tears...

I stared at the trees blowing gently outside the thinly veiled window and sighed, wondering what new scene my father would create tonight in his drunken state. I cringed at the memory of the previous night, when the fiend has threatened to hit my mother if she didn't comply with his wishes. My eyes burned with angry tears at what my mother and I had to suffer every night when Papa would sink to new levels of cheap behaviour and torture. My mother withered away, some part of her dying every time her husband abused her in all the ways he could. It seemed as if he had fine tuned it into an art- the art of making his wife stoop in front of him. It was as if it brought him sadistic pleasure. My mother toiled the day away, waking up at 5 am in the morning, getting breakfast and tiffin ready, rushing to catch the school bus, teaching all day long, coming home at 2 pm and then taking coaching classes from 3 pm to 8 pm non-stop, all in a bid to run the house, a job that my father absolutely shirked. He was not educated enough, he was ill most of the time, no one would employ him- all the various excuses that he used, to stay at home and spend my mother's money like the clichéd water down the drain- no matter how much he spent, it was never enough for him. And the most ironic part was that my mother never did say a word- she was always ready to give him the heavens, the stars and the moon if only he would be the ideal husband and father. But it was as if more money drove him to higher levels of frustration and he came home to abuse my mother and me even further. My mother lived in eternal hope and I, in eternal despair.

I remember this one night when he came home, completely drunk, and started arguing with my mother over trivial matters. My mother knowing better, kept quiet. Most nights, this would work in calming him down, albeit, just a little. That night though, he seemed furious and kept hurling accusations of my mother cuckolding him. My mother was way too busy seeing to the fact that we were all properly clothed and fed, I felt like telling him. Ma knowing my volatile nature, kept a restraining hand on me and I was forced into submissive silence. One thing led to another and despite my mother's silence, we were suddenly running away from the house, with Papa chasing after us with the Kirpan that his Sikh friend had gifted him. I distinctly remember looking back and seeing the light of an overhead street lamp glint off that malevolent sword. That night, we took refuge behind the high staircase of a neighbour's shop and as soon as Papa began to look in another direction, we ran through the dark night and stayed at my mother's colleague's house. This is one of the many times when my mother tried to leave my father and the handcuffed relationship, that she was forced to call her marriage. My father always brought her back with empty promises of a willingness to repent. As I mentioned, my mother lived in eternal hope of saving her marriage that was a love marriage no more.    

My childhood was peppered with situations like this. But nothing halts time and it glides past on silken wings, irrespective of whether Adam is joyous or Eve is shedding tears copiously. As the seasons passed and the years went by, the time came for me to shift to another city to complete my senior secondary education. My parents wanted to see me in the “Army School” uniform and subsequently, I shifted to the only city in Assam, Guwahati, to my first experience in a hostel. I was happy to get away from it all, but felt a strange and claustrophobic sense of foreboding when I thought of my mother and what limits my father would cross without his daughter’s scornful eyes on him.

My two years at Army passed swiftly and happily enough for me. Hostel was fun after I got to know most of the girls and days and nights passed in eating more and studying less. When I look back now, hostel seems synonymous with endless giggling in the middle of the night, “talking” about the unfair warden, yapping for hours on the phone and the endless exploring of the big, bad, new city. When I came back home for the frequent holidays, it was another story altogether. It was like I left the happiness back in the little hostel room that I shared with another girl and returned to the suffocation that my mother was still existing in. I do not say “living” and say “existing”, since I would hardly deem that life as “living”. It was more as if she was willing herself to get through everyday, so that I could be given whatever was needed to give me a strong base in life. Everyday was still the same sequence of drunken events... like they say about a leopard changing its spots... things had still not improved when I came home to study for my class 12 board exams. In fact, things got to a point when I had to go back to the hostel to study, since my father’s ruckus every night hardly allowed to concentrate. It hardly escaped my notice that my percentage had dropped a whopping five percent as compared to my class 10 board exams, from an eighty nine to an eighty five.

I had always dreamt of becoming a chef and after I sat for the common entrance test for the most prestigious hotel management schools in the country, I anxiously passed the remaining days thinking of the result and what school would I eventually have to choose. I was hoping that I would get a good enough rank to qualify for IHM- Pusa, which is considered to be the best Indian school to study hotel management in. I had a nagging fear and almost knew that my father would eventually force me to give up my Delhi dreams and choose Kolkata, but the human heart is such that it hopes even in the absence of any hope. I got one step closer to my dream when I achieved an all India rank 1, which virtually opened the country up to me, in terms of choosing a school. On the day of the counselling, however, when the entire Subroto Park auditorium was applauding my achievement, my father was in the hotel room, saying that he couldn’t stand the Delhi heat and that I was to choose only Kolkata. And that was what I did.

Life is Kolkata started on a cheerful note with the principal referring to me as “The Topper” and with everyone being very impressed with me, my ego was continuously caressed with silken strokes. Pressure however started to build up, when everyone expected me to always be the alpha in everything. I was expected to be the model student and frankly, the person that I am, is light years away from the person they wanted me to be. Days and nights were burdened with heavy college work, giving me little time to think that this wasn’t quite the dream I had envisaged. The holidays finally came and I flew to New Delhi with the money I had saved by not drinking my usually regular cups of coffee in the nearby Cafe Coffee Day. It was my boyfriend, Pramod’s birthday, and I wanted to be with him to celebrate. It had been a while since I had seen him and the celebrating was almost secondary to seeing each other. What creatures Love makes of us. A long distance relationship had taught me many vitals things- the most important one being never to take anything or anyone for granted.

The first glimpse that I got of him, through the airport’s glass wall, was enough to dispel the agony of those times when I cried for him to be next to me, just to make things better if nothing else. It was my first visit to the city without a chaperoning adult and Pramod showed me all the parts of the city that I had missed in my earlier visits. Those three days flew past like a blur and my love for the city only grew stronger. I cried the entire way back, not just for the familiar comforting presence I was leaving behind, but also for the life I was headed back to.

When I arrived in Kolkata and the dreary campus surroundings, everything that I had clamped up inside me suddenly burst. All the pent up emotions of rage, hatred and injustice that I had suffered came to a boiling point. I remembered all the times when I had been blamed by the warden of having led my room mates astray, of everyone expecting me to be perfect and then sneering and smirking at me when I couldn’t match that image. Tears flowed like they would never stop. News from Taj Palace, New Delhi had come, saying that I had been selected for their Internship Programme. This good news made me cry harder. I felt like I was losing myself in this mess that had become life for me in IHM-K. I hardly wanted to spend a moment longer in the “city of joy”, that had brought me nothing but sorrow. Today, when I look back at things, I think that if my father had let me have my way and study in IHM-Pusa, I would have been a professionally qualified chef by now... but what they say about crying over spilt milk is true. Things took their natural course of action and I left IHM-K on the 24^th of January, 2008.

I reached the capital, when the rest of India was celebrating our Republic Day. As the car inched closer to the place that I would now be calling “home”, those agonising knots of tension loosened their grip on my gut and after days of misery, I felt like I was able to breathe again. A wave of serenity passed over me and I realized that I was looking forward to beginning this new chapter in my life.

I had intended to take a room on rent next to where Pramod stayed, since he was the only known face in the wide sea of the Unknown. The first few days were the perfect blend of joy and happiness and relief that God is known to dish out to us mere mortals in His happier moods. I started looking for a separate place of my own, but nothing was available in the modest budget that I had. After a few days, I gave up looking and here on, my relationship with Pramod took on another hue- a “live in” one.

 One of my strongest beliefs in life is that it is only if one is ashamed of something, does one hide it- if you are not convinced yourself, you can never convince the world, being another. I did not find it necessary to lie to my parents about where I was living and with whom. I am extremely proud of the bond that I share with Pramod and hence, let my parents know about my decision to move in with him. Naturally, I did not expect them to take it smiling and was willing to change my decision if they objected to what I was contemplating. Imagine my surprise when they met Pramod and told me later on, that they were okay with us living together, him being the only one I knew in the city and that they trusted him to take care of me. More importantly, they had decided to finally give me the freedom to choose, since ultimately, I would be the one who would have to live with the choices I made.

Admissions to Delhi University would only take place a couple of months later and I decided to work in a call center, thinking that it would be a proud moment for both my parents and me if I could become a little more independent. Also, I thought that it wasn’t “very nice” of me to be in a live-in relationship and still expect my parents (in this case, my mother), to pay for me. I know that there isn’t any logic attached to that sentiment, but I felt and still feel, very strongly about this. Here began the working phase of my life.

Almost three years later, I can very proudly say that I have had many unconventional twists in life, but have not hidden anything from my parents, unlike a lot of other people I know. I have worked in call centres and put myself through college, a feat, not many can boast of having achieved. Working nights and attending college in the day is tough, but nothing beats the feeling of that small bubble of pride that swells inside you, when you realize that all your three years of graduation tuition fees and books and everything else has been funded through your own hard earned money. It somehow makes me every happy to say that my graduation in English honors, is my own and that I owe it to no one. Of course, I scarcely need to add that I mean no disrespect to all that my mother has done for me. It is because of her today, that I have to bow down my head before no one.

As I write this, life flashes before me and somehow, I feel no bitterness toward everything that has happened to me. This is obviously easy to say when my mother is no longer trapped inside that dreary life but spends her time teaching in a boys’ school in the hills of Mussoorie. Even then, though, I feel that a lot of what happened to me during my childhood was what made me grow up faster than most girls my age. When most females of my age bracket would delight in talking of boys, clothes and the like, I feel like I am far removed from all that. I am hardly trying to be arrogant here, but I’m glad that I am the girl I am now. I believe that God does have a plan in everything that He does, even though it might be very difficult at times to understand what He does. Today, if things hadn’t gone the way they had, I might not have met the people I know and care about, I might not have had such wonderful and terrible experiences I have had, might not have learnt the amount I have... if life had been less terrifyingly amusing, it might not have been this colourful. My tapestry has manifold streaks of blue and black, but also has dazzling shades of gold and purple. I have learnt not to judge people, not even by their actions, since no matter what, one can only comment if one is in the person’s shoes. In any case, who are we to comment on anyone’s life? No one has appointed me as the moral guardian of society and unless I am getting hurt, I believe that my nature is highly tolerant of most things. I think I have made the most of what I have been given and though I may regret a lot of actions I have taken and a lot of choices I have made, I don’t think I would exchange what I have for anything in this world. As Pt Nehru once remarked, “Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.” If I die this very moment, I will be happy and secure in the knowledge that no matter what I have done, if it was good, it was wonderful, but if it was bad, it was experience.