside from the car. Shilpa looked different now, she looked old as she was going to marry. She had no choice to explain or make them understand about it.

So she simply gaped at all of them and said in a strangled voice.

"I think this might be my summer's revenge for those who spoke behind my back and praised in front of me. This is going to be my last journey, after this, I shall not come..." She had to make her word clear so she spoke in that crisp voice.

They looked scandalized at these words but showed no sign of sadness. They asked her to come to their home and greeted her, so they can finally know what that special news she was hiding from them.

"Won't you ask your fellow to visit our home also? We have cooked your favorite sweet dish, I wish your friend will also like it," they said as she entered one of the houses. She cleared her throat, throwing caution to the winds and said, "He and I are going to marry in this autumn and then we shall go to the heavens with happiness and joy."

She understood the damage her words had done because the sadness inflicted on the people of the same family's face was unbearable to digest in her eyes!

So she changed the subject at once and asked the boy to get out of the car and join the party for his own enjoyment. "Come and join us in the sweet dish feast, I hope you enjoy its flavor! These people cook it with great professional interest."

The family was happy to welcome both. They decide to stay in the same place for the night.

Shilpa had no idea how to explain her departure to the people who once hated her and now had started respecting her. She felt shocked and surprised by her own attitude towards them! Today she was saving her own identity from the people who she despised so much; wondering what to express and feared what might come tumbling out of her mouth in old expressions fighting against new one in her own mind.

"No worries, I shall try to help once I go to the city. My future husband might be able to help with this issue...” She advised assumingly to a family's son whose computer had crashed.

"I believe that your future husband can himself deal with my computer. Why don’t you ask him to come and look?" When she shook her head in rejection, he stamped his foot towards the garden, rushed back inside to look what he could do by himself in repairing his computer, and opened it for his joy.

Two men stood close to the rock having a hard discussion about the entity of the rock. They felt that the rock be removed as now Shilpa would be going away. "I believe there is no point in removing it. Even madam is not going to stage it's friendship with the rock, the rock will remain her forgone identity, won’t it?"

The man bellowed into the other person’s face, as Shilpa went to examine the rock, which was lingering its own sigh, alone. "I believe after she leaves, the rock might make us feel that we haven’t done justice to her life! It shall hurt us forever, so why don't we remove it?"

The second man requested Shilpa rather than the first man, who was still examining the weak stones around the rock itself where she used to dream in the past.

The night had fallen by the time Shilpa had packed her whole luggage since the first time she had set foot in this place.

She was trying to remember her infant experience as well as the feelings that had changed as a youth. That’s when her future husband entered the room. "You better pack all stuff you bought yesterday from the market as well as the things you own in this place. Will you wish to take the pieces of rock with you?"

"I think the rock deserves to the stay here. It should be saved by these people rather than breaking it into pieces and packing it altogether,” she said in a sullen voice looking over, and then she dropped her voice in to a whisper. "They believe that my curses will still exist here, so they want that rock out of the way, isn't it?"

The gentleman nodded with a peculiar expression, but then he replied hurriedly to clear the idea beneath the breaking of the rock as an unknown presumption of nature.

"I believe that the rock is eternal like other natural identities, so they shouldn't think of it in a possessive way, should they?"

Shilpa cut him off with an evil grin, "Oh come on! People here think that natural identity is everything and that's how they exist." She looked sadly towards him and then turned away trying to decide to leave or not to leave the place altogether.

The sun was coming out again, making Shilpa smile over as she sat in the car ready to the leave the place for the final time. Yet there was a lack of formality looming in the wind.

"I shall miss this rock and this place," she said to herself rather than anyone. She shook everyone’s hand, distributed sweets to some young children and asked them to take care of the rock. She further requested them not to break it.

She noticed that the children started to cry at the mention of the rock; unable to face the summer’s revenge, yet they managed to smile during the farewell of their best friend. "Goodbye everyone, I shall meet you in future, but my hopes will always be as eternal as that rock," Shilpa said loudly speaking for last time in that place.

The car’s windows suddenly shone scarlet in the early morning sun and vanished from sight, taking away the best known to the people of this place.

Yet the happiness might come back with the rock awaiting its chance to make people happy with the love of nature becoming more powerful than the attraction of physical entity at large.