Bibek Mukherjee was the officer in charge of a police station in Calcutta. It was his last year in service and he was scared about his post-retirement life. He was a very fearless person but there was something in his past that had pierced through his armour of fearlessness and it seemed to him that it was waiting for his retirement to haunt him every single minute of the day. It was not that it didn’t haunt him in his service life, it did but he always got a saviour in his work, which helped him forget it. It was a disaster that no person would have wanted to experience but destiny never asked for permission about anything it did and so it had not to him as well.

          
He still remembered the time when he had joined the city police. It was the best time in his life and it got better when he got married. Then his wife gave birth to their only son and he didn’t desire anything else from life. He was more than happy by God’s blessing in the form of a beautiful wife and a son. Life was wonderful and he didn’t even realize how the years passed by. His son was in college when the disaster happened. The day was a Monday when the results in his son’s college got declared. He was in the police station when he got a telephone call from the college. A boy had committed suicide in the college campus. He got in his jeep and drove towards the college. When he reached the spot and saw the blood bathed body he got weak in his knees and the fingers in his hands went numb. He was a police officer but before that he was a father. His son was lying on the ground of the college and he was informed not because he was his father but because it was a police case. For a minute he stood still looking at him, not knowing what to do. It was too big a shock and it was so unexpected that he didn’t know how to react. He sat beside him and touched his face with his shaking fingers, disbelief in his eyes. He didn’t know how many minutes passed like that but he got back to the reality of the situation only when he felt a gentle pat on his shoulder. He looked around to see the principal standing beside him. There was sympathy written all over his face. The gesture by the principal made him weaker and the tears wanted to burst out of his eyes but he controlled it, not having the privilege to shed tears was one of the biggest disadvantages of being a cop. He controlled himself as much as he could because he was in duty and the suicide was a crime for which he had been called to investigate. Life could not be any worse than it was at the moment. But what he didn’t know was there were more sufferings awaiting him in the near future. When he broke the news to his wife she immediately fainted. It was a tragedy not easy to accept and he felt helpless in the situation because his wife was in a completely depressed state of mind when she got back her senses, which was after one full day. 

He got to know from the principal later on that his son had failed in the college exam and that according to him was the reason behind his son's taking his own life. The information broke him further and he held himself responsible for his son’s death. He loved his son very much and was extremely proud of the fact that he was good in studies but in college his son had become very carefree about his studies and he had been very concerned. He had called his son to his room one day and talked to him about the matter.

“I think you should concentrate more on your studies,” he had said.

“Don’t worry dad, I will manage,” he had said in a very casual tone.

“Don’t let me down.” He had said it with a lot of seriousness.

“I won’t.” He had promised.

He wished he never had that conversation with his son. His son loved him more that he loved his own self and he was very sensitive, so when he failed to keep his promise of never letting his father down he punished himself by taking his own life. Bibek Mukherjee’s life was a living hell from then on but fate it seemed was not satisfied with the suffering he was undergoing and intensified it by taking the life of his wife who was glad to give up her life as she had not been able to accept her sons death. According to the doctors the reason behind her death was sorrow. He was left alone to repent the tragedies the rest of his life. A curse it was, the curse of fate.

                                               
                                       THE END