Weird and Wonderful

Chapter-14

Year - 2011

“What happened, Swasti?” Her mother came running. It appeared to Swasti that she had lost her ability to speak. She wanted to tell her mother everything but words refused to be formed in her brain. She could only cry, resting her head on her mother’s lap. By then, her father was also awake. He was quietly standing at the threshold of the door.

“Don’t worry, Swasti. Look at me,” Swasti’s mother said, cupping her face, “Look, I have come. Now there will be no problem.”

Looking at her mother’s face gave Swasti some relief. Her sobs had become less violent and she had stopped shaking.

“What happened, Swasti?” Swasti’s father said, stroking her hair. Her head was still resting on her mother’s lap.

“The fear is killing me, Papa,” Swasti said with helplessness.

“What fear, Swasti? Look, your Mummy and Papa, both are here,” Swasti’s mother said tenderly.

“I fear that...that I won’t be able to crack the Engineering Entrance exams,” Swasti said. Swasti did not tell that she could not crack the exams because doing so would require her to be focused and she could not focus on studies until she forgets Rachit. And Rachit’s memories were the last remnant of her lost love; she could not afford to lose them.

“So what Swasti if you could not crack Engineering exams? Cracking an exam is not a guarantee of a happy life. You can have everything, still you can be poor at heart,” Swasti’s mother said.

“If I had thought about money, I would have never left my job,” Swasti’s father said, “Though I could not become a successful painter, still I have no regret in my heart because I know that I have listened to my heart instead of the world.”

“And even if you fail in your career, you will never fail in your life because your parents will always be there for you,” Swasti’s mother said. Hearing these words, Swasti hugged her mother which was something that Swasti would never have imagined doing earlier as she was never the person who expressed her love for her parents so openly.

Swasti was still crying. She was crying over Rachit’s death; she was crying over her lost love; she was crying over her broken dreams. But near her mother, she was feeling less scared. And finally, with tears flowing through her eyes, she slept.
Swasti’s eyes opened when sunlight began teasing her through the open window in her room. After the night’s incident, she expected that things would improve. But when she tried to get up from the bed, she felt that there was something heavy in her chest. She had no strength to stand. Somehow she brushed the teeth, but she didn’t feel like taking a bath. At the time of breakfast, she ran towards the washroom and threw up everything she had eaten.

Swasti’s mother didn’t go to office that day and she had called Swasti’s class teacher to tell her that Swasti would not be going to school that day. Swasti was lying on her bed and both her parents were sitting beside her. At one point, Swasti felt like telling her mother about Rachit. But something stopped her. She could not break her mother’s trust who loved her so dearly. She could not ruin her reputation even if it meant ruining her own life. So, Swasti decided that she would not tell anyone about Rachit except Kritika and Ami.
Days passed and Swasti started going to school again. But she had lost her interest in everything. She had become like a zombie who could walk but had lost her life. She saw everything, heard everything but nothing had meaning for her. The guilt of letting down her parents and grief of Rachit’s death had killed her will to live. One day, she had an anxiety attack in the school itself. She had made an excuse that she was ill that day but the seed of doubt began sprouting in her classmates’ mind. Rumours about her mental condition began spreading in school.
Finally, her parents took her to a psychiatrist where she was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. What if someone from her school found about it? They already used to make fun of her by calling her ‘weird’. What if her classmates found out that she was suffering from depression? They would easily label her as ‘mad’. She could not trust even Kritika and Ami. Who knows if they would try to take advantage of Swasti’s condition? After all, everything is fair in love and war and she knew that competition was not less than war for Kritika and Ami.

Swasti even considered the option of taking her own life. She had planned about it elaborately.  Hanging herself was the most convenient option for her but she had found out on Internet that sometimes people die twenty to twenty-five minutes after being hung. She didn’t want to imagine about the hopelessness of twenty minutes. So poison was the obvious choice. But what was the guarantee that she would die after consuming poison?  No, she could not withstand the guilt of causing disgrace to her parents. But she could not live a life like that.
Swasti thought about suicide each night and each night she postponed it for the next day. But her life was no better than death. Her eyes had lost the ability to dream and her heart had lost its capacity to find joy in the most trivial things. Everyone was surprised at the change in her behaviour, but ignored it by saying things like “Weird lives of weird people.” Swasti heard the cruel comments made on her but none of them bothered her anymore. Kritika had tried to talk to Swasti, but eventually she also gave up.

So, Swasti was a dreamless, friendless sixteen year old girl without any hope. Her parents did not know when the dark night of their daughter’s life would pass but they had not lost hope for their hopeless daughter.