Rekha’s Waiting………………………………………………………..

Rekha’s Waiting………………………………………………………..

Rekha lost her father Mr Goyal when she was 13 years old. It was a suicide as was told to her by her relatives. As she was only a teenager and was not quite aware of the perplexities of life, she didn’t knew what storms were waiting for her.  

She was very close to him as he was the world for her. He was her friend , her guide and her protector. With him, she felt very secured. She thought his sole purpose of coming on the planet was to love her and take care of her. He pampered her with all the amenities of life. “Papa will you be there with me forever?”, was the question she often asked him. “Yes “, my dear ! Always . Her dad would reply.

 After his demise the first day that she went to the school she remembers was the worst day of her life.

It was the morning hustle bustle of the school , where all the children were playing and she stood there like a rock. Yes, she had become lifeless. She didn’t have have a clue of what was life, holding for her. All she had was unbearable  amount of pain in her heart and fears and anxieties.

She had her first panic attack in school.  She was being punished by her Biology teacher and was being asked to keep her hands above her head . As she kept her hands up, she started having miserable pain , she lost her sense of hearing and sight and felt unconscious. After regaining consciousness she felt her heart pounding very fast like a machine and she sweated like water from head to toe. Her hands and neck had become numb and she started feeling dizzy. She wasn’t able to speak. Yes, it was a very deadly one , she almost felt she had a heart attack and would die.

Thankfully, she became normal after sometime but those 15-20 mins were like hell. After this episode she used to have frequent panic attacks that would occur anytime , anywhere, anytime of the day or middle of the night, she would rise in fear and fear took all over her mind and body completely. When shown to a psychiatrist she was being diagnosed with anxiety neurosis coupled with minute depression. That was the only teenage friend she got, a mental disease.

She had 3 other siblings beside her, a mother and an aunt in her family. Her aunt fled away with a person from her office immediately after her father’s demise. The poor mother had to take the responsibility of the 4 children. Her eldest sister Reshma could not bear the father’s loss and was hospitalized as well.

The whole family was ruined. They came to know after a few years  that Mr Goyal had not committed suicide but it was a well planned murder by Mrs Goyal’s family. Her brothers and sisters  had got her husband poisoned  along with her other relatives. They made Mr Goyal drunk and put insecticides in his mouth , along with rat poison forcibly. Mr Goyal had somehow become aware of his murder plan that was being planned in their house for 3 days between Somesh, Ritesh and Jitesh the three brothers of Mr Goyal .  So, somehow in anticipation he had also written a letter regarding the same to be handed over to the police to get the culprits arrested, however the unfortunate incident took place before he could reveal to anyone ….. and when he was in the hospital counting his last breath Mrs Goyal’s brother Somesh took the letter from him and gulped it inside his mouth. So the secret of his death went with him, and the poor children blamed their father of committing suicide , but in the real sense it was a cold blooded murder.

Rekha , her brother Varun two sisters Reshma and Savitri had to spend their young days in very painful situation. Though , their mother Mrs Goyal was working and Reshma also had got the job , the days were without the love and support of the father the head of the house.

This absence led to the straying of the children that started with the eldest sister. As she was a emotional person by heart she was trapped by many men in the lust for her money as she used to pay for the expenses of the men who used to exploit her and leave her heart broken…. throwing her back in depression everytime. Unfortunately, being so disturbed psychologically she used to throw great temper tantrums at home due to which there was an atmosphere of fear and negativity all the time in the house which affected the health, career and mental peace of other members as well. Her brothers and sisters became introverts and cowards and never expressed themselves out in the open. So much so they could never have any relationship with the opposite gender and their physical urges could never be met with which created a lot of hormonal disturbances. Rekha developed cysts in her body as she could never get any satisfaction from opposite gender. Whenever , she did wanted to get into any kind of relationship her family always objected to her choices and the only option offered to her was to get married and do whatever she wanted to with her spouse.

Rekha dint wanted it to happen this ways she wanted freedom to have lovers be it before and after marriage . She did not wanted to be ashamed of herself or her choices to express herself physically but Mrs Goyal was very brutal to her. She always kept on nagging her to get married and get settled. Rekha wanted a free partner not a relationship tied down to maintainance of someone’s house and raising up children, no she was not that stuff as it was suffocating and too monotonous for her.

Due to her panic attacks she consulted a phychiatrist “Dr Burman”- “Hey kid….how are you? You will be alright by taking pills- was the standard statement given by Dr Burman on her visit to his clinic.

While other kids her age made fun of her , her inferiority complex and her worrisome and anxious nature , they labeled her as a “Behenji” and a “Coward” . In our society , people are lawyers for themselves but Judges for others. They give judgements about a person without even realizing what are the reasons behind shaping up of personality. Often it’s the bad family conditions, the stress, constant fears, the taboos and stereotypes which suffocate a person as he or she are not allowed to live their life their way. They are ridiculed for any kind of deviation if they take from the regular herd mentality.

It is the outsiders who will decide the food, type of clothes, type of spouse or partner, career, life choices or even with whom to make physical relationship one has to constantly seek approvals of others and if they want to live a life that they can call “Theirs” than they are labeled as “Rebel”.

Funny isn’t it. “ I will kill myself or you were often the statements made by Reshma in fury. Once she got involved with a married man Fapan Chandi , who was a womanizer. He exploited her in all possible ways he could , even had plans to marry her. He lied to her about his wife that she was crippled . Reshma was an emotional fool and she tried to end her life for him, while she was only a change of taste of a girl for him. As he was very good with trapping women. He was a big source of stress and tension for the whole family specially on Rekha and her brother Varun as constant fights used to take place .

Sometime later, Varun also got trapped into picking up wrong women for himself and got into depression a number of times. “ I love Churiya “ , “ I want to marry Churiya”. Now , who on the earth was Churiya ? Churiya was the cousin sister of Varun and she had lured him once he was in his visit to hometown. Churiya was a very clever and cunning girl and had relationships with many men….while Varun was too naïve to understand the shrewd women’s luring . He was made to believe that she honestly loved him and would marry him. However, their affair was disclosed after some time and Churiya very conveniently admitted that Varun was his brother and they had nothing between them, this left Varun in a deep shock. “Churiya !!!” “ Don’t you love me ? “ Were all those promises fake”?

“Brother , you are my brother and I don’t know what are you talking about” was Churiya’s answer always. This broke Varun and he slit his hand with a knife with blood oozing out of his veins like water. A brave neighbor Mr Nath came for his rescue took the knife from his hands and took him to a hospital. He was saved , luckily but the dark scars on his hands and his mental health still remained.

He was in a complete state of shock and due to his adoration for Churiya wasted 10 years of his life and dint let any girl come in his life. He lost his prime time of getting married and having a family of his own. Later another shrewd girl Vidhi, came into his life who used to take away favours from Varun by emotionally exploiting him. He spend millions on her and after taking good advantage of him, she too went away from his life to live a marital life with husband and kids. “Vidhi! Why are you leaving me?”, When Varun asked her , “ Varun , I have a husband and kids to look after “ was her standard answer.

Varun was always a emotionally weak person and due to this he never could do any job or become independent. On the contrary he used to threaten the family members that he will slit his hands again or cut his throat with blade or would jump off a building and commit suicide. He would shout and abuse his mother and sisters and accused them of not getting him married . He already being at a age of 40 something had crossed the so called typical marriageable age and could not find a good girl to get married.

The only person who could be called “Normal”  in this family was Sunita. She being a hardworking person, a doctor by profession , brought a very good name and pride to the family as she won many awards and scholarships in the field of medicine. She also had a unfortunate incident in the house by getting married to a wrong man who ruined her life. However , she was strong enough to bear all of it.

Rekha also got into many wrong relationships, every relationship breaking her heart, causing her unbearable death like pain ( death would have been better). She could never get a suitable lover for herself (mind you not one but many true lovers). She had a bad experience of her eldest sister Reshma getting married to a rogue. Dhananjay was his name though he was a high govt official , he married Reshma in the greed of getting all her money as she was a govt official herself. He hid all the details of his family and came to know about the situation of Reshma’s family and exploited the situation. He started pestering Reshma for money and used to beat her. He also threatened to kill her. Poor Mrs Goyal kept quite as she dint want her daughters family to be spoilt.

Once it happened that as Dhananjay was abusing Reshma and her mother , the other son – in- law also happened to be present and he too started to behave weird. Mrs Goyal had to literally beg their son in laws to stay on so that her daughters life don’t get ruined. Nature has different plans for everyone. The cattle are supposed to be together in a flock due to their fears and insecurity and the Tiger also has to bear the gift of loneliness , as he is a fearless king of the jungle.

Since Dhananjay was a nightmare and caused so much stress to Reshma that she developed cancer. But as she was strong she fought against him and threw him out of his life and also fought the disease all alone. She being very bold and strong took care of her entire family always being their support. However , her family could not give her back in return as they were “ weaklings”. A good label, right??

All the commotion of marriage , the killing of father, brother’s illness, sister’s fate had psychologically ruined “Rekha”. “ I will write a detailed letter to the cops and will commit suicide “ was the thought that often would cross her mind.

Her mother never understood that emotional and physical needs do not only get fulfilled by spouses but could also be by lovers. She kept on blowing the trumphet of Marriage though she had seen 3 failed marriages in front of her, literally causing people to die. But , she has been one mother who has been so  narrowminded and “ A girl needs a man “ theory, even at cost of life. She could never instill the sense of confidence in her children, a feeling of self reliance that “NO MATTER WHAT , YOU ARE SELF SUFFICIENT AND YOU CAN PULL ON YOUR LIFE ON YOUR OWN STRONG SHOULDERS” “ITS OK TO HAVE PARTNERS AS YOUR BODY IS YOUR DECISION”.

The only thing that matters in the end is “ARE YOU HAPPY?”.

Rekha had to go though all this pain and fears all by herself. There was no one who could understand her. So she stopped trying to make everyone understand . She has converted all her helplessness to her strengths and has set up her own goals and dreams. Yes, she is waiting to live her life all from a start, the teenage her father had left her with. Yes she is waiting for all the fancy things, the adventures, the hobbies, the friends , the boyfriends, the independence that she missed all these years. She is waiting for her father’s killing to be avenged. She is waiting for her brother in laws to be taken to task. She is waiting for all those men and women to be punished which took the most precious years of life of hers and her siblings. She is waiting to prove all the people wrong who said she will never be able to make it. She is waiting to be so strong mentally, physically, emotionally and financially that she doesn’t have to depend on any man / woman/ stereotypes/ social structures or even GODS from the heavens above to come between her dreams and purpose in life. She is waiting for her time to come, after spending more than 30 years of her life in endless tunnel of darkness, she is waiting for her own lion in the heart to wake up. A lion has to pay the price of being alone and desolated yes, but that’s the price that needs to be paid for one’s own expression of freedom. As courage has few leaders but many followers. The journey has to be taken alone without any social approvals as one’s confidence is the best judge.Yes, Rekha is waiting…..waiting for her new self, waiting for her liberation to live a life of her dreams. SHE IS WAITING FOR HER SELF TO BE WITH HER FOR HER FOREVER. YES, this waiting is worth it , isn’t it?