A road to nowhere..

7. The person she never wanted to be

The album carried the glimpse of the intense emotions and excitement that had hung in the air that day, its shade so clearly evident on each and every face in every click of the camera.

The more my fingers turned the pages of album, the more bewitching the things got.

The newly wed couple being treated as celebrities, every other person trying to have a photograph with them, as if trying to preserve those moments.

And the bride and groom, with a heart warming smile, greeting people, everyone exchanging gleeful looks. It all seemed to be too harmonious.

A small world, depleted of all the worries, carrying in its environment all the tranquility of a perfect life. Two people, uniting, taking the oath to conquer the journey of life together, owning each other's successes and failures, joys and gloom, darker and brighter sides.

It was a beginning to a new phase of life.

"Your father and I, we were like the two ends.

He was the calm, serene person, like the flowing river, with all its grace and awe.

I, on the other hand, was the furious fire. No no, I wasn't a bad person (she laughed). But I certainly was the one that was a bit tough to handle.

We had our own reasons and circumstances as the contributory factors that shaped our personalities. He had suffered the loss of his twin siblings in his youth. I had gone through the trauma of the demise of my mother when I was just twelve.

Life had its own plans. I became the aggressive person who would make a big fuss out of a negligible issue. Maybe it was the attention seeking behaviour my subconscious had paved somehow.

After the death of my mother, I struggled against loneliness for years. I was the only child of my parents. No siblings. No mother. Just me and my father.

And the sad part was, my father, a businessman, would remain on board for days. Sometimes, I would see him after days. On other days, I would be alone in a big house, with the servants working here and there.

I became the stubborn child my parents had never expected me to be. It was a drastic personality change which unfortunately became a permanent one. I was really difficult to deal with during all those years.

Sometimes I wonder how I made my father feel. He was a soft-spoken person, I never saw him shout at anyone, not even on our servants, not even when he was angry at someone or something.

He had lost his wife, had to fulfil the vacuum of mother for her only daughter, the daughter whose mood swings and rage fits would distress him often.

I would often realize that though he said nothing, I was becoming the real challenge on his nerves.
I was not happy with the person I was transforming into, but I could not help myself out either.

It is a terribly stinging feeling, Aziz, not being comfortable in your skin. And living with it day and night is even worse."

There was pain in her tone. She paused for a moment. Probably she got flown away by a tide of memories, drowning in the sea of the moments that had silently slipped out of hands, to become a part of what is called the past.

I sat there, beside her, seeing the life of my parents through her lens. She spoke after an interval.

"When we got married, I found myself surrounded with all the love, respect and attention I had craved for so deeply.

You know Aziz, the children who grow up facing the vacuum of absence of their parents, they start finding life very unfair.

Talking of myself, somehow, deep inside, a belief had rooted inside me, that good things were not meant for me.