Raabta

Burden

Tujhse naaraz nahiin zindagi
Hairaan hoon main
O hairaan huun main...
Tere masum sawaalon se
Pareshaan hoon main…

Burden

It was my 12th board exams, a time when every student felt the crushing weight of expectations—scoring good marks, getting into a good college, earning the praise of mom and dad.

Everyone around me seemed to be drowning in that pressure, but for me, it was different. For me, the pressure wasn’t just about exams; it was about survival.

All my friends had amazing parents—the kind who loved their kids openly, showering them with hugs, kisses, and gifts. I’d watch them, my chest tightening with jealousy so deep it felt like a physical pain. Why did they get to have that love? What was so wrong with me?

Every day, I’d come home imagining what it would be like if my mom was waiting for me, just like other moms. If she’d ask me about my day, give me a shake, and prepare my favorite dishes. But that was just a dream—a cruel fantasy.

Nothing like that ever happened to me. Instead, I came home to a house that was cold and indifferent. A house that only came alive for my brother, who was nothing more than a younger version of my parents—a carbon copy of their arrogance and disregard.

I remember every time I tried to bring up the smallest thing to my father—how I wanted to take extra classes, how I needed new books. He would brush me off, saying he had already done "more than enough" for me by paying my school fees. His words always felt like a knife cutting through my skin. More than enough? I was his daughter, wasn’t I?

Why did everything I needed or asked for felt like an obligation to him?

That brat, just three years younger than me, carried an attitude no one could match, filled with the same fucking arrogance that defined my parents. With time, anger, jealousy, and frustration festered inside me, growing stronger with every day that passed.

But one moment stands out more than anything else. It was my brother’s birthday, smack in the middle of my 12th board exams. Chemistry was the next day, and those formulas—those damn formulas—had never made any sense to me.

No logic, no intuition—just pages and pages of things I had to memorize and regurgitate on paper. I was stressed, confused, and desperate to study. But all my parents cared about was Sonu’s birthday.

They never celebrated my birthday. I never had a cake, never had balloons, never had my friends over to celebrate with me. Why? Because my birthday was a reminder to them of the day my real mother died giving birth to me.

But for Sonu? They threw a fucking party. Music blared from the speakers, loud enough to make my ears bleed. There was laughter, celebration, joy—everything I had never known.

I begged them to turn it down, pleaded with them, reminding them that I had an important exam the next day. They ignored me. My own father looked at me as though I was nothing more than an inconvenience. My stepmother didn’t even bother to acknowledge my words.

Instead, she turned up the music even louder, as if to remind me that nothing I said mattered. I ended up going to a friend’s house to study, but something inside me snapped that day. That was the day I realized I was nothing to them. Absolutely nothing.

It was the same story every time. Every achievement I fought for, every mark I earned—none of it mattered to them. When I managed to secure 82% in my boards, I was over the moon. I had made it into an engineering college, one of the better ones. I thought, just for once, they’d be proud of me. But no.