The Rivals (Rewriting)

Shot-19

A shrill cracking sound reverberated throughout the house, rudely cutting through the blissful silence of the beautiful sunny morning. I had been awake long and was trying my darndest to work out. I figured since I had to participate in it anyway, might as well get myself physically into shape for the Championship. Mentally, I doubted if I'd ever be normal about partnering with Rishabh.

It might have been my third yoga pose in which I was trying so hard to concentrate without being alarmed of anything going on downstairs. The house was small and you could practically hear my mother dicing vegetables in the kitchen. I was genuinely afraid of them hearing all the shenanigans that underwent in this house the previous night. But thankfully, they were all out as a light.

Most daughters expect their lovable fathers to wake them up with a pleasant 'good morning' or a 'the sun is not gonna wait for you, kiddo'. Lovable was an alien word to describe my father then. I usually got up to the sound of something breaking or some frivolous rebukes from downstairs.

The man had got no work lately. Just to leave home in the morning for the whole day and return back the evening that too just to snatch away our peace and quiet.

It felt almost alien to imagine a time when he used to be the ideal citizen everyone in the neighborhood looked up to. A well-payed job in a law firm, perhaps one of the most sought-after lawyer of the city, a loving husband , the best father and an ideal citizen who mended his ways as he went. All gone, poof! with the man's deterioration to savagery.

One case, all it took for him to unravel was one damn case in which he defended a notorious murderer. Six years of unimaginable pressure, gruelling hours inside the mind of a monster rendered him inhumane. Our house has been retaining wholly on my Mom's savings from when she used to work and my occasional meagre contributions for the past year and a half.

I came to know about this delightful little new alcohol problem of my father last month. It was not like I hadn't seen this coming from miles. This made me worry whether all the tutoring money I had been chipping in the house for the past months was being used by that abominable man for his drinks. I swore if he turned out to be the reason for which I couldn't bulk up my savings, I'd honestly stick his ass up in his bottle and throw him in the sea.

Sentimentally, I had then lost all the hopes of salvaging a happy family from the ruins. 

Right then, if the man, out of nowhere, came out completely changed, begging us for a second chance, I oathed that I wouldn't give it to him. Not even if my Mom pleaded with all her 'mature-immature' philosophies, that man deserved no sympathy.

That poor woman had to suffer so much living under the same roof with the beast! While I could have a few moments of relief in my Grandpapa's apartment, she still had to stay here, make up for all that was lost in her family. 

The unanimous decision of my mother and mine for me to stay out there for the school days and nights and return home during the weekends was so that I could get some space to study without any disruption.

My mother was, in the beginning, highly reluctant to let me go. She was a mother after all. But with the increasing chaos in the house, she could feel how this environment and her motherly instinct to have her close would do more bad than good for her daughter who was trying to break out of the shackles of suffering that this house had bestowed upon them both.

What safer place for her teenage daughter to move in other than their Grandparents' home? In this way, she wouldn't feel entirely cut out from her daughter's life and the daughter would have a personal space to work in.

Mom asked the lady next to Grandpapa's apartment to look after me. The lady had two kids whom she happily handed over to me to be tutored in return for a meagre sum of money. With the son, came his school friends and before I knew it, I had a substantial amount of money every month for my upkeep in the apartment with spare to help Mom in the main house. For two days a week, I was a home tutor and for the other three, a full-time troubled student and for the remaining two, a selfish daughter.