Hang On!

Chapter I

The Tragedy

She was surrounded by people crying, weeping and mourning, but her eyes were dry. It was certainly rheumatic, and some part of her heart was aching but the pain was too less in comparison to her anger. She was bewildered at her younger brother's suicide. 

She had known Kunal hasn't been feeling good couple of months now and she was as supportive and understanding about all the plans he cancelled, of the days he refused to step out of his room, of the isolation he sought, and that's how he chose to repay her. No, she was screaming within, "No That's not what I deserve Kunal, why didn't you speak to me. Why didn’t you trust me? ”

Chapter II

The shift

Kunal moved to Mumbai a year and a half ago. While Kanika was already working for two years now. She was a trainer in one of those IT coaching Institutes that offered crash courses in Java, C++ and other computer languages. Her brother Kunal had just finished his engineering and was looking for a job. To the world, he was a confident, fun-loving, charming boy with dreamy eyes, but also something Kanika was afraid, Kunal was too sensitive for the world out there. 

Precisely why she always felt perhaps it was not a great idea for him to have moved to Mumbai- a ruthless city.  

Chapter III

Career Chemistry

The siblings came from a very humble background and their parents had suffered a great deal to make them both engineers. They had seen days where best of the food was served to children while the parents survived on the basics. As grown-ups, they both had a dream to finally provide a life their parents deserved. Only that, Kanika being the firstborn was more mature to handle the pressure of such a dream more gracefully than Kunal.  

When Kanika first moved to the city, she soon understood the fact that this city was anything like her own, this one was ruthless, unforgiving and mean. Here, everything had a price. Friends came at the value of compromises, neighbours at the price of give and take, jobs at the price of morality and politics. 

Nonetheless, she paved her way in, not as an engineer, but as a teacher instead; she settled. Her priorities were right, just that she was now fulfilling them in a different way than her parents originally expected her to. 

Unfortunately, it was something her parents never forgave her for, her mother was often heard complaining in social gatherings how she sacrificed everything "for what? to see her become a teacher? huh, she could have done that without killing us for an engineering degree". Kanika, as graceful and strong as she was, never took these cries of disappointment to her heart. She was happy sending home whatever little money she could manage. No one knew her side of the story, how hard she had tried to be an engineer but despite her first-class degree, she was time and again humiliated at HR rounds of multi-national IT companies for her weak communication skills. In order to sustain, she had to take the offer at an institute, and now she was doing great at it. To answer her mother's complaint, she always concluded by saying "I always wanted to be a teacher, and I am sorry I discovered it only later in my life." She really never bothered to explain, because she knew they won’t understand. 

Chapter IV

Fragile Aspirations

Under the influence of his parents, Kunal too was sort of disappointed in his sister for not being an engineer like brothers and sisters of his friends "Mrunal's sister, you know the one who was your senior in school, she is working in Paris right now as a developer. Mrunal gets to travel now. Why didn't you pursue engineering didi?, you would have gone too, then I would have followed.”

Kanika often chuckled and teased him to divert such subjects "Even if I would have gone to Paris, what makes you think I would have called you there, you dumbass, haven't I told you, you aren't my real brother, you are adopted, we found you in a dustbin outside a temple" to which Kunal would throw a thing or two at her and they would end up fighting cheerfully.

A dream that Kanika couldn’t fulfil was now Kunal’s responsibility. The sense of it was so ingrained that when Kunal first started facing troubles at interviews his confidence easily shattered like a mirror. It wasn’t just the pressure of his own expectations, after all it was also of his parents. 

Chapter V

Beginning of the downfall

6 months since Kunal started looking out and his parents were already becoming restless for a job. “The family will soon have an engineer that it rightly deserves” and “thank God, some children are still considerate of their parents, unlike their siblings who are selfish and mean” kind of snorts and jibes, became common on dinner table whenever the siblings visited home.

What was funny for Kanika, was becoming smothering for Kunal. “Any moment now, he may get the mail. You said it went good right? Your last interview, didn’t you? father would exclaim and Kunal will give a meek nod in return. Kanika knew the nod was killing him, she knew exactly what he was going through, and she wanted to say “Its ok, that’s not the end of it” but there was a facade, and he was unapproachable. 

Chapter VI

The struggle

Each day was becoming a struggle for Kunal. Kanika often found him in bed till late, he would seldom eat the food she left before leaving for the institute. He was closing down and she was feeling it all.

On one or two occasions when she tried talking to him, he was dismissive. He was too proud to let the facade go. “ I am ok Kanu, really, just feeling a little low, mood swing I guess” he would exclaim irritated. Apparently, the feeling of guilt for judging her sister, of not being good enough for a job, and not earning his own money was killing his confidence rapidly. 

She knew he has been feeling low, she just couldn’t have imagined the depths correctly. He was lower than the lows and he was sulking in with each passing day until the day came when hit the bottom and decided to end it all.

Chapter VII

The disappointment

The guests were all gone, and so was Kunal. The parents were left staring blankly at the spot where Kunal’s corp had been laid all this while. As if waiting for the nightmare to end. get over. Hoping for it to get over, as desperately as they once wanted a son, as they once wanted an engineer in the family. None of that was going to come true. 

Kanika was more furious at all of it, she wanted to yell at them for killing him under the burden of their expectations, she wanted to burn the system that judged candidates on their proficiency of a forge in language instead of their merits, but all and all she wanted to kill him once again for quitting. 

She got up abruptly and moved away from the hall majorly to avoid shouting at her parents, who her best judgment knew were not really at fault. She moved into Kunal's room and abruptly started cleaning it. She was trying to exhaust herself though some meaningless action so that she can shut her mind out.

She wasn’t cleaning in a true sense, she was merely throwing away stuff, hiding it behind something so that the room appears clean, probably it was a subconscious move, as her mind on auto-pilot was contemplating how Kunal must have hidden all of it, the sadness within him without letting any of it appear on the surface.

As she dumped his jackets in the attic she found one, that she had gifted him on his last birthday 12 days ago. Holding it close, she smelled it and wailed finally, like a child, like an orphaned child. Sibling love is weird, like all other kinds of love. To be understood and felt just by the people in love. Her parents heard her but were too fragile to get up and console. It was her moment and they decided to let her be, only that they too started sobbing after her.

Chapter VIII

The closure

Kanika felt something in the pocket of the jacket she now held as the last memory of her brother. She took it out, it was a pendant that her parents had gifted Kunal on his birthday, wrapped in paper. As she took a closer look, she found it was a letter. A letter Kunal perhaps wrote for her. Here it was a letter indeed. “Ah! Kunal” she gave out a tired murmur, “you did try to communicate”. There it was, an explanation.

“ Dearest Kanu,

(paper was marred by watermark, that could possibly have been his tears)

I am sorry.

I don’t want to kill myself but somedays I just feel the will of living becoming too frail. This horrible scary suicidal rush empowering me.

I want to run in your arms to escape it. But when I look at you, I feel terribly ashamed of myself for judging you when instead I should have understood your challenges. I feel guilty and I cave within, where these monstrous feeling, stronger and more brutal awaits my return.

I am not weak, trust me, I am fighting this with all my might but like a candle the wax of will and hope is melting away, I am not really sure whether the light is becoming dim and weak or the darkness around me is becoming stronger and engulfing.

Kanu, I know perhaps time will change and I will be successful, full-filling ma papa’s dream but with each passing day, each rejection, each humiliation some part of my heart burns. It burns too fiercely for me to stop. It burns like a forest, I swear Kanu, no amount of self-reassurance, optimism can put it off. It stops only after it burns down everything and then I feel locked in an abyss. 

It takes too much out of me to come out of it and start over. I have done it. Really, I have done it multiple times, mostly for you and then also some of it for ma papa.

But not today Kanu, I am just so tired of this vicious cycle. It never ends. I can’t do it again and again and again Kanu. I am exhausted. I am fed-up and I realise, the only way to end this is to end myself.”

Forgive me Kanu and take care of ma, papa.

Just when she thought the letter was over, she noticed scribbles at the back of it. 

Kanu, I don’t want to do this, I am scared, I want to live but it's eating me alive and I am fed-up……

As if he was trying to emphasis his helplessness. 

“He was depressed”. She exclaimed in a whisper. She sat on the bed, and waited for it to sink. She was seeking answers, but was she ready for them?

She had received her closure, now she had to figure out how to deal with it. As tears welled-up her eyes, she closed her eyes for one last time, clutching the pendant close to her heart. feeling the last bit of him, soaking him in, so that he lives in her- Her younger brother. 

Chapter IX

Hang On

A month later, Kanika was seen wearing Kunal’s locket around her neck, as she sat in the institute as a counsellor, counselling one of her students who had come to her on the pretext off feeling low and sad. 

“Hope is the only thing you need Avika” she said and then zoned out, starring at the wall behind Avika. Almost freaking the poor kid out. For a moment, Avika was forced to turn around and look because it sure felt like her counsellor was looking at something beyond her, but then there was no one except a portrait of a young, 20 something boy, hanging on the wall. Avika realised Kanika was somewhere deep, she thought it best not to disturb her. 

Yes, she was looking at Kunal’s, and the incident that changed her forever, through a rare-view mirror. Her hands, went to her pendant, clutching it, she concluded her moment, she looked back to Avika and said “Don’t lose hope. Don’t be so harsh on yourself. Please, just hang in there, it’s going to be alright. You will see.”