Chapter 2: The Farewell

Continued.....

I now wonder what was picture perfect about our life… how was it that our wretched lives seemed so perfect to me and why?

I learned it a little too late… it was all the slightest details you’ve read above that made my life seem beautiful to you and me on the outside, but the inside was just as ugly and dreadful.

My family, my home .. a blissful masquerade that was a piece of heaven on earth for me soon turned out to be a gateway to hell.

Life sure was difficult and every single day was nothing but hard work, another shot at survival. We lived some really hard times all these years with blindfolds. We were fooled by the beauty of the outside colors to the extent that we ignored how black and white our lives were from the inside.

I had turned fourteen years old, crossed my childhood/playful years and entered my teens working as a shepherd, seeing nothing but poverty, hunger, struggle and a constant desire to at least live a day of our miserable lives that had three proper meals, new clothes to wear or better yet shoes in our wounded feet. But some wishes remain unheard, never to be fulfilled.

It was just like my dream, our house was crumbling but not because of the rain.   Our home was falling upon us because it was merely an illusion of perfection. Now that I had grown up and out of the imaginary magical world of super heroes I saw the realities within our space with clarity.

“I now knew it with all my heart that it wasn’t that my house/family shielded me from the worldly realities, it was my surreal way of thinking. There was no such thing as a perfect world… there was just one world… the real world.”

In this very real world, my elder sisters were married off as soon as they reached the right age. So now it was my responsibility to earn.

Earning was more like a burden now. Although we had lesser mouths to feed now, yet hunger remained one of the reasons my parents fought every night.

I once used to wait impatiently for the day to turn into night, but now I couldn’t wish for anything else than the nights to end.

It seemed that all the bricks had cracked; the leaking hole wasn’t letting in water anymore…. there was no fear of flooding, yet our home was flooding ….. with hatred, pain and regret.

It was just like another normal/ regular day of my life that I went for cattle grazing with my younger brothers. I had no idea that my world was about to change with the setting of the sun.

When I returned home I was told by my mother that some guests are over and that I should take a quick shower and serve tea. I did exactly as I was told.

After tea I was given new clothes that I quickly changed into, I danced around in the washroom playing with the dupatta as a wave of joy hit my flesh and jolted my bones. Considering I had worn new clothes after years, nothing seemed suspicious or bothered me all evening. And it just went on to be better as that night our dinner table was a host to our village’s Qaari Sahab.

Ahhh… I was filled with joy, after a long time being at home didn’t make me feel we were poor or miserable.

My mother had made chicken Korma with brown rice for dinner. It was the first time in years that we hosted guests (properly) at our place, offering more and better than what we had. Everyone seemed so happy and enjoyed their meal in peace.

It wasn’t until after our peaceful dinner that I suffered another blow from these perfect illusions.

“Everyone in my family bid me farewell and I left.”

As I sat on the bus, my heart sank, my eyes were filled with tears and I knew things had changed… I would never be the same, nothing ever will be!

I too was married off without consent or any knowledge of it….

I was born empty handed, so my parents bid me farewell from their home and lives empty handed. No worldly possessions… nothing except the dress I was wearing.

“All I could look back to was the dinner my parents had hosted and the kaanch ki churiyaan my mother had gifted me.”

I woke up, opened my eyes as the bus stopped. We had reached our destination, a place I had never heard of or seen before.

We walked to my new or second home (as I would like to call it) and just as I reached the road to home I started weeping with a thousand tears…. it was like the rain, my eyes were the clouds that had withheld the tears for years but now the clouds had burst and my tears were bound to come out like a rainstorm.

But the strange thing is I wasn’t crying because I had left my home, family and my miserable life behind…. I was crying because I could see my future like a vivid image in my mind. A future gifted to me by my own elder sister.

It was almost midnight when I finally stopped crying, there were no more tears to shed…..

I just stared vacantly at this strange place I would call my home… with all these strangers I had to call my own.

So after all these years… my home and the people I had left behind, my family was nothing but a blissful masquerade over an endless pitfall of hell…

Read Chapter 1: A blissful Masquerade