Love and Life: A Positive Story
By Dr Shaista Irshad, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India
“Mayflies live only for twenty-four hours...”,
Niharika was amazed to read this, and at the same time felt
miserable too, that poor mayflies don’t have enough time to live and feel the
bliss and beauty of this life. Niharika was a writer by profession and had many
books to her credit so far. She wrote poems- mostly romantic and love poems-
and also at times had her scribbling on her close observation of nature. She
had the flair of embellishing her married life with stunning surprises, wrapped
in the sheath of small beautiful romantic packets. She amazed Maani every night
when he stepped inside the home. With her sizzling demeanor, sexy outfit,
enticing makeup and her flower bejeweled shining smooth body; she left him in
awe and amazement, his mouth wide open, and eyes seeking refuge in her,
planting caresses on her neck and bare bosom. Life seemed all happy and
wonderful as Niharika slept thanking God every night. She was so much engrossed
in the depth of her own passion and emotion that she rarely brooded over the
reality that her soulful love was nibbled and consumed with a tinge of
corporeal desire by Maani. For Maani, love was a need- raw need- of the body;
the body that should be fed without bothering about the avalanche of deep
passion that illuminated the fringes of dreams that survived on Niharika’s eye-lashes.
Both of them were deeply and profusely living their definition of love until
the time when Niharika got to know that she was two months pregnant. Whereas on
one side the news confused Niharika, as to whether she should be happy about
this or upset for letting her life change in such an unplanned way; Maani was
on cloud nine. He lifted her in his arms and pecked her on head. He seemed to
have gone mad with unexplained happiness that dripped from his hazel coloured
face and deep black eyes. His reaction was a parody of the scenes from Hindi
movies. Seeing him so euphoric Niharika decided to go with the pregnancy,
though for her, the time was still not ripe enough to go with such a huge
responsibility.
And lo and behold! The life changed in an unprecedented manner.
There were certain complications in her pregnancy and her doctor recommended
her to refrain from being physically intimate with Maani. With the passage of
time she grew groggy and nauseated, not being able to swallow even a morsel
without throwing everything in the next instant. Her vehemence and ardour went
somewhere lurking behind her bulging belly button. She was slowly getting
drifted away from her usual temperament that had kept rabble-rousing her for
throwing regular surprises and romantic dinner arrangements for her hubby so
far.
Niharika needed Maani to wrap his arms around her, to sit
quietly under the moonlit night, letting the mellifluous voice of his breath
fall on the pores of her skin, and ease the creases her incessant vomiting has
caused to protrude on her psyche. She wanted to talk about her baby that did
somersaulting in her tummy; that weird sensation that made her wake up during
difficult sleeping hours, and laced it with intermittent pangs of anxiety. The
more Niharika sought his intimacy, the more Maani was getting busier each day.
Niharika’s body, that satiated and adumbrated his concept of love, was sexually
dormant now and beyond his reach. He stopped looking at her, staying in a
separate room, watching movies and surfing internet. His huge pretentious world
couldn’t accommodate and slake the meager emotional needs of his wife. He
withdrew himself from Niharika’s romantic world, stopped being the muse of all
her poems; the poems that emanated her love for Maani.
Her world unscrambled and kept waning before her eyes till it
was left as dregs in the runnels of her cheeks caused by incessant crying. She
got so familiar with the kitsch salted tears, that she could feel it on her
tongue, even without crying.
There began a long trail of complaints, first in the form of
whimpering, then rows and then grievous howling. Niharika’s all the complaints
and tears fell on deaf ears, the tears that would suffice in irrigating a
wilting flower in the desert, couldn’t move the heart of Maani at all. Love was
being redefined between them and the final product was like a vestigial organ
having no use for the body. Niharika felt so weak, cheated, destroyed and
devastated. She tried to love the child; whose nuzzling movements resonated
with her each breath. She used the language of love for her unborn child,
against the indifference imparted by her hubby’s attitude. She wanted her child
to be a happy child, so she invested her whole being in keeping herself sane
and happy, happiness as hollow she herself was.
Slowly the day came when she was scheduled to deliver her baby
through C- section. Her only hope was to see her child for once and then she
had visualized herself- in her most depressing moments-dying on the operation
table. The operation went well; her doctor managed the complication with great
expertise. She and her baby, both were fine and healthy. It was a baby girl.
Niharika tried to be happy, but things seemed to have changed irreparably for
her. The post- partum depression took its toll on her already suffering psyche
and she gave up with life. She stopped hoping good, stopped writing and forgot
that she was a happy go- going person, a highly romantic girl who felt that
life was little and she had to always live big. She lamented over the life
expectancy of mayflies, and there she was, finding life as a long-stretched
wasteland, having to walk barefoot and not count the blisters on her sole. She
forgot to notice the colour of the sky that delineated the fringes of the
wasteland. A girl of colours she used to be- who couldn’t survive without
colours, who used to reflect the tinge of brightness in her eyes, attires,
flowers and jewels; who couldn’t describe a thing without basking her thoughts
in all kinds of colours. There she stood with ‘gray’ dominating her whole
being.
With the responsibilities of the baby ‘Gul’, she felt she had
learnt to live, which seemed to be more a kind of survival than living. She
couldn’t shred the moments spent in profound agony and pain, of being deserted
when she wanted to be held close by her partner. She mourned her own imaginary
and metaphorical death before her eyes each night. Yes! She planned to kill
herself. She imagined her body hanging from the ceiling fan each night after
she put Gul to sleep. Then she undid the rope that coiled around her neck,
stretched the body on the floor and then wailed at her own death; wailed on her
own behalf and then on the behalf of her parents and finally on behalf of her 6
months old daughter. This became a routine. She started celebrating her
imagined suicide to the extent that she brought herself to believe that she
might not live to see the next day.
After 6 months, Maani was there again to feed on her body, like
parasite comes to the host for survival. Niharika couldn’t conjure up enough
strength to stop him. She senselessly observed him undoing the snap of her
neckline, then slithering his fingers under her sleeves, then down her shoulder
to the waistline. While Maani was busy swallowing the taste of her skin, she quietly
left her body and went on with her everyday imaginary ritual of hanging
herself. She saw Maani’s mechanical hands stripping her clothes from a distance
of a ceiling fan, where she was preparing to tie the noose and slid it around
her neck. Maani, undid her bra hooks and let her huge milking breasts fall on
the cup of his palms. He looked like a hungry voracious animal ready to lick
and slurp and chew and have a feast after months. She already metaphorically
hung herself and felt stifled as each breathe was being sucked out of her
lungs, with the noose tightening around her neck. Maani aggressively moved over
her, stroking, rubbing and crushing her body, a lifeless body supported by dead
soul. When he was done, he sprawled over the bed, panting heavily, while
Niharika was busy lamenting over her own death, silently howling over her dead
body which she herself picked, dragged and stretched beside baby Gul.
Maani’s touch and act of physical gratification provided her
with the last reason to execute her month’s plan of ending her life. She wanted
to convert the imaginary act of suicide into a real one. Next evening, after
putting Gul to sleep, she made all the arrangements to relieve herself of the
agony and endless unbearable pain of 1.6 years. She couldn’t think of anything
except this, that now she wouldn’t have to bear the pain anymore, she wouldn’t
have to expect anything, anymore. As she stepped on the double chairs, kept one
over the other, to reach the fan, she threw her mantilla over the wings of the
fan and started making noose. She slid it easily around her neck and just as
she was about to push the chairs away, she heard Gul crying withall her might.
She was hungry and only depended on her mother to feed her. Niharika came back
to her senses with a jolt, as Gul’s hungry, painful cries went on and on. Who
would feed Gul? Maani? who once into deep sleep, can never be woken up even by
a severe earthquake? How can she leave her own daughter at the mercy of such an
ignorant and careless man? How can she be so selfish to think only about
herself? When she has a reason to live and also the reason to love, why
shouldn’t she? She is not alone- she has her daughter- a reason enough to
devote her entire life fondling and pampering her. She always wanted a daughter.
And now when she has, why has she confined her entire life to only that one
person who never understood her love? Gul’s innocent face- with thick black
curled eyelashes like that of Niharika’s-was an invitation towards life. She
was too small to be left behind without her mother.
She slowly removed the mantilla and went to her daughter and
picked her in her arms. Cuddling her in her bosom she cried and cried and let
her delicate pink lips suck the milk of life from her breast that already
overflowed with motherly love. With each sip and each breath, she felt the pain
of loneliness and depression rinsed out from her heart.
Niharika now knew how to live her life. She understood the God’s
plan that whether for one day or for 100 years, life has to be lived with all
the might and strength. The hope should never die. She has her daughter Gul and
her passion for writing- a reason enough to make her life meaningful. The
replacement of love is only love, a love she had for her daughter and for
herself. She picked a deep red frock and changed her daughters’ frock, that she
had wet.
JURY REMARKS
A well written story and good use of words to describe the plot.
I wish the author all the very best in his/her future endeavours of writing.
The story that came to the Winning score, called 'Love and Life;
A positive story’, was full of surprises. I felt a range of emotions
reading the conflicts and trials as the story unfolded. I was glad the title
included ‘A positive story’ since it did not look to be finding that
direction.. till the final realizations of what the most sustaining life values
were. A well storied narrative of human compromise and unmatched desires that
could only conclude well for one reason!
Joan Wilson, United States ____________________________________
This story “Love and life : a positive story” resonated deeply
with me as a woman and mother. Despite all the myths on natural motherhood, the
bond of love between mother and child has to be worked on. This story is spot
on because it is true therefore universal.
Lucette Bailliet, Australia
____________________________________
“This story takes all of us to the emotional depths of the every
modern day woman’s life. The story exposes the superficiality of life lived by
the majority of the folks irrespective of their gender. Relationship has become
a more or less a business type and the role of the life partner has been
reduced to a mere profit sharing partner. People are treated as just objects
and once the priorities or attraction is lost, life is easily swallowed up by
the chaotic waves. Sadly many lives are silently lost in these fluxes for many
unknown reasons. Sacrifice, understanding and compassion that hold the life
together against any turbulence are the missing elements.”
“Here in this story, Imagining about a suicide over a long
period of time, attempting it and finally getting over it by listening to the
miraculous call of the life and responsibility is an inspiring element in this
story.
“I personally that believe this story can throw some light into
the life of many around who are otherwise generally seen or understood as okay
or good in the eyes of the society.”
This is something really positive… isn’t it?
Gopakumar Radhakrishnan
Founder – Bharat Award for Literature – International, India
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