Chapter 1: Ruhi
The trills of the alarm clock are not as loud as my mother’s footsteps.
It’s not that my mother slaps the floor with her feet while walking but I know that distinct dull soft thuds of her heels as she strides across the dining hall to come to my room and say, “Won’t you wake up today?”
No matter who calls how loudly, my mother’s single sentence in the softest voice could pull me out of bed even in the early mid-winter mornings.
She was like a ticking bomb. An active volcano that can erupt any moment.
At the same time, she was a soft feathery pillow you would love to cuddle with and drift into a dreamless sleep.
She was a wonderful mother.
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Born as the eighth and the youngest child to a middle-class hardworking couple, my mother grew up in the abhorrence of her relatives because she was born one year after the seventh child—the first son.
Her birth was thought to be ominous and thus my grandfather’s eldest sister tried to drown my one-year-old mother.
Grandma saved her daughter and gave the old lady a piece of her mind but it was useless. That old coot took pride in her action because according to her, she was ‘saving the food meant for the son’.
The attempts continued irrespective of my grandparents’ protests.
Daughters are a burden—my mother and her sisters were made to believe that in their hearts, and they did so, obediently.
It was like an age-old tradition where the family members instinctively get sad over the birth of a daughter and celebrate the birth of a son.
It was the same when I came into the world.
Whatever I did was a mistake and needed rectification—the way I ate, walked, talked laughed, dressed, breathed—everything needed to be validated beforehand and then acted upon.
Nothing made my mother happy—my obedience, diligence, patience, and love.
My honesty was perceived as sore lies and my attempts for a bit of attention were corrected with the words, “Go and study for you are worth nothing.”
Despite the cruelty, I always noticed the sadness in her eyes and softness behind the severity of her voice.
More than being sad for myself, I felt sad for her.
During a school re-opening speech in class 4, the principal told us to treat each other kindly, “You will get back what you give. If you spread love, it will come back to you tenfold.”
So, I did.
I gave my mother as much love as possible for my tiny heart so that I would get at least 1% in return.
No matter how distressed or sick she would be, I would nurse her and care for her in case, one day, she does the same for me too.
In her moments of insecurity, when I told her how beautiful or intelligent she was, she brushed me off heartlessly leaving me hanging by a thin thread of disregard.
She didn’t believe in her capabilities and knowledge.
So, I tried to make her believe in it.
If she becomes happy with herself, maybe one day, she will be happy with me too.
And sometimes she would...
She would talk sweetly and praise me and hug me and that would make me feel so blessed that I wished for nothing in the world.
But then I would realize that it was just to make me give up something I liked or let go of a precious possession for somebody else.
I was usually stubborn but with a bit of coaxing and sweet words from her, I turned into a loyal dog.
She wanted me to be the one she couldn’t be.
So, she would make me take up a variety of courses and participate in innumerable competitions. Simple participation didn’t suffice, I needed to stun the crowd with my performance and win the first prize.
Any other prizes and awards got thrown out of the house.
If people in the guardian group discussed somebody’s achievements, my mother would come back home and scold me for not being good enough to be the hot topic of discussion.
Who wants to get discussed by bored housewives?
It was ridiculous.
I don’t have any ambition, to be honest.
I lost them long back.
Goals and achievements become worthless in the face of Death.
I saw it.
When I was lying wounded and bloodied in the middle of the road, sinking into a pool of obscurity and silence, the medals and certificates adorning the walls, the prizes and gifts in the showcase, my days of glory and pride—nothing made sense to me except the realization that my life has been nothing but a meaningless race.
I was always stressed or unstressed—like a poetry meter.
Except that the meter has a rhythm and I was a discord.
