.................
My mother used to say “For losing something you need to have it first. You can’t lose something which you don’t possess in the first place.”
Prologue
My Seventeenth Birthday.....
‘It is a big heap you have, you are lucky that you have such friends.’ Said Eva, my cousin. We were in my room analyzing my birthday presents.
‘Yupp, I guess.’ Said I. If only she knew. I was lucky. Yes but not for having good friends. I was lucky because I had rich classmates.
Yesterday was my Sixteenth birthday and I threw a birthday party to my friends at my house. When I woke up in the morning I was pretty sure that nobody is going to show up but still we were preparing for the most unhappening party this world will ever see. My father was running around doing stuffs. I and Eva were decorating the room in which we were going to host my friends, maybe. Mum was in kitchen preparing snacks and food. By the evening we were all set to receive a bunch of my classmates for my 16th birthday party. Dad had brought the cake and soft drinks. Mom got the snacks and food ready. Eva and I finished decorating the room with balloons, paper strips and Happy Birthday stickers etc. Though I wasn’t expecting anybody, I still did my best to make this part of my house look like a party place. After getting everything set and placing the cake and drinks on the central glass table we started the thing called waiting for guests. Waiting for somebody is not my thing. I loathe waiting for people to show up and that’s why I have never been to airports or railway stations to pickup anybody. Ten minutes passed but nobody came and as I was trying to come up with words to tell my parents that nobody is going to come and that my acquaintances at school are not as friendly as they believe them to be, I heard people talking at my doorsteps and a bell rang. My father went to receive the guests while I tried to look as less surprised as I can at their arrival. So finally they were there. The first person to enter the room was, dad, well obviously, following him was the ‘least expected to arrive person’ on my guest list, Aryan. Following him was ‘The Birds’. The Birds was the title given to a group of three girls who were special friends of Aryan. Ananya, Shrinika and Vrinda. All students of our class knew that ‘the Birds’ were the style icons. They were alone to be credited with the horrendous ideas to turn plain and boring school uniform into fashion week dresses.
‘Happy Birthday funky bones.’ Said Aryan handing me a big present wrapped in a glossy wrapping paper. I can’t believe it. He called me funky bones even today. It’s my birthday dude and I do have a name. Leave it, enough description of my sweet birthday party.
It was the last time I celebrated my birthday.
Chapter 1
Stories become Legends, when told by worthy people; Tales, when told by elderly people; and History, when told by influential people. But what is the importance of a story told by a girl?, who will be ever interested in a story, told by a girl who hasn’t seen the world much, who hasn’t travelled much, who hasn’t read enough and why would anybody be even listening to what I want to say?
But still I want to tell my story, whether anybody pays heed to it or not; whether anybody listens to or not because that story is inside me, growing day by day, cutting into my soul, hurting me, scorching my insides as if some glass pane has broken inside and now I have to deal with its pieces in my gut. My story is revolting to come out of me, and I want to say it out loud, even if only once.
It is not a legend, nether it is a tale or folklore; it is my story. My story is for sure a part of history but only in the same sense in which other passing moments are. I am as common a girl as the girl next door but I can tell you things which the girl next door can’t even imagine in her wildest dreams. I have seen, whether you accept it or not, demons inside angels and beasts inside human skin. I have known worlds of terror which you can’t imagine; I have endured pains which nobody can think a girl’s level of tolerance could bear.
I think it is high time to start but beware reader it is not a fairy tale, nor it is a love romance, you can find a little bit of mystery though (but still there are people present or lived on this planet which are much more mysterious than any novel), and yes remember it’s the story of any girl next door. The reader before proceeding further should keep in mind that life is not as beautiful as they show in those romances, and there is no magic possible which can turn Ellas into Cinderellas in a matter of seconds.
So let’s start; I would like to start by introducing myself. I am.......... but there’s a problem in starting and that’s my introduction, if I told you my first name you will certainly try to ascertain my religion, or probably try to attach me to your society or class. I will not tell you the name of my city because I don’t want you to find me, I don’t want to be found out by anybody; I don’t want any publicity. What I only want is to tell my story and for that an introduction is not needed. It’s the story that matters and not my faith or my citizenship.
But still in this vast wide world we recognise our near and dear ones by using a fixed protocol. We recognise them with the help of a word assigned to their faces, which is made by arranging some alphabets in a fixed order later on pronounced as a single unit to call the person to whom it is affixed to. Name.
The handful of people which we know can be classified in groups based on as to what extent we know them? , like there are people who we can be recognised by their voice only, some are recognised by face while there are some others who we recognise by just the smiles which are mutually exchanged. But our witty ancestors who were too clever for their own good, devised a great method to recognise people. Naming. Nowadays the trend of naming a person goes as far as naming the unborn and unconcieved dream children too. Some scholarly people suggested that we have numbers assigned to prisoners instead of names because naming a person creates a special bond between the name bearer and the one who uses that name to call him/her, but in my opinion it’s not entirely true, for me both the names and the numbers have the same purpose, that is, identification and no kind of affections can be attached to a name unless you don’t love the person whom it is attached to.
Yet in spite of all this we can’t deny the fact that a name is what makes our individuality more individual. So the conclusion is that I need a name to tell my story. I need a set code of alphabets to which you can attach to, cling to and use it to figure out the person you are listening to. Though it not to be my actual name.
So from here on I will start my story and you will get to know one of my names as the story will proceed.
K.Dhanasri or Sri
Chapter 2
EMERGING NAME IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH POETRY
LOSS
I was sixteen, when it came to me
I never tried to, but now I loved to be
It was a feeling, I wanted to devour
It was a proof of our love hour
I was still sixteen, when I loved him last
I was not prepared, but I was happy at last
My body felt ached, but my soul relieved
Those moments of love, were the best I’ve lived
Slowly and gradually, it started to grow
I knew it’s there, moving as she grew
Then came that time, I waited for
It was going to happen, what I waited for
It took an hour, and all was over
I was waiting for a cry, as he came over
But everyone went silent, or I went deaf
But instead of it, s/he was born dead
I was only sixteen, when it came to me
I was a mother but can’t claim to be
His father (my love), sadly looked at me
His look was soothing, though it hurt me
I am twenty one, a grown up now
We are married for two years, he kept his vow
Slowly and gradually, it was again growing
I can feel it inside me, kicking and moving
I will for sure, regain my motherhood
I will for sure, regain all that’s good
But what I lost then, was not only my first child
I also lost then, love for the father of this child.
-K. Dhanasri
- Dhanasri is one of my favourite poets of contemporary English poetry. The poem printed above is one of my personal favourite. I’ve read this poem a thousand times since I first saw it in a collection of poems by contemporary poets but every time I read it, it sends chills through my spine same as the first time I read it, or to put it precisely, understood it. I didn’t get her in the first reading, but as I read it for the second time I knew the agony coming out of her words. I felt those words are on my body and soul while I cried.
When I say K. Dhanasri is my favourite poet, I mean it. She is a true feminist but she is not like other feminists who praise females as if they are goddesses or warriors, she keeps females as realistic in her poems as we are in real life and never tries to present them in a heavenly form. The best thing about her is that she only speaks through her poems. She never gives any interviews or statements nor is she on Twitter. Yes! You heard that right, she is not on twitter or on facebook or on any other social media. She is a recluse writing her poems in her home silently away from the chaos of today’s world but can certainly say she knows life more than anybody else. I don’t know why this poem is so near to my heart but I know that it’s the most beautiful piece of poetry I’ve read. I sometimes try to picture K. Dhanasri. According to Google she is in her early 30s only, but I doubt it, her poems seem to be originated from much more older and mature mind. Before knowing her age I pictured her as a woman in her late fifties with glasses on, clad in a sari, sitting on her table, etching her heart out on paper, in the last years of her life, after seeing all the colours of joy and grief in the long journey life is. Actually she is not that much old but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t seen the colours of joy and grief, I am sure she has seen the harsh realities of life and has grieved for losses beyond imagination and that pain became her poetry and tears became the ink. This poem has been titled as ‘Loss’ by her but I call it as ‘Agony’. Agony which is a resultant of Loss.
I sometimes wonder what does an author/poet thinks while writing. Do they live their wildest dreams in their dystopian worlds or do they show the world about their inner self in their works, which they otherwise hide. Do they build fantasies to escape from their realities or do they express their true feelings in verses and words. The conclusion that I arrived at is, while a person writes a book or a poem s/he actually, at that point of time, reveals what his/her true self is. The more elaborately a person creates a fantasy, the more of the true self oozes out. I am not saying that each and every work of an author should be treated as an autobiography; what I mean is that a tiny part of an author is always embedded in his/her creation, for example, this poem by K. Dhanasri, does not implies that she actually had and lost a child at the age of sixteen but, I am sure that she suffered from a great loss at some point in her life which gave birth to her lost dream child. Her poems, written with different perspectives, give an insight into lives of different people. I would like to recommend her books to people who are looking for a good collection of poems.
-Neha Bohidar
Today I read this article in a National Daily written by Neha Bohidar. The article talked about one of my poems titled ‘loss’, which I believe is one of my best works so far. This girl has truly got the essence of both my poems and the art of writing poems.
- Dhanasri is my nom de plume or pen name. With this pen name I’ve got published two books of poems till date and more are coming up. I am an accomplished writer today and have everything one wants from life. But the story was different 13 years ago.
Chapter 3
Sri
If you go by date then it was my eighteenth birthday but actually it was just another day of my life and I was all alone. Literally. Mom and Dad were not at home because last night my maternal grandmother suddenly got ill and they have to rush immediately to see her, maybe for the last time. I am not being harsh or anything I love my grandmother as every child does but it was the third time she had had a heart stroke and that too in one year. Death is something inevitable and we should not fool ourselves by thinking of ourselves as eternal beings. I was alone on my birthday, no party, no sucking friends. Just me, my cell phone and my books. Books, the ultimate recluse as some people call it, was my only obsession. I read like people breathe, continuously. It felt like I will cease to exist and the world will fall apart if I stopped reading. But at that that moment I was not reading I was thinking about Eva instead. She was late, she told me that she will be at my home at 2 o clock but the clock face was showing 3 and she was not here yet. Eva is the only person I knew and actually can confine in. Sometimes it feels like she is a sister from another mother. Suddenly the doorbell rang. Think of the devil.
‘Who is here in the middle of afternoon? Eva I guess’ I thought aloud. I got down from my bed and went downstairs to open the door. As I opened the door I saw a bouquet of flowers standing on two legs, wait what? Then in a matter of seconds I realised there was a person at my doorstep with a bouquet in one hand and a gift in another. Okay birthday wishers. I really hate them. Really!!! They are people who, for the whole year, behave like you don’t exist but on your birthday they wish you. Beggars begging for goodwill. Well as I had no choice left I asked the person to come inside. Well he was not a stranger. I knew this guy perfectly well. He was the elder son of my father’s best friend. Who in the world told him it’s my birthday? I wondered but the next moment I had my answer. Facebook.
“Hi Sri. Happy Birthday. This is for you.” said he handing me the flowers he brought with a big smile on his face. Roses. If he only knew. I don’t like red roses but anyway I took them and thanked him.
“Come in. Have a seat. Make yourself comfortable.”
“Thanks” he said as he got settled on the sofa. “Yeah this one is also for you” he said giving me a box wrapped in a beautiful wrapping paper. It was a small square box with a ribbon flower stuck to it.
“Thank you kritesh” I put the box on the table. Let me get you something. “What would you like to have?” saying this I turned and started to walk towards kitchen. Cold drink will do I thought.
“Aren’t you parents home” he asked out of nowhere. I spun around and glanced at him for a moment. “No they are not at home. They’re at grandma’s. She got sick last night.’
“Oh I see”
“Yeah.” then I went to the kitchen. As I poured soft drink in glasses I thought of him. I know kritesh from the last two years but we never had a proper conversation. He was a good guy but I didn’t know much about him nor did I want to. When I came back to room he was still sitting seeing around.
“Nice top” he said as I placed the tray on the table.
Oh really. What in the world he is up to? Flattering me. I looked at myself. I was wearing a black tank top with a pair of loose fitting pants and a scarf which I fished from beneath my bed as the doorbell rang. Dude I was in bed before you arrived. Don’t flirt. It won’t work. Not on me. I didn’t say any of this. I didn’t say anything actually. Just smiled at him and sat on a chair opposite him.
“Help yourself. Have some” I said breaking the silence that hung.
“Yeah thanks. Open it” he said pointing to the gift.
“I will do later on. Thanks once again” what’s the hurry.
“No please open it now, I insist” said he picking up a glass.
You insist! As if I do care. Anyway I picked up the wrapped box as he sipped the drink and removed the flower. The box was small but kind of heavy. I tried to make a guess but failed. So I started to remove the wrapping paper and a dusty old box came into view. It looked like it would have been red when it was new. The corners of the box were torn and ragged. I opened the box and I didn’t expect the thing that was inside. A Ring. Not just a ring it had my initials on it. I was confused and confused. Freaking hell. Is he proposing me? Please no. Enough surprises for today. I am already tired of this shit.
“What the hell is this” I nearly shouted at him as I looked up but he was not on the sofa. What happened to him? But the next moment I felt hands on my shoulders. He was standing behind me with his back hunched over me as he looked into the box. “I love you.” He whispered in my left ear “I love you and I can’t bear it anymore. Will you be my girlfriend? Please don’t say no you can have as much time as you want but please don’t say no.”
The problem with the boys is that they leave you no choice. They ask you, for sure, but also have predefined notions and leave you no choice.
“See kritesh, I never thought like this about you nor have I time for all this. I am grateful that you came but now gather your things and please go.” I said standing up and giving him the box back but instead of going he held my hands and tried to slide the ring into my ring finger. I jerked my hand off his and threw the ring away. It fell on the floor making a clanking noise.
“Don’t you understand? I don’t like you; actually I don’t even know you. Just go. Please, leave me alone!!” I shouted and pushed him away.
“Please Sri, try to understand I can’t live without you, I love you” he pulled me and hugged me tightly pushing air out of my lungs. He was tall and muscular and I can’t move and breathe. I struggled and pushed him away and slapped him. He turned towards me, his eyes filled with rage and his face red.
“You bitch” he slapped me on face and I fell backwards on the floor. My head banged on the floor. It hurt for a moment and then everything went black.
Chapter 4
Have you ever been to a psychiatrist? Probably no. Psychiatrists are medical doctors who deal with patients to diagnose, prevent, study and treat mental disorders. Whenever people come to know that somebody is seeing a psychiatrist, they at once declare that the person is mentally retarded and that’s why patients don’t go to psychiatrists for finding solutions. Why am I telling all this? I am bragging all about psychology because I have an appointment with a psychiatrist.
Anita Raj Sharma is one of the best psychiatrists in my city. I reached her office at 4:00 in the evening. It was a big hospital building looking as gloomy as any other hospital. I entered the building and checked in at the reception counter. The girl at the reception told me that I have to wait for half an hour. Well I knew so but still I thanked her and sat down on one of the steel chairs in front of the reception counter. I sat there brooding and looking around. On the wall in front of me there was a big diagram of human brain showing different parts labelled as medulla oblongata, cerebrum, cerebellum etc. Next to it was a plaque saying ‘silence please’. Under that plaque there was a big chart enlisting the symptoms of depression. So I tried to check for any symptoms of depression in me. As I read the first few lines, I was sure that I had depression and that too at a very dangerous state and there was no cure possible but then I realized I was not there for depression. I never had depression. So I tried to divert my mind by looking at the other patients sitting there. Most of the patients looked as normal as any other human beings on the earth. Some were of my age while some were younger. To my far right was a wall which had a glass door with letters frosted on it.
Dr. Anita Raj Sharma
M.D. & D.O.
CONSULTING PSYCHIATRIST
I was just observing the surroundings when the receptionist announced my name. I entered the door. It was a medium sized room, beautifully decorated. Walls of this room were painted a light blue and had sofas of different sizes lying in a haphazard but still beautiful way. On the wall opposite the door there was a beautiful wooden door which said ‘Come In’. I entered the wooden door and found myself standing in a big drawing room type of chamber. The room had a glass table at its centre with sofas, couches and an arm chair around the table. A bookshelf packed with books of various genres including psychology stood against one of the walls. The room was clean and had a thick carpet on the floor. Air in this room was leaden with a sweet smell of roses and lavenders. I sat against the armchair and waited for the doc to arrive
After a long moment she came in through a small door which was at the back of the room. I stood up and we shook hands and then she motioned towards the couch and asked me to sit. So we were there, sitting opposite each other. Moments passed but nobody spoke. Then finally she spoke to me breaking the silence that hung between us.
“Hi, I am Anita Raj a consultant psychiatrist but we are here concerned with you so it’s high time now for you to speak.”
“Hi I am Sri. I am 23 years old and I think I am suffering from hyper sex disorder.”
“That’s my job to decide which disorder you are suffering from. So tell me why you think you are suffering from this particular disorder? And when did all this start?”
“Umm, it’s been a long time since I am facing this issue and I don’t know how to resolve it.”
“Sri, why are you here? I expect a real answer from you”
“I am here because I feel I’ve ruined my life my career and everything. It’s a haunting feeling and I can’t get over it”
“See if you will keep talking this way it won’t make any sense so I think you should start to tell me from the very beginning.”
“It was my eighteenth birthday. I was alone at home, so there was no party or anything. I was in my room reading..........”
“Why were you alone on your birthday? Where were your parents and friends?” she said cutting me short. I knew this was gonna come.
“My parents were at my grandma’s. She was ill and they went to see her. They saw her for the last time.” She nodded and asked me to continue. “So I was alone at home. It was a hot afternoon and I had no plans to leave my house in any case. I was thinking about Eva. She was late. She told me that she will come to my house at 2:00 but she was late and I was.....”
She again did this. Do not interrupt. Anyways. “Who is Eva?”
“Eva is my cousin. My only cousin.” She nodded like saying oh yeah I guessed that right. “I was thinking about Eva and her being late and how she was the only person I actually knew in this world and how she was both my best ever friend and sister. I was so engrossed that I maybe didn’t hear the doorbell when it first rang. There was somebody at the door and I thought think of the devil. I went downstairs and opened the door but the visitor was not Eva, surprisingly kritesh was at my door with a bouquet of flowers. I was both surprised and annoyed at the same time. He was not a person I was expecting and I was not expecting any guests. Anyways I asked him to come in and we sat opposite to each other and made small talk for a while and then I went to fetch something for him. When I came back, he asked me to open a present he brought from me. I opened that small box and as the contents showed up I remembered my gods. There was a ring inside that box. He was proposing. I asked him to leave. I told him that I can’t have a relationship and that I barely knew him. But he was not like other admirers; he was adamant and refused to leave. He grabbed my shoulders and tried to slide that ring through my fingers. I panicked and threw him away as he came back to me I slapped him.” I stopped to breathe. I was wondering if I want to tell her what’s coming. “He was very angry and he slapped me hard. I fell backwards, my head banged on the floor and everything blackened.” I stopped. I was short of breath and was confused about how to tell her. She must think I am a psycho or a lunatic. That day I got the worst birthday gifts a girl could ask for. The thing is he raped me that day.
Chapter 5
KRITESH
“Network marketing is more or less a feedback mechanism; the only difference is that in this system you have to first use the product and then while you are recommending the product to somebody, you have to make sure that he becomes a member of your network. This task seems to be easy but to accomplish a target you have to persuade people to do as you say, it’s like manipulation.......” Our coordinator was speaking but I wasn’t listening anymore. It’s been a week since I came to Lucknow. When I came here I was pretty sure that my work here will not last for more than two days but it’s been seven days and the work is yet to finish. The company I work for had organised a meeting with some clients and I was assigned the task of meeting them. I attended the meeting and all went well and I was about to finish work and leave when my coordinator called me. A series of workshops was to be held here and I was to attend them, for god knows what reasons. Today is the last day of this workshop and tomorrow I have to go and meet my boss here only and then if all went well I’ll leave for home. I promised her that I will take her and kids to the amusement park on Sunday but I got stuck here. I explained to her and she understood but kids, I am sure Riya and Prashant are angry and won’t talk to me when I’ll reach home. I sometimes think about my life so far. The day I met her on that day and we talked awkwardly. Then slowly and gradually we fell in love and got married. Now when I look back its seems as if all this is a dream, impossible to happen in real life but the thing is it’s all real and she is mine for ever.
Impressum
Texte: Sudhansh Sharma
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 20.07.2017
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