I saw two children fighting on the road today. Each one trying to push away the other from the swing. I went over to them and told them not to fight. “Why are you fighting little one…brothers and sisters should never fight. They are meant to be friends for life. “No…I hate him…even Papa loves him more. Ill show him one day.” I smiled at her. “You know I used to be just like you once but promise me you’ll never become like me.” I told her. She looked at me with confused eyes. “Don’t talk to strangers. They’ll eat you up.”, screamed the little boy. “Don’t pull me so hard” she screamed back...and they continued bickering. Brothers have a strange way of protecting you sometimes. We never realize it until its all gone. Small things that you see in life take you deep inside, bringing all those questions back which sometimes have no answers.
They say you wake up everyday in the morning striving towards something. But what is it that I am striving towards? I don’t know. At least I thought I didn’t. Till I decided to take the higher road in life. What is the higher road…you may ask. It is the way which is difficult, the way which we should take but the way we never want to. The faith that I had lost in life was difficult to find. The faith that I had lost in me was difficult to find. I tried looking for it, I really did, in work, in people, in places but there was something missing everywhere. However much I tried, a sigh escaped my lips, because I felt incomplete, lost. I never seemed to be good enough ever. Even if everything around me pointed to the contrary, it felt like nobody could understand me and that maybe nobody ever would. I could sense the dissonance in my life.
Now I live in peace, because now I understand myself, now I understand why I feel scared to let people in, and why sometimes the distance never seems to close. And that works out pretty well because then, faith is not that difficult to find. Sometimes when I sit by the Ganga and listen to the melancholic Bhairav raga, I feel closer to God, to the meaning of my life. It’s there somewhere, buzzing around. I sit by myself, listen to music, paint, write, or just think, whichever way in which I can express and understand the person that I have become. Life changes you in ways that can never mend itself but I will find my way, I will! I will.
This discomfort in my own skin, the constant discontentment started early. The way I filled in the square with the crayon given by my teacher was never good enough, whenever I tried eating by myself I just didn’t feel capable enough to eat without staining my dress. Yes, its surprising, but even as a child I felt emotions that were not really childish…disappointment, the need to prove yourself and a competitiveness that was so fierce I can still feel it in my bones. Since I was the younger one in the house my brother was always better than me. At everything. He could run faster, hit harder, push me with greater strength, and could command attention that no amount of fretting, crying and throwing tantrums could get me. Maybe I was too young to realise that a higher road existed, where I could make myself capable and prove to my father that I was worth being his child. I never saw in his eyes the love, pride, fondness that I saw every time I saw him look at my brother.
“Why cant you be a little smarter, look at Dada, learn something from him”, he once sneered with a drink or two down. I didn’t know what I had done to deserve this and in a way my mother understood me, even though I never discussed it with her. She tried making up for it always. She would talk to me when she would comb my hair, telling me how I was a princess and that I was so pretty and all other nice things that young girls are told by their mothers, and often only by their mothers. When my brother and I were a little older I realized he wasn’t so great after all, he would bully his friends and suck up to older boys. Slowly I learnt how to get to him. I would challenge him to do things which I knew he couldn’t. Count backwards from hundred, and jump from the topmost stair, spell difficult words that I had already learnt and if I did all this faster than him, he would go tattle to my father. I guess both of us had gauged our weak points. But as you grow up and boyfriends happen, and girlfriends come along the way, when you need to sneak into the house late into the night, and when you catch the smell of smoke coming from the bathroom…somewhere you connect with your brother like no one else. I remember the day he started seeing my best friend, how insecure I was. But I appreciated the fact that both of them came and asked me if I was ok with it and only then would they go ahead with the relationship. I pretended to be surprised but not like I had missed the side glances and secret smiles they passed while crossing each other in my house.
By now I had started ignoring my father and his snide comments about how nice and how good and how smart my brother was because somewhere both of us had grown out of it. But I guess my father never did, he still seemed to have a grudge against me which I never understood. Maybe he hated the fact that I was a girl, maybe he hated the fact that I always held my own in front of him, or maybe he just plain and simple hated me. At least that’s how I felt, how I feel and how I thought I would always feel. They say happiness comes in many forms…in the company of good friends…in the feeling you get when you make someone else’s dreams come true…when the promise of hope is renewed. It’s ok to let yourself be happy…because you never know how fleeting that happiness might be. I felt happiness that night…in each of these forms…when I finished the final year of school with the ‘most promising student’ award. I called my brother wild with happiness and he said he was coming over to pick me up. Ill never forget the pride I heard in his voice that day. Surrounded by my bestest friends…yes I call them ‘bestest’ because there can be no one better than them. Growing up with one another, they become family and Ill never find people who understand me like they did. In making my mother’s dreams come true…with the hope that Ill finally match up to my father’s standards…maybe even get him to love me and I felt like nothing could ever go wrong. That I would always find reasons to be happy in life. And that I wasn’t that bad maybe. All those doubts about not being pretty enough, not being smart enough or just not being good enough were slowly fading to some hidden corner of my mind. This is where life plays games with you. After waiting for an hour I finally called him...my mother answered the phone…hysterical. “He’s had an accident Neeti…Oh Lord!...come fast…Lilavati…I’m scared..” and she broke into sobs. I rushed to the hospital, my heart sinking deep inside. When I got there the doctor informed me that he was in the operation theatre and all we could do was wait. I went and sat with my parents. My father had a blank expression on his face…my mother sobbing quietly. I went and sat with them hoping to give them quiet support and strength. We sat that way for about two hours not saying a word to each other. That’s when the doctor came and told us that he was gone. Gone from our lives...just like that. I was stunned. My mother screamed like an animal in pain. And my father stood like a statue. Time seemed to have stopped in its tracks. We stood there for ten minutes, with words that kept ringing in our ears...hearts not believing what had happened. Things passed in a whirl after that. His funeral, voices crying, people offering solace. But the heart refused to accept any of this. The last time I spoke to him…why didn’t I tell him I loved him…and why all those years we tried pushing each other on the opposite side of the road when we were on the same side always. Few days later we were all sitting and eating…like silent puppets. And then he said it. “It was you who killed him”. I dropped my spoon. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment. “I hate you...do you know that? I hate you from the moment you came into my life. I told Shanti to never bring you from that orphanage but will she ever listen to me. You cursed all of us. And you cursed my son. You asked him to come to you…didn’t you? You made him walk into his death. You killed him.” He walked over to me, and slapped me hard. I don’t think I was the same ever again. I couldn’t let anything or anyone come close to me after that. I was to blame. He was right. I asked him to come. If I didn’t ask him to come he would still be alive. Maybe if I was still at that orphanage, he would still be alive. Why couldn’t I die instead of him? Why was it him? My dad was right. I killed him. And not once, I deserved to be slapped a thousand times. Maybe I should just kill myself. That would make things right maybe. Nothing seemed right. Little did I know that nothing would ever seem right.
The dissonance only grew. I failed miserably in everything that I did. All the spark in me had died somewhere along the way. Awards in school don’t really promise anything. It was difficult living in the same house after that. If I happened to cross paths with my father, I couldn’t lift my eyes to meet his. My mother hated him for saying what he did. She tried her best to talk to me. But the shell was so tight, so closed, I couldn’t bring myself out of it. The darkness, the solitude, my failure felt like a balm. Like I was giving myself what I deserved, and I deserved it all.
I finally moved out. And though my mother begged me to stay, my father had no reaction really. I hadn’t spoken to him after that but when I told him I was going. All he said was. “Finally”. It hurt so bad sometimes that it was like a physical ache. I didn’t know what I had done to deserve all that. Tears seemed to have dried up but the pain didn’t go.
Now over the years the pain has subsided a little. Maybe just rounded over the edges. But now I know that what my father said was wrong. But deep inside I still blame myself a little. Maybe, just maybe I was to blame. I would do anything to bring him back. Anything in this world. To make my mother smile again. To be able to look at my father in the eye. To deserve a little love, a little affection. To maybe live a little.
My mother came and met me a few months after I left. I hadn’t met her in months now. She asked me to come home. For one night…the pleading look in her eye made me go and to be honest, there was always hope that it was all a big bad dream and everything would be fine when I woke up. I entered home, all the feelings rushing in again. What happened to us? We used to be happy. We used to be a family.
The drawing room seemed dead. I walked towards a picture of our family. We were all smiling. My father was holding me. What I wouldn’t give to be that girl again. All that life had to offer seemed lost. Maybe I was destined to be alone forever.
I turned around and saw my father looking at the picture in front of me. And that’s when I saw that it was he who needed to be forgiven, not me. I saw the pathetic man that he had made himself into. I saw the pain that he given me and realized that most of that pain was his. What I felt was not anger or even forgiveness but pity. And then I realized the existence of a higher road. I had two options in front of me. I could either tell him that he was wrong and that I hated him. Or I could tell him that I had forgiven him and that I loved him.
My father cried his heart out when I told him that blaming me won’t bring him back, that Ill always love him and I know that he loved me too. I chose love over hate…forgiveness over pain. I’d never felt so light in years. I’m glad I did what I did because it helped me grow as a person. Though I could never live in that house again. I could now search for the meaning of my life. I could have faith in myself. Find something that I wanted to work towards, something that drives me. I wanted to, for myself, more than anything. I deserved to live, to love and be loved. I remember a prayer that we learnt in school. ‘Help us to have in our lives… courage in danger… steadiness in times of testing…perseverance in difficulty…loyalty when loyalty is costly…love which nothing can change and joy which nothing can take away. It is these things that I live to find. Things that I live for. More than anything I live in hope every single day. I hope to find my faith and keep it. I really do.
