Zameer: No Man's Land

9.

Our house started to fill up with people with their crying facades. Turns out, it was normal since the last twelve days, only I had been too busy and involved in myself to notice all this. I woke up early in the morning and yet the last one in the family. Even my little most brother, suraj, had woken up too. When I got down after getting ready, I saw all the people walking in and about my home like some ceremony going on. In fact, it was a ceremony going on except the fact that it wasn't a happy one.

Gate opened and I saw all the men coming in except Ravi chacha. Baba, Chandra chacha, Viren and little Suraj... all of them bald. It was our hindu ritual. I was wondering why baba was following it. I came down and went to the inside hall where we had done all the Puja-Path and where the ultimate picture of Baaji with garland around him was put. I saw Ravi chacha getting bald by a home called barber.

"Aizaaa....udhar mat ja. Aa idhar kitchen me help karwa meri, naha liya hai na??"

Mom called me and I went inside only to see Beena chachi and Maaji cooking on the gas while mom had all the bronze utensils in front of her. It was actually a ceremony going on.

"Ye kiske liye ban raha hai?"  I asked them.

"Baaji ke liye!"  they said in unison. A snorting chuckle surpassed my mouth and I nodded in unbelievement.

"Tum jao yahan se beta...yahan tumhara koi kam nhi hai. Madhvi rakhi ko bula lo na, isko jane do bahar"  maaji said to me and literally sent me out.
It was so paradoxical for me to understand that all my life I saw her malignance with my father, which I used to think was for his name but now I knew that it was for the whole religion itself...yet she loved me the most. Even more than her grandkids, her real grandkids. What math was used for the basis of her hatred and malignance was something I could never calculate.
I went outside only observing all the stuff happening in my house.

"Are Aijja beti. Tumhare baaji ke jane ka bhot dukh hai hume." Suddenly this strange aunty stopped me and holding my shoulder said all this to me. I watched her for a brief second and I was to start asking her questions as to why she was upset and tying to console me when I had no idea who she was at first place, but then I realised the facade of society and this was just how it goes.

"Ji shukriya" I said with lame tone.

"Or batao....shadi kab kar rhi ho?" She asked me and I felt the rush of anger hitting my last nerve of brain coming from the toe. I looked at her with pathetic eyes and was about to say that it was none of her business and she was the stupid most person I've ever wasted my time on, but I felt a pair of hands on my both arms and a voice so evident because of the smile already placed on the speaking device of human body that people could state the speaker of it without even looking.

"Aunty ji in baton ka abhi kya fayda. Aap chaliye pooja shuru hone wali hai, baba aate hi honge" he said and I jerked his hands away  from my arms and standing a little apart from him, looked at him with same pathetic and shocked eyes. That lady went off watching me and Vedant keenly but I didn't pay any heed.

"Why did you do that?" I said in utter annoyance as he clearly stole my chance to teach that stupid lady a better lesson.

"People get upset on death Aiza..and so they pay condolences no matter how less real and 'from heart' it is, and just when they finish doing it.. they move on.  There's no need to make them understand or feel what you are feeling. Some day, she is gonna feel it anyway. Its inevitable. So don't pay heed to the crowd in your home."  He said and I kept thinking how on the right nick of time did he get to know and understand what I was thinking.
It felt so filmy and... surreal.