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Next day morning he saw the priest and quite a few old people from the village (with whom Tara was friendly with) leaving for Rakkar. By afternoon, Ramu too boarded a bus to Rakkar which was a good ninety minutes journey. Reaching the bus terminus of the city he enquired about the address of Sitara, the deputy collector. It seemed everybody knew her. She was quite a popular figure in her district as she had done many good things for the people there. Soon, he reached outside the bungalow of Sitara and stood on the gates. Later after sometime he moved towards the thick hedged fence, stood on a big stone and started peeping through the hedges just to have a glimpse of his daughter or Tara. But no one was to be seen in the lawns. Suddenly a guard rushed towards him on seeing his actions and waved his cane at him.

"Heyyyyyy!!! You rascal!!! What are you to do?" and gave a tight blow of the stick on his hips. Ramu shuddered with pain and immediately got down from the big stone he was standing on. With folded hands he asked forgiveness from the guard and slowly walked away to stand, leaning against a tree on the footpath quite a distance away. He kept on leaning till he got tired and then squatted on the footpath itself thinking hard about how to have a look at his daughter. But he couldn't find a way. Then he asked a passerby if there was a temple in the vicinity and the person guided him to a temple at the corner of another road.

Slowly, with heavy steps he reached the temple and by that time he was hungry too. On reaching there from a distance he saw a bespectacled lady in her late forties distributing some 'poories and aloo' with the help of two young boys, to the beggars sitting by the side of the road. As Ramu reached nearer he was dumbfounded to see the bespectacled lady-------it was Tara. Immediately, he covered his head and face with a blanket and sat in the row of the beggars. As Tara approached nearer his whole body convulsed and his eyes gazing continuously on the floor extended his trembling hands to receive the food. Seeing him trembling, Tara blurted out, "Baba, you seem not to be well. Anything you want I can arrange for you." Ramu shook his head in denial, his eyes still fixed on the ground itself. Quietly Tara moved away to serve to another beggar. Her voice kept on ringing in the ears of Ramu throughout the night as he lay awake on the footpath under a tree.

Next day early morning he again sat on the lowest step of the temple to beg for food or some money to buy it. Suddenly a white car came to a halt, screeching its brakes outside the temple. Tara stepped down from it and ascended the stairs to go to ignite a lamp in front of the Goddess Durga which she had been doing very religiously from the past so many years even in her village. Descending the stairs while returning from her prayers at the temple, she started distributing some money to the beggars who were lined up on each stair leading to the worship place. On the last step when she reached Ramu, she could recognize him as the same beggar who was trembling and shivering last evening when she had come to distribute food. Ramu had again wrapped himself with a blanket from head to torso to hide his identity, although the weather was quite warm that day. Tara stopped near him and enquired, "Baba, are you feeling well now and why don't you take off the blanket. It's already warm outside. From your physique you do look to be a healthy one and instead of begging why don't you work?"

"Memsahib, do you think anybody wants to be a beggar? To put aside all your pride and ego and to spread your hands in front of strangers begging them for scraps of food and some change is not something I do simply because I want to. It's a circumstance brought forth by life itself," Ramu answered back in a muffled voice as his mouth was totally covered with his blanket.

"Will you like to work, if given a chance to you?" Tara asked him while trying to look at his face, but couldn't as he had completely wrapped himself.

Ramu stood there motionless for a couple of minutes and then nodded his head in affirmation.

"You are going to work as a 'mali' at our house and I will see that you are properly fed and taken care of," Tara replied feeling happy inside for her charity. She immediately called her driver and asked him to take back the car as she would be reaching home by foot in another ten minutes.

"And hey!! Now look here, you just follow me," she said as she signaled Ramu to come after her. On reaching the gates of her vast bungalow she called for the guard to open it. On seeing and recognizing Ramu, the one shabbily dressed and thick bearded who had been trying to peep in the house from the hedges the guard called out, "Memsahib, he's a vagabond. Yesterday I caught him peeping inside our house through the thick hedge. I'd hit him with my stick, then only he moved away."

"Don't you worry, he'll do no harm. From today he'll look after our lawn and the kitchen garden at the back," Tara replied politely to the guard.

Once inside the gates of the huge house Ramu was aghast to see the well reared lawn with chrysanthemums planted all around. It had a broad verandah to shade the interiors from intense sun. There were already two gardeners working and mowing the grass. A group of six people were busy erecting a small 'shamiana' and two electricians were trying to fix up the fancy electric bulbs on the trees surrounding the house. Ramu looked in awe at all the work going on around.

"Oh!! I forgot to tell you, today is my daughter's wedding. So, you better get rid of this dirty beard of yours. My servant Sitaram will give you new clothes to wear and better clean up yourself properly. It seems you haven't bathed for quite sometime. By the way, I forgot to ask you your name. What's your name?" Tara asked suddenly.

"Ramu!!!" Ramu spoke out immediately with a reflex action.

On hearing the name, Tara stood there shocked and surprised as if thunder struck and was at a loss for words. After a few seconds, she came back from her catatonic feels and said in a low and shocked voice, "Sitaram will take care of you," and went away.

She came to her majestic room all devastated and dazed sitting on a chair dumbstruck as the words of the 'beggar' calling himself 'Ramu' kept echoing in her ears. After a few minutes she got up and called upon Sitaram to come to her. The servant came running.

"Yes, Memsahib."

"Look here Sitaram, there's a man standing outside near the lawns with a thick beard and a blanket wrapped up completely on his face. It's your duty to get him all cleaned up and also do get his beard shaved off. Give him some good and new clothes to wear. Take him to the servant quarters and make him feel comfortable. Oh!! I forgot to tell you, first give him something to eat. He seems to be quite hungry."

Hearing this, Sitaram immediately went out on the lookout for the man, Tara was talking about. From afar he could see him standing inside near the gate and a guard looking at him suspiciously. As soon as he approached him he signaled him to come along with him. Ramu followed his steps and Sitaram took him at the backyard of the bungalow where the servant quarters were. Reaching there, he signed him to take off his blanket which Ramu did willingly as he himself was feeling all heated up with the sun getting hotter that day. Sitaram could see all his torn trousers and a filthy and torn shirt which he was wearing.

Sitaram went out and asked another servant to call a barber immediately. In another ten minutes the barber was at the doorstep of the servant quarters. On seeing the barber with his shaving kit Ramu got violent and started shrieking, "No, I will not let anyone touch my hair or beard." Hearing the ruckus two other servants came running and held Ramu tightly while the barber did his job of cutting his hair and beard thus giving him a clean look. Later they collectively gave him a bath as instructed by Tara. Then he was given food to eat which Ramu took to his heart's content as he had not eaten such delicious food for quite a long time. Again and again he looked in the mirror with his new clothes on and started liking his new looks. After a while he lay down on the bed in the room allotted to him and dozed off to sleep.

He must have slept for a couple of hours when Sitaram came running and shook him up from his slumber. "Get up now, you lazy bum and come out in the lawns to arrange the flowers. It's already 2pm by now and the marriage function will start by 6pm.Till then everything should be ready."

With great efforts Ramu got up and made his way to the lawns. He headed straight to a corner and squatted himself near the chrysanthemum plant making it straight as it was bending sideways. While checking all the plants he finally reached the row of the beautiful flowers near the verandah. As he was rectifying its position, suddenly a voice of a woman made his head turn.

"Hey, who are you? I have never seen you here before." It was Sitara who had come out to see the arrangements. Ramu kept on gazing at her in bewilderment and shock. Internally he could make out that she was his daughter, Sitara. Before Ramu could react, she started calling out for Sitaram and as he approached, "Sitaram, what is this? Who is this fellow and what is he doing in our house?" she asked him furiously.

"Sahib, this is Ramu, he was brought her by Maaji, to day morning itself to look after the lawns. I have heard that she had found him outside the temple begging for food and she brought him over here. You know how Maaji is. She can't see the plight of anyone poor."

Till then Ramu had stood up and kept looking at Sitara in amazement, feeling scared that he'll be turned out of the house. Hearing the commotion outside, Tara too hurriedly came out in the verandah and stood in the way in consternation at seeing Ramu. She couldn't believe her eyes and then suddenly tears welled up and she started weeping incessantly. And then she moved a few steps, caught the shirt front of Ramu and started crying hysterically, mumbling all the time, "Where were you all this time Ramu? I'd waited for you all these years and look here (pointing towards Sitara), she is your daughter whom you had left when she was hardly six days old. I can't believe this happened to me. The pain was unbearable when you went away. I spent nearly six months of my life with you, just to watch you walk away. Did you think, that our marriage was so disposable? Before we got married, you only pursued me so hard as you wanted to rush to get married. So, I said 'yes' and then you walked away with that other girl just leaving me and our newborn daughter to fend for ourselves. I prayed for the day to come, when I didn't wake up feeling this huge anchor on my chest, the day where you were a distant memory and I wonder what the heck I ever saw in you!!! But time healed my wounds. I don't even know if time heals all wounds as the pain of your betrayal never vanished. I wasn't sure what the future held for me, but I did know that I was going to be positive and not wake up feeling desparate..................................... And I did rebuild my life."

"Please forgive me for my misdeeds," pleaded Ramu as he knelt on his knees and started crying incessantly hiding his face in his hands.

Sitara stepped further and with a hushed up tone which was full of anger said, "Do you know how much I felt rejected, abandoned, alienated and discarded just because of you. It was only Ma who supported me in my life; otherwise I would have lost my self esteem."

Ramu shuffled towards her, got up and gave Sitara a weak hug.

"Sitara, my daughter!!! Please forgive me. I'd not been a good father to you or a good husband to your mother. Every action, every deed, every significant moment of mine is tattooed in my heart forever. God has definitely punished me enough for my misdeeds and now I'm totally a broken man. Atleast now after all the sufferings and humiliation I have gone through in my life, I deserve to have all my tattoos removed. I'm totally a broken man and if punished further I will go and kill myself."

He asked Sitara to sit down on the grass of the lawn itself. Then they sat and talked. It was simple conversation, no more than the level of a small child. There was no fight, no blame, and no hurt. Just two people who have love to give and desperately like to have it reciprocated, both open to the possibility of having a new relationship. With folded hands Ramu sought the forgiveness from both and started moving towards the gates of the bungalow to go away. All those years of blame, hurt and pain went away. Sitara now saw her father in a whole new light and forgave him. She let go of the past, and recognized that it was what it was, and that there was no way she could change it now. All she could do was to make a new start for herself and her mother in that moment with a pure forgiveness, from the heart, for any old 'hurts'.

Sitara came running to him, hugging him tightly. "Papa, you are not going to go anywhere. Won't you bless your daughter who is going to get married today?"

Tara too cam running, held Ramu tight, "No, you aren't going anywhere. You have to do 'kanyadaan' of Sitara," saying this they both hugged him tightly and led him inside the house.

End