It was a
cloudy and rainy day in Gurgaon and Simran Gupta couldn’t wait to go out to
play in the rain. Her mother had promised her that she could play in the rain
after her homework was done. As Simran was just completing her last mathematics
sum, the doorbell rang. Suddenly, there were many whispers in the hallway
below. Cautiously, Simran inched towards the staircase. At the bottom of the
staircase was her mother, Sheila. Sheila gave one wary glance at Simran and she
knew something wasn’t right.
The next morning was a
Saturday and Simran had gotten out of bed early. As she descended down the
staircase, she noticed that in Sheila’s bed (where her parents slept), was only
her mother. There was no sign of her father ever getting into bed. She was
shocked. She ran down to her mother, her face was pale.
Simran was very curious
at the moment. She woke her mother up. Sheila went to the kitchen and fixed the
two of them some cereal and juice. Now Simran was very curious, because her
mother acted as though nothing had happened the previous night.
When Simran finally
broke the silence and said “Mom, where’s Daddy?” Sheila started weeping. Very
soon the news was out, her father had DIED in a car accident. Both mother and
daughter sat at the dining table, weeping for hours.
That evening was the
funeral and both mother and daughter invited Simran’s grandparents for the
event. Her grandparents sat there, in front of the corpse, crying for hours.
For the coming week, Simran was not to go to school. Her mother decided that it
was time for a holiday. So Sheila and Simran took the next plane to Goa. They
rented a house near the beach. The next five days would only be surfing,
swimming and restaurant food. On the
third day, while walking back to the beach, her mother saw a fair, young lady
walk past them. On her bag in neat printed handwriting, it said, Koyil Singh
N.E. Florentine, Gurgaon. The lady was their neighbour!! Sheila stopped walking
and said “Why, hello!” The young woman looked up in surprise and said, “Do I
know you by any chance?”
Her mother’s answer was
obviously “Yes, I believe we are neighbours.” After a while Sheila and Koyil
were firm friends. Simran had no problems, because Koyil’s children Alvin and
Lara were very fun children to hang out with. They spent the night at Koyil’s
house. By then Sheila had found out that even Koyil’s husband had died very
recently and that was the cause of their vacation too.
There were many odd
similarities between the Singh family and the Gupta family. Both fathers had
died on the same date, due to the same cause. Both the mothers had chosen the
same vacation destination for making their child/children get over their
father’s death. Something hit Simran on a school night. Was it possible that
both dads had crashed cars? When one man was leaving the house and one arriving?
The days were just a
blur for these two families. Finally Simran decided to tell her mother about
the conclusion she had come to. Her
mother asked the police if the other person included in the car crash had died?
If he had, what was his name?
The
answer was yes, he died and his name was Kunal Singh! This brought horror to
both families. The children more often spoke to each other, the mothers more
often went out together. Life was back to normal and the families.
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