So
- The baby pigeon finally flew away and didn’t come back, maybe it didn’t survive the flight, or maybe he liked some place better and found someone (maybe’s are safe).
- The stray black cat that was around since two years disappeared on me, I saw her limping away painfully on my neighbor’s wall one day and after a few days, I saw a carcass on the dump that looked like hers. The housekeeper suspected that the rowdy neighborhood boys might have injured it by pelting stones at her.
- The friendly kittens that were living ion the campus for a while were driven away, as the ‘international conference’ was taking place and the directors didn’t want the guests to see the cats or have them begging for food.
Us humans are very pompous, we naturally assume that all the space around us is ours. We have a right to it, we can drive others out. I was telling you guys how my parents didn’t like the baby pigeon around and yet didn’t have the heart to drive it away, as it was very weak. Yet its mates didn’t abandon it; they kept on coming, feeding it, keeping company, until he flew away… So last Sunday, when I was finally trying to enjoy my cup of tea and trying to curb down the other irritations of my life, the cell phone ranged mysteriously. It was the newly married friend of mine, calling from abroad, crying and babbling profusely. Saying things like…”sometimes, it’s bad, very bad, they abused yesterday, called me names….i cant take it anymore….i have lost my own life…” I couldn’t hear much, couldn’t say much, I cried myself, until she ran out of credit after a few minutes and the call got dropped. I then went out bought a calling card and called her back, she picked up and said that she couldn’t talk and it wasn’t the right time. I learnt on Monday that they threw her out. Her husband and the first wife – threw her out on the street, with only the clothes on her back, in the cold streets at night, in a strange country and city, where there was no one where she could go, besides a distant aunt, and the motel….with no money. They were taking all the money she was earning from her. She was giving it to them, so that their relationship might stay intact, she took care of the pregnant first wife, while she was a ‘new’ bride herself. She was told on the first night that he wouldn’t have children from her, but would continue to have more children from the 1st wife, so they can get more state welfare. They used to get intimate in front her, deliberately keep the door open, so that she could see. Covent on the furniture, she bought from her own money. Fly back on the plane ticket she bought, to parade in front of her biradri in a family wedding, as the dammad, while she feigned to look happy in all the jewelry and clothes she bought for herself. And people gawked on here at the work place and in her family over her luck, to have found such a rich businessman and apparently not so old. Qismaat khul gaiii, itnaey saloon baad, they used to say. And we used to laugh and cry on hearing that. And now they have thrown her out, cursing her, calling her names. To the person, from who never uttered a mean word, a cuss in her life. One who compromised after so much time, and after so much heartache, to be left on the juncture again? The hi-fi prestigious doctorate degree from oxford didn’t help. The illustrious trips to one of the best instates from around the world doesn’t help. Yet her ability to earn money and cook delicious meals and stay quite did help – them a lot. Her family here, and her husband there. Yet all these professional women end up making sacrifices in their life, because they want a name, and an identity, the married tag. Because the identity they forge in the world, thorough their career, isn’t enough. They are looked down upon, they are talked behind their back….chhhchhhc…something has to be seriouslty wrong in her, they say. What solace can you offer to such a person? Tell them about karma. About fairness and judgment. Hasn’t been she test enough? You lose on words, you can just cry. Sometimes even the ability to pray drowns in that numbness. What betterment we indeed wait for and look forward to in life? When there is nothing in the here and now for you, what to look forward to? So matter how much faith you try to have in your own life, you get affected by the pain of those close to you, and you start to get buried in the debris of their problems to. You think, it could be me, or maybe a few years down the road it could be you.
And if that wasn’t enough, getting to know that another friend, who has moved to a different city without her family for her new job and is living with her relatives until her own housing problems get sorted out, is being hit on by her aging paternal uncle, was amusing, very very amusing. The analogy maal-e-ghanimaat sticks….
In personal life, all the roses of hopes and possibilities turn into thorns and stick in my palms. The past, it still haunts me, I think of those names, of those associations, that are dead and not dead.
Work-related deadlines and squabbles are keeping on my toes…the squabbles that is, the real and hectic work is going to start from Monday. I write tones of emails everyday just to keep myself safe, to remind people of my TORs, their expectations, and ground realities. I haven’t breathed openly and freely in a long time, I am always in a rush. I begin hating my job and my life and then I look at the problems in my friends’ lives, their lack of being under a secure roof, of not having fathers around. i think we should learn to be content with whatever we have, even for the given set of problems, because they rutrn into other worst things, not better……
So now I would be off to work for around 2 weeks on that mammoth assignment of mine, and would then have to endure all the attacks these vultures are going to make. So prayers are needed.
