Obstructed Heart [Editing]

Chapter 1

ANIKA

I squealed in agony after receiving the devastating news.

I cycled home from school at what seemed to me the speed of light. When I reached home, my breaths came in the form of fast shallow pants and my face was completely soaked. My eyes were swollen due to non-stop weeping and it hurt rubbing them to wipe the tears. Some of my tousled hair from the loose ponytail flew on my face and the remaining unevenly knotted wisps of black hair poked out in every direction around my scalp. I had to clear my face and eyes off them to view the dreadful sight.

The sweat beads mixed with the salty tears swamped my spectacles, blurring my vision. With trembling hands, I removed my glasses and took a step ahead. My school uniform was drenched in sweat- the grey trousers clung to my limbs, the white shirt and the sea green blazer adhered as if they were a single garment. The trauma along with the clothes glued to my body restricted the little movement I attempted to go closer.

To add to the misery, the headache felt like a thousand needles pounding my skull.

The gathering of more than a thousand people made our otherwise massive villa look like a crowded little shop. People, known and unknown loitered on the two floors, each containing four hall-sized bedrooms and a living room twice as big as them. It looked more like a feast with the living room walls lined by tables of food, milk, tea, coffee and people devouring them greedily.

My heart broke into million pieces as I glimpsed the two bodies cocooned by white cotton clothes, through the assembly of neighbors and relatives sitting on the woollen blanket sprawled on the living-room floor. All the people were sitting cross legged and wore clean and plain white clothes. Hearing me yelp all people sitting with their backs on my side, turned their faces alarmed.

The people moved and lent me some space to walk across the room to the soulless figures. They gave me sympathetic glances and told each other that I was the eldest daughter of the couple whose dead bodies lay about a few feet from where I stood. An aunt said that I would be eighteen after two years and would be legally able to get married. I vaguely heard a lady's remark in an undertone for my Uncle and Aunt, about how mean and greedy they were. Some claimed my relatives had covetous intentions to purloin all our wealth behind their facade of taking the guardianship of me and Daksha. A woman commiserated with my little sister, saying that the poor twelve year old couldn't even comprehend her Uncle's intentions. I couldn't make sense of who said what in my half-dazed state. The persistent uneven throbbing of my heart making it impossible to understand anything.

My schoolbag slipped from my shoulders and the spectacles dropped on to the ground from my quivering hand, as despair and anguish consumed the remaining energy I had. Wailing I fell onto the ground beside them clutching and shaking their corpses, "Ma, papa, please... please wake up...."

The heartache added to the fatigue which already numbed my senses, to the point of blackness. I couldn't recall when I passed out from the shock and felt some hands engulfing my body and laying me on the bed. In the dizziness I couldn't figure out who the man was but he held me dearly and I felt him pressing his lips to my forehead.

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13 November 2018,
Saturday

This was the day my parents died in a car accident, eight years ago.

Hanging a fresh garland over the framed photograph of my parents on the living room wall, I wiped my tears as the flashback replayed in my mind. The reminiscences of that afternoon were too vivid to forget. Nothing in the world could efface the loss of the loved ones and especially parents. I shuddered and wept as if it happened yesterday. Every year, this day brought with it the cognizance of loneliness and the battle against our own relatives.