Remember how I mentioned a few chapters back that the angst was almost over? Yes, the keyword was "almost".

Yash couldn't meet Zara as he was long gone before she woke up, but he really did forget to give me the notes that evening. Once he had reached home, he apologised and sent me pictures of the notes with a winky face emoji.

I had just finished cleaning the floor and washing up, and I threw open the windows. I thought the room still smelled foul.

I sent him the middle finger. I bet he blushed.

Yash was right, we both got chosen for the Santiniketan trip, along with two other girls – one of them was Yash's friend from Painting lessons and the other from Business. The last of the five was a trans boy from Basic Drawing.

With semester exams coming up, I had worked myself to the point of not sleeping in the nights. If I did not get enough credits for all of my courses by the end of this sem, I wouldn't be allowed to go on the trip in the summer. I had been working on a sculpture made of wasted wood shavings, sacks of which I had collected from Pramila Ma'am's studio over the days. It was inspired by the Russian mathematician Sergey Bobkov's life-sized sculptures of birds and animals made from wood shavings. Though the wood he used was cut for this purpose, mine was proper waste. I did try to sort them out by size as much as I could, and soaked them in water for several days to soften them.

The topic of the project was 'Conservation'. Using the waste we generate as sculptors, I chose to do a sculpture of the increasingly endangered coral reef.

Zara's mother had once walked in on me at three in the morning thinking that I had fallen asleep with the lights turned on. She found me buried neck deep in piles of shavings with sawdust in my hair, and nobody said a single word when I walked into the living room after two days, freshly smelling of soap and shampoo. I had survived on meals that Zara's mother would leave for me just outside the door.

My only reward was the way Zara stared in wonder at the coral reef made of wood shavings. She wanted to touch it but the varnish had barely dried so as compensation, I offered to take her to the park. Romita's board exams had come to an end and she agreed to come with her brother too.

"Give me some status update! You're literally my only source of gossip now," she said once we had sat down on our regular bench, looking over at the kids playing at a distance. There were a few more kids from around the neighbourhood today. "My schoolmates are such bitches; they don't even both to keep in touch once Boards are over."

I scoffed at her remark, thinking about Ishan's large group that managed to stick together even a year later. Maybe not physically, but I was pretty sure those two years of utter bliss was enough to keep them bound in spirit.

If only I hadn't helped Shivam fuck it up, they might have had fonder memories.

"COME ON!" Romita nudged my shoulder and I couldn't stop myself thinking of everything that had happened since the fest. "That's a very weird grin – oh no! You two have done something! Admit it."

"Shut up," there were other adults within earshot. "Yeah, well, we kissed, had some quarrels and then came back stronger than before. I think." I kept it as PG as possible.

Romita whooped and then pouted unhappily, "I have been MIA for way too long. I'm not getting any more details than that, am I?"

"No, but you get to see something I finished working on this morning."

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, and showed her some pictures that I'd taken before leaving the house.

She smiled. "You've got a lot better than the last time I saw your stuff."

I knew I was grinning at her like a child who was being treated to chocolate cake. I liked compliments like that. Nothing empty, nothing too flattering, but a simple message that meant that you are doing better than your past self. That meant the world to me.

"Rohan, no!"

The little boy, who was about to put in a fistful of grass in his mouth, now stared back at his elder sister with – was that a guarded look on his face?

I stopped dead in my tracks.

No, this couldn't be happening. This kid was too young to grow wary of his family already.

"Romita!"

The girl paid me no heed as she proceeded to scold her brother prying open his small, stubby fingers and letting some of the torn grass fall at his feet.

"What nasty things are you putting in your mouth? You'll get sick, you know how angry Ma would be if she found you dirty –" she was saying.

"Romita, no."

"What no? I'm the one who is going to get scolded for not taking care of him and his bad habits."

I shook my head. "Rohan," I said in a calm voice. "You know how plants and trees breathe and live just like we do, just like the dogs and the fish do, right?"

Zara clutched at my pant leg and put her fist against her mouth. "We killed them."

I nodded. "So don't do it again, okay? The ground is very dirty, we walk on it with our shoes on, so if you pick up something from the ground and put it in your mouth, you will get stomach ache."

"But the grass is icky too! Clean, clean it!" Rohan moved forward to dust off the patch of grass he had been standing upon.

I bent down beside him and held him up by his hands. "The grass doesn't die easily if you only make it dirty, Rohan. It dies if you hurt it and uproot it by force."

"Then?" the little boy with teary eyes, pointed toward the torn grass lying at our feet.

"Leave it. It will go back to the ground and help the other grass to grow. This would have happened when plants and trees die naturally. It wasn't its time yet."

My sister patted Rohan's head and looked at me. "But we eat them when they are fresh and young."

"We need it for survival, but unless you need to eat them or use them, you must not hurt them, okay? We can't eat the grass that grows here, so we don't uproot them."

Zara nodded. Rohan blinked, "I don't understand."

"It's okay, Rohan," my sister. "Just don't hurt anything."

I tugged at Romita's sleeve and pulled her away from the children.

"He gets scared easily," I started beating about the bush.

"I know what you are trying to say," Romita looked away. "I just – I always see Ma scolding him right off the bat without explaining anything. Just stuff like "don't do this, don't do that, else you will be punished", I know I shouldn't. Thank you."

The kids had regained their playful spirit. I remembered the first time I had met Rohan and he had put grass in my hair, I knew I should have made him understand back then itself.

You are never too young to be kind.

"I hope you become a schoolteacher."

"What?" I looked at Romita in surprise. "Have you looked at me? I look like the delinquent backbencher, rather than a kid-friendly person."

She looked back at her brother giggling and playing with my sister. She laughed. "Once you get past that stage of your interviews, think of all the kids you can take care of."

You are never too young to be kind.

That would be nice.

It was time to go home. Zara held on to my index finger as we walked down the road. I wished she didn't look so solemn.

"You okay?" I asked her. "Are you sad about earlier?"

She turned, "I just – I don't want to go home. I liked it at the park today."

"Don't worry," I smiled down at her. "We'll come back again next week."

Once we were at the front of our door, Zara stood on her tiptoes and rang the bell.

There was a loud crash inside.

Baba opened the door, grabbed me by the collar and before I could understand what was going on other than the fact that my project from earlier this morning was on the ground, I felt my cheek sting. This time he had almost hit my eye.

"What's wrong – argh!"

He shoved me against the wall, almost knocking the wind out of me. I could faintly hear Zara's mother shouting somewhere in the background but all I could do was choke on my own breath.

"Santiniketan, huh? You think you're one of those Tagores – those zamindar wussies living off their ancestors' money and whiling away their lives in a thousand scandals?" Zara's mother managed to get Baba's hands off me. He ran a hand through his hair and paced the living room. "You- you ungrateful brat, you will do anything to ruin our family name."

Zara stared at the whole scene unfolding before her. Cold drops of sweat ran down my stomach, soaking my innerwear and the colder cloth now stuck to my skin.

He knows.

I forgot all the cheekiness I'd developed against him for all these years. Once again, I was the ten years old motherless kid staring back at him, making him get his fists ready to swing another blow.

He has always told me how my blank, expressionless face made him want to hit some more just to get a reaction out of me.

"Baba, stop hitting Dadabhai," Zara's voice was small, barely audible.

That's when I realised the mistake I'd made. In the midst of all the assignments and work, I'd forgotten how our parents' daily quarrels had affected my sister. Baba fighting with me or mother wasn't anything new, but we usually made sure Zara was away from it all.

All this time I'd either been out at college or stayed locked up in my room. I had heard insults being thrown back and forth, but with a shake of my head, I had tuned out and selfishly been in my own little world.

And only until a moment ago I had been feeling superior to Romita's outburst against her kid brother. No wonder Zara looked more subdued than usual, no wonder she did not want to come back home. Where was I when my own sister needed me to be with her?

I was no different than him. I tried to run away from him all these years but just my luck. He was catching up to me.

Hello, old Riyaaz. You will become exactly like your father.

"You idiot," my father spat in rage with a hand raised in anticipation. "You fucking idiot. You think I don't know that you're trying to corrupt Zara too? Taking her to your filthy college, introducing her to your equally filthy friends. I got a call from her school. Do you know what she wrote in her second grade school essay?"

"Ranjan, I told you, it's not his fault," I looked at Zara's mother. She turned away from me. "I should have checked what she was submitting for homework."

"Yes. Yes, you bloody well should have. How else would you have hidden this from me any longer? Your daughter – your bloody daughter has written how she visited the government art college exhibition and saw Dadas dressing up like Didis, and how she was taught to call a Didi as "he/him" as some of the most interesting things she has come across. And all this -" he eyes steeled themselves as he struck me on the face again. "-and all this was taught to her by her own Dadabhai."

"Stop it!"

"You don't get it Shobha, you have to straighten up these fellows in front of the younger ones to set a good example. Only then the kids will know what not to do."

"Baba, I'm sorry, I won't do it again. Please, stop hitting Dadabhai."

Everytime she spoke, I felt a little emptier. I looked at Zara's mother again, trying to get her to take Zara away from here, but she wouldn't look at me.

"Look at you... pathetic." He left my face burning and stalked across the room. "I fear for you, I don't want you to become something like that boy from your middle school. As soon as I'd heard he was a theatre kid and did all that cooking, I knew what he was turning into. You were getting closer to him, which is why I asked Shivam to make sure you two were safe and away from him no matter what."

So it was his doing.

Why am I not surprised?

"She even wrote that "boys are not the opposite of girls" in her opposite words exercise. You have told her all this." He grabbed me by the collar of my shirt again. I glanced downward.

This was the same shirt Yash had grabbed me in, on the day he had first kissed me.

I remembered random, small details like that. The intro of a song we listened to before dozing off on the grassy field in the cool evening wind after a sunset in the summer, or the sound of the floorboards creaking under his feet the first time I saw him sneaking into the studio, and him holding the ladder for dear life but looking unbothered by it while painting the walls.

"I fear for you in that college. All those filthy kids, and even your teachers. All the disgusting things going on in there-"

I have chosen. I am not going to be like him.

"But Baba, I am like Ishan, maybe not as kind and sweet as him. But exactly in the sense you mean."

The next chapter will be up in a few hours. Till then, don't try to kill me.

By the way, here are some awesome works by Sergey Bobkov. Source : www.zmescience.com