Chapter 2

For the first time Mark does not groan at the thought of walking the three kilometres from the Kasauli bus stand at the Mall up to The Retreat, where his mother Cynthia Rogers and he has lived for all the 23 years of his life. It has been two weeks since that horrible day at AIIMS but for him life has been one long endless day. Has he slept on that bus? Has he slept at all? Has the sun sunk since he left Daisy behind, cold and still, in that eerily innocent hospital room? Mark does not have the answers; he does not even know the questions.

All he has, as he drags his feet on the familiar streets of Kasuali, are memories. He can see Daisy point at the colour of the sky, he can see her cribbing about the colour of her brown bread at that corner shop, he can hear her laugh at a joke in her mind… he can see her eyes anxious and, yes, hopeful, as she sits on that rock and waits for him to come.

It is June and Kasauli is brimming over with tourists. He sees a bunch of foreigners sitting outside Hotel Alasia. Some smile at him and, strangely, it reminds him that people can see him. In a vaguely satisfactory way it makes him feel human. He wants to return the smile, as he usually would, but his lips do not move. Flustered, he turns towards first of the two ‘long stretches’ towards home. Mark called them long stretches because, well they were long stretches, but also because you could see the beginning and end of the narrow uphill road from its base. That’s how steep it was. And, easily a half a kilometre stretch, it was really a very long and tiring walk.

Beyond Ros Common, the last of the hotels on that road, he can hardly see any people, except those who zoom past in taxis, eager to reach Monkey Point, the end of Kasauli, before the sun gets to the west. Mark slows down a little ahead of Ros Common; his eyes glued to one of the many huge stones that reside here, one after the other on the edge of the road, forming a neat little border to the cliff. He stops near that stone that knows all his little secrets and with his bag still on his shoulder he sits on his haunches to read. Etched into the rock is a line that seems to speak to him.

Mark loves Daisy, forever.

He puts his bag down on the muddy corner of the road and sits on the stone, staring down at the deep valley, as he had done so many times before. The greens recognize his stare and turn their face away in the wind. No one can face Mark, no one knows what to say to him. He and Daisy would sit here for hours, until the orange sun sank behind the mountain across the valley. They had met every day here. This was the only part of the long road that didn’t have towering pine trees blocking the view of the valley. Daisy loved it. That was reason enough for Mark to love it.

The sun isn’t that orange today and the days do not start and finish anymore, they just go on. There will be no expectation with the coming of the morrow. There will be no Daisy. No Daisy. Mark gets up to take the final steps towards his house, the last structure on the road until the Air Force base. He can walk another 10 miles today, and feel equally lost and numb.

The rusty gate of The Retreat has a board hanging on it—‘Beware of dog’. There’s no dog inside. Most of the houses in Kasauli adopted the same lie to scare away the rare thief. Mark opens the gate and walks down the grassy pathway to the main door of this old-worldly bungalow.

"Who is it?" his mother shouts from inside, as he rings the bell. Getting no reply, she opens the door to see Mark sitting on one of the garden chairs staring down at the valley.

"Mark…" she says softly.
"Hi mom."
Cynthia walks up behind him and kisses him on the head. He turns around and hugs his mother tightly around her waist and suddenly starts howling like a baby. His cries have pain, as if someone is turning the insides of his heart around with a sharp blade.
"Shh… baby shhh," Cynthia tries to control him but is at a loss for words.
"Mom, I wasn’t there," he cries out loud, "she didn’t even see me before she left!"
"Don’t blame yourself baby," Cynthia starts crying too, "please don’t blame yourself."

As mother and son cry, holding on to each other, for support and understanding, even the greatest of artists cannot paint a more perfect picture of sadness. Cynthia does not know a moment worse than this, where she has to listen helplessly to her only son cry. Where she knows he cannot do anything but cry.

"Mark, you knew this was going to happen," she says, wiping her tears, "You knew all along baby. Please don’t cry like this."
She holds his head up and wipes off his tears. He turns around and faces the valley again.
"The funeral is at four," Cynthia informs him.
He looks up at Cynthia and shakes his head vigorously. He does not want to cry again but he is very near doing so.
"Alright, it’s okay," Cynthia hugs him again, "you don’t want to go?"
"No mom," Mark says a little firmly, "I can’t see her being buried."

Not after he had seen her so full of life.