By Arshad Usmani
All of us live with our past. All of us allow it to shape our future. But some of us know how to shrug the past. I think that is who I am...
Although I was not like this always until one day which changed my whole life. That was the day when I decided to die and even my parents would have totally supported it.They are that good and believed in me. And that actually keeps me going because I am not the usual. I am weird. Why not, normal is so boring. It's just about perception or any sane being would have looked at my life to gasp in horror and call it dull, miserable and monotonous. But I feel proud when my teachers made me stand in front of the class and said, "Look, this is the student you all should try to become. I am sure you can never be like her as she is one and only. She is the best, been student of the year every year, always topped the class and every competition and this year awaits wonders in inter school board exams for her."
At noon I sat on my computer to check my results. Server down. It's obvious a rain of alumni must have hit the website like torrents and flooded it. Buzzing on their screens in nervousness like honeybees on a honeycomb. I waited and waited one hour, two and three, then frustrated, skipping lunch, lying on the floor tried to calm myself down. A spider crawled on the wall, I took a jar, caught it and closed the lid. I looked at it struggling inside the glass walls, I liked it and called it Ismat. At last in the evening I had access.
Guess what, I got 496 marks out of 500, that it 99.2 percent, can I believe my eyes. My ambition was to become an All India Topper. Tried all those years to achieve it. And now I nailed it until in the evening...
Suddenly the phones started to rang, congratulations poured in. Nearly two hundred students and their parents arrived over a period of two hours. They brought cakes and gifts and celebrated. Congratulated my mother a lot for making their children pass this jungle of board exams. They rewarded her with money, offered benefits, tariffs and discounts in their respective professional services plus exemption of service charges.
My mother is a premium quality, high yielding maths teacher. She conquers the kitchen with insane measurements. She has a balance scale and a lot of measurement utensils to not get anything go unmeasured into the cauldron. She taught more than 200 students not only maths but science and English too. She was a great help in upliftment of failures and losers to attain a level of art in tricking the examiners, hitting passing marks, self satisfaction and keeping the family honour. And in this endeavor I too was with her working as an advocate on this case against the Central Board of Secondary Education.
These students who ranged from barely passed to passed with good marks, were so boisterous in telling me that they were going to get bikes, smart phones, scooty, sports gears, jewelry, suits, gown, increase in allowances, vacation trips, partnerships in family firms and what not on achieving these marks. It sounded so amazing to hear all this. They asked what I was getting on scoring so high. I said, "I am getting published in tomorrow's newspapers and my interview will be on every news channel. Everywhere in the country my parents will be honoured. That's the only gift I want. Everyone will see me. I'll be famous."
One thing disturbed everyone and me, why no reporters have come to cover my story. Which left me in doubt. Soon everyone was gone. And it was 8 pm. And I asked my mother, "Where is daidoo?"
When I miss my father real bad, I call him 'Daidoo' with numb in eyes and lump in throat. Thinking he would hear it in his heart.
After one hour, he returned, asked if I was missing him and went in the kitchen in a hurry. I followed him and tried to peep from the door ajar.
He kissed mother, took in his arms and held her tight. He said sadly, "They said Muntasha's marks are not the highest. There is some girl Gayatri Devi who got 497, just one mark more than our daughter. Gayatri will be the breaking news tomorrow, star of India, a watchman's daughter. She will get big pictures with her family on the front page."
"And what about our daughter? Muntasha has done equal hard work, harder than her, than anyone!"
"They will just mention her name in the corner with other two boys who got third rank. They said, nobody cares about second or third rank. Everyone only asks about the firsts like Neil Armstrong or Tenzing Norgay."
That was a serious blow. All this for nothing. I was second. Nobody cared to know about me. I left to my room crying inwardly. Such pain.
I was lying on the floor with my results in my hand and a guilt. I couldn't have tried any more harder. How could she get one mark more? What extra did she do?
My mother started explaining me the doctrine of determinism and how we have no control over fate. This realization of me being predestined is so self- refuting that maybe my mother is playing mind- tricks to brain- wash me to accept the harsh realities of life and live with it, abide, bear and endure silently.
"I got 496 marks out of 500," I yelled at my mother, "that is 99.2 percent. And I am still here suicidal. Because there is some Gayatri Devi who got 497 marks out of 500 which is just one mark more than me. Now every newspaper and news channel will cover her and her family and everything but not me. Why should they? I have not done well. Can you believe that? Just a one line mention of me and those who are on third place. And that too in the corner. Such insult.
"I always lived like a saint. Sacrificing all. Mugging and revising day and night all my life. Topped every class since nursery. And pulled my efforts to the extreme for board exams only to be defeated by one mark. I always dreamed to be an All India topper. But this Gayatri, shattered it. With one mark, the bitch banged it."
"Look darling," my father consoled me, "Don't vex in despair on the shine and brilliance of someone else's diamond but rejoice in how blue is your own sapphire."
My father thinks like me, understands me while my mother is more caring and always at what's right for me. Daidoo always admires my beauty and style and forces me to live cool like him while mamma regards me sensible and intelligent and forces me lady like manners and Madame Curie. I love them both so much. It's what they did to brought me into this world and raise against all odds.
My father Salim met my mother Arina when he attended a Parents Teachers Meeting as his little sister's guardian. He was just twenty years old then.
His sister's class teacher Miss Arina Zaidi explained the good behaviour of his sister to him. It seemed that Miss Arina was sitting there for hours tackling parents. Her mouth had become dry and her lips frothed with thick consistent saliva forming webs between the stalagmite and stalactites of her mouth.
Her lips were of the shape of amoeba, regurgitating across the face with slimy sticky but dry secretions moving inside of its wall which lined a great black vacuole void. Out of the vacuole void came the voice not meant for understanding the meaning but to enjoy the feelings, their hum. And so he did. And so she chimed more. Those lips like a mill, those voices like a product and he as a consumer saw potential and future hence decided as a businessman to own it. But first he will had to hoard it so that no one could lay their hands on it.
He gifted her a Banarasi Saree in next meeting, and she thought it was from a family who cared for their children's teachers. She liked it. Next time it was a box of luxury chocolates and she became doubtful but let it go. After that came a wrist watch and she hesitated. Then it was gold jewellery and she thought he was really serious. She wanted to meet and explain him. Dinner. They ate silently.
He started, "I want to be with you forever."
"I am 31 years old and a shia muslim, it's impossible, with you being a Sunni muslim and..."
"It's love."
They met whenever they got time. Soon they decided to make it sacred and legal. Their parents refused, totally. They had huge difference, Salim was 11 years younger than Arina. And Salim was a Sunni muslim while Arina a Shia. People say shia and sunni might marry a hindu but never each other.
One day Salim walked in his father's workshop and standing in front of him, took a pair of small scissors and stabbed it two times in his neck at two places. In hospital his parents agreed to marry him with Arina. He definitely knew where to stab without killing himself.
Meanwhile Arina, after eating right amount of mosquito coil mixed with cake, twice she choked on ventilator as her parents were stubborn. They disowned her.
After marriage they build a home of their own away from the cruel families and society and started a struggling life. My mother continued her teaching job and father joined a bank. Their whole clan looked down on them and disgraced.
Everything was like a fairy tale until Salim met met his distant cousin Ismat, same age, colleagues and with same conviction and views.
Once he was in her apartment. After a warm coversation they kind of got lost in each other. He was hesitant, she was shy but eager and not wanted him to deter. He tried to get in with remorse and second thoughts and she cried in pain, excruciating but still feigned joyous first time over zeal. It had to happen so it happened. After the passion filled intimate moment, Ismat thought it was love.
It went on, became more frequent and as an obvious thing evoked suspicion Arina who became vigilante to soon find them kissing each other and groping at a party in a corner of course where no one can see them. But she a brave wife. She did not fret and left. Such was the extent and purity of her love for Salim. And such was her trust on him.
Next day Arina asked Salim that she wants a baby and let's do it today she told him.
"You sure about this baby" he hesitated "Because you will have to leave your job and everything. So much pain, effort and your poor health. You are so weak."
"Yes I will die, even then I want it. It's the right time. Why you married me?"
Six times he masturbated until the evening when tried for seven but failed and felt happy. At night Arina was ready with cosmetic power and perfumes. Dressed in a hot teacher's attire according to his favourite fantasy she tried to teach him a lesson. Dominating she made every move but to no avail. All he felt was shame and guilt.
"No baby," she tried to cheer him up, "we can try next day or some other day. Don't worry. It happens sometimes. It may be God's will."
My father really cried that night on deceiving my mother for my aunt Ismat. Next day he told her his wrongdoings with Ismat, the teenage enchantress.
"Why, she is a witch, with black magic and all things. It's no your fault. Under a spell you were, hypnotised, against your will. You only love me, I know. Our love is pure. We died for each other."
And then after nine months I was born.
I opened the lid of the jar and let Ismat crawl on my hand. It moved fast then stopped. It liked me or tried to figure out the situation. My life was like this spider, always in a corner surrounded by my own web created by me and be cut aloof. When my friends were in parties, movies and shopping, I was surrounded by books, reading and solving questions, and buying sample papers. When young girls were more susceptible to sexual objectification, as they were often taught that power, respect and wealth could be derived from one's outward appearance, I was susceptible to scholastic achievement pressures as my mamma taught me sensibility, intellect, brilliancy, and high grades. I never truly enjoyed my life. Why I cannot become a person like my father risking life, adventure, seizing the moment, never let go and shrugging the past. Double harrowing is the fact that I sacrificed so much to achieve this feat yet not achieved it.
I would have to begin again. Whoever wishes to be born anew must prepare to die.
At 10 O'clock night I took an auto rickshaw and went to the bridge. On the railing I looked down at the river, always flowing, never-ending. I called my parents from my cell phone and then I called police. I told them that I am going to die because I am second with just one mark, I will not be in the news, no recognition.
I tried to see my reflection in the cold and dark water but couldn't see it. I jumped to find it and collided on my reflection, pierced it and lost.
Next morning, when I opened my eyes, in a hospital, lying on bed with stiff neck and plaster in one hand, daidoo and mamma on either side of me, I felt relieved not being in heaven.
After what I went through last night my father instead of making me feel ashamed and guilty decided to cheer me up. He put before me various morning newspapers which he just bought. I was everywhere in them, "Girl Got 99.2% Tried Committing Suicide Saved by Fishermen," etc. Interviews on TV, paparazzi to follow me, and I was to be in news for weeks.
"God bless those two fishermen" mamma gasped, "Who were fishing at the right moment in the river with a boat and a large fishing net sprawled through the water."
I smiled as I remembered how I bribed those two fishermen for this trickery before jumping in the river.
I took various newspapers in my hand and saw my big pictures and then Gayatri's small picture in the corner.
By looking at them then I realized the true meaning of life. How much I want to tell that topper girl what my father always told me when he saw me sitting at my desk, studying for exams the whole syllabus again and again for nine to ten hours at a stretch daily. I never listened to him, he always quoted Franz Kafka:
“It is, after all, not necessary to fly right into the middle of the sun, but it is necessary to crawl to a clean little spot on earth where the sun sometimes shines and one can warm oneself a li
ttle.”
---Franz Kafka
-----End-----
By Arshad Usmani
