The Sorrow Of Ignorance.

Shivani

I may have been small but I knew that night when he said everything will be alright, nothing will happen; it was a lie, a lie coming from the corner of his eye.
Years later I knew all about men, almost all and never a lie that could go undetected by me. But it was my first love that haunted me the most and hurt me the most.

Lies - what are they to us, why do they hurt us?

It was different for girls, in my house or anyone that I knew. Protected all the time and taken where the grandparents and parents wanted to. There were places where I wanted to go. My dreams were growing each day. At first whenever I asked them they would tell me something or other which I thought would be the truth. Somewhere the restlessness in me provoked me to think about their stories and I knew in an instant all I was told was a lie.
What did I want, what did I dream off?
Just a boat ride across the river, I was told there was a deep forest there and some old empty houses, I had dreams of visiting them.

Dreams, I knew what it was to feel happy because of them, I knew what was joy because of them, I understood what mornings were made of because of them, Dreams.

I slept under  sky lit stars; me with a friend Shreya and we watched the stars, fireflies, crickets and barren trees. The terrace was all mine just like my dreams and Shreya would love to spend the nights with me.
We had stories to tell to each other and then see where would our dreams carried them till morning. Then while we walked to the school we would continue from where we had left them. We both knew about a prince, a prince that would carry us all around the earth. Once as the moon made every corner of my terrace holy, I felt an urge in me and asked Shreya how much would it cost us if we ran away from here, took the local bus and the train to where ever we wanted and come back only when we had finished all the money. She looked deep in to that sky that hid all the stars that night and said as much as the stars that I could see and not see.

Fireflies, they taught us how to stand still. We bought jars and collected them each night. The taught us to stand still, the still we were, the more they were around us. Such a joy holding one in the palm and such a joy to hold a dream as the eyes opened slowly in the dawn.

My class housed some sixty-five of us and in front of me sat Nitya. For reasons not known to me I used to see him sometimes in my dreams in that deep forest. I use to smile at him and at other times laugh only to shy him away. He used to call me crazy and it sent me to seventh heaven.

My thirteenth year was lucky for baba, he said that himself, and today there were so many people in the house celebrating baba becoming the sarpanch of the village. I felt like a princess and then I saw Nitya entering with his family, he saw me and turned away his eyes, I knew then he was my prince who would take me to my deep forests. I called Shreya and whispered tonight, she chuckled and this made Nitya go red in face.
I wrote a note about my dream and forest and how would I travel tonight with Nitya and asked Shreya to pass it on to him. She made him come to the corner of the veranda and gave him the note, the note was like a cobra bite to him, and he looked poisoned blue, poor boy.

Boys are weak, men weaker, this I came to know later in my life.

Stolen glances are never exchanged by friends, I was naive then but there was Shreya and Nitya exchanging those glances, I thought he was scared and Shreya amused and I was thrilled to have my dream fulfilled.
It was quiet and the night dark, a moonless dark night. There was a silly wind, very difficult to keep track off. The whole village was drunk, asleep, some by my baba's celebration liquor, some by this wind.
Shreya made him come, I was thrilled and now I had this desire to go alone with him. It was complicated and I could not get the hang of this crude feeling of asking Shreya to leave me and Nitya alone. Partly also because seeing them holding hands and running to me. Anyways I was in the middle of an amazing freedom, freedom from the land of people to the land of flowers, trees and nature. My dream was now happening and the nature would now be looking at me.

The center and the circumference was today's topic that  my maths teacher hinted at and then my physics teacher later lectured about poles and magnetism. Both of these made sense to me whenever I looked at Nitya. Interesting, yes school was becoming more interesting.
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Shreya

What I saw, touched and smelled would be the reality thought Shreya one night, the only reality, how could there be any other reality other to what I could not touch and see or smell. Even fear came to me after I had touched or saw. I am affected too by these senses I thought loud.
Shivani was quiet tonight may be not even listening to my thoughts.She used to talk to me about her mother. Questions were burning deep inside her mother as much they were in her.
I could not understand them, I only use to think about my pain of missing my father, who never came back from the war. My mother still used to wait for letters. she use to say someone has to tend the pain, it keeps the warmth in the sleep intact.
I had no idea when I saw Nitya or he saw me. I still remember me sitting besides the river soaking my legs in the cool water. It was hot that afternoon, may be temperatures about 40 degrees centigrade, not a soul for a mile each way. There was a cool wave flowing inside my body and I felt very quiet and comfortable. Shivani was very talkative and chirpy and I loved that, but today this solitude meant a lot to me.
Plop, a stone dropped in front of me, I was jolted as if I was in some deep sleep, I turned around and saw no one, I thought it was Shivani playing pranks with me. I thought I wouldn't pay attention and she would come out on her own.
I closed my eyes and went back to my journey. Then there was music or what seemed music to my ears, a hello so soft that would have melted me. I opened my eyes to see Nitya, he said he was tired and wanted to sit and was looking for some shade by the river to cool off when he saw me. At first he said he thought I was in some trance or had a heat stroke, so he decided to throw a stone. He asked if he could sit besides me for sometime and promised that he wouldn't speak until spoken too. I smiled back and then suddenly burst out crying. Poor Nitya he sat the whole afternoon holding my head on his shoulder, quietly, very quietly.
You are a daughter of a brave soldier Shivani's baba would tell me proudly 'and I remember him to be very ingenious in school days, you have gone on him, I see you and I see him.'
I use to stand there motionless the minute Shivan's baba sang this song in front of me, first couple of times it bought tears in my eyes, but now the words weren't even registering, I just waited him to finish and hand me a ten rupee note and say go buy some eclairs. I never bought them and I had now 23 of these ten rupee notes. I also hated death and killing and wasn't sure why dada went to fight or why he became a soldier. I wasn't like him at all. Sometimes I hated him too when I use to see my mother searching drawers late at night.
I wasn't sure if Nitya would agree to come with us to forests that night, he held my hands and they were burning, I laughed and he jerked my hand loose, I held them again and shouted run.
There was Shivani waiting for us, looking pensive now, the color of her skin gone pale.
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Nitya

I really hated the mornings, amma would be shouting her lungs out to wake me up. I knew like most days I had unfinished homework in my school bag. Amma was a very simple woman and me telling her anything was truth. I hated this though, I wanted her to suspect me once but she wasn't even pretending to be fooled. Baba and I never spent any time together, we use to sleep by the time he came home. Shreya always slept when I spoke about me, today too, her head as always on my shoulder and me happy to sit still.
I liked Shreya for completing my homework always or the silence I came in to with her.
Like her I missed my father too and my father was just a room away from me. Baba looked very energetic and amma would tell me his stories of success in far lands. He use to visit new lands and be away from us for days together, what she could never answer was why was he working hard.

I hated working hard for anything, if I could learn something then it should be easy for me and not hard.

My amma use to laugh and say 'please never say this in front of your Baba that you will never work hard' and I use to explain why I wouldn't work hard and she would tap my head and ask me to shut up. I never wanted to work hard, I felt sick in my stomach, I would have rather found an easy way to do things or not do at all. 

'Nitya'; 'yes,present',  my calling would trigger so much anger in Mrs. Mathur, our maths teacher, surprised me, only me in class. I had been absent on and off and now was being taken to the Principal's office. My amma had a lot of explaining to do to my principal, and there in that dark dingy room with just a small table fan I was going crazy and angry. I knew when baba came back this time from his visit I would be smacked blue.
I could never stand the giggles of Shivani, but she was my only way out of being beaten blue and black. My baba used spend a lot of time smoking with her father and playing chess, so if she could somehow get me off hook. I was scared of baba and more scared of her, she was a creep. I wish I could run away, just go away to some place where I would never be found. I hated everybody, ok, except Shreya .

'One charminar'; babu stretched his hand to the top corner of cigarette stack and removed one, looking at me at all the time, I couldn't hold his stare and whispered to David, 'sure no one would come by?'
 'No, come'.
 David knew all about cigarettes, he had seen his father smoking and learnt it all by himself. Today he was going to teach me. 'Slowly, just as you breathe, very slowly and as normally','aise' and I inhaled only to drop down coughing. I guess even this seemed hard. I tried again, this time ever so slowly and it remained in my mouth, burning my tongue and throat. I wondered why would baba smoke this all day long. That night was horrible, I spent the night with my hands tied to the leg of my bed, I had hugged amma when I returned home from my cigarette exercise. She threw me aside and started cursing me, out came the cane and the wild swings of it right across my back. She felt guilty of not taking care of me in baba's absence and how would she face him when he came back home. How did she come to know about my smoking, all of my thirteen asked all that night to me; how old could I be as she repeated that I was old and such a good for nothing.

What had my age to do with me being good for nothing?

David was strange, strange to me then, I never knew I would be carrying this scar with me too. He wanted to count my ribs and see the smoke going down my chest. I was skinny and had been ashamed of my structure. That day in the old stone temple where we sat and smoked, he slowly removed my shirt and moved his fingers on my ribs.
I must have died that night, I could hear baba laughing and calling out my name, slowly I opened my eyes, only to feel my hands swollen, still tied to the bed, my bach aching.
'Nitya, Nitya' amma called, she had forgotten all about me being tied up. I struggled my wrists of the ropes which had loosened up a bit. I heard baba laughing away and calling out my name. 'Nitya, get ready soon, we have to go to Shymalal's house, he is our new sarpanch', was this good news, no , for me it was bad news, it meant Shivani would now act more tough with me. We reached there and here she was looking straight at me. I have had a terrible night, what more could get worse for me. There she was, Shreya, and she walking straight towards me, she pulled out  my hand and placed a note in my hand. What more worse could happen is the question I had asked sometime back, but this note drained my blood, I felt the ground trembling. I whispered 'tonight?'.
Later in the evening I met David and showed him the note, he smiled and said he would take care of everything.

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David

'Do that again and you are dead'. One more kick in my stomach.
I lowered my eyes, one to seven was unfair, the floor below my eyes had my blood and my cheeks soaked whatever my lips and nose leaked  but I felt no pain after the first few minutes, no pain.

PAIN - what if the hunger in you died - would the pain still stay.

Undisputed all the super heroes on my wall fought. One to fifty and more. I would one day do that. I would take on fifty and jump and kick, one day.
David would rule just as these ruled, I shouted loud in my room.
What stood between me and my dream was - PAIN.

I was always on the run, from school to house to other hide outs of mine. Father was a police constable and knew almost all. His commitment to his work was recognized by everyone. He was also my ideal in some way and somehow I knew because of his thoughts that pain never went all the way, somewhere it stopped. I felt free to cry and shout and then it wasn't there.
I could think myself out and father really liked my abilities, always pushing me and inspiring me. His talk of spirit and god was always most interesting. I used to sit and listen to him for hours together. His smoke filling my heart and my spirits too. Saturdays was special, he used to finish one full bottle of whisky, almost full, he knew it too, I had sneaked a few sips of it. He had ears in me and that would be a high for him.