How Blue is my Sapphire

How Blue is my Sapphire

_by MCD

Can we call sun and moon as anti-social?! Oh sorry, they don’t live in society like we do. Then where do they live? They live in cosmos. So I think they might be called as ‘Anti-celestial?’. Hey wait did I said that ‘they live in cosmos’?? do they live? Hmm.. I think I am going crazy. I should find a way to sooth my aching mind. The more I hibernate on this bed the more these pointless questions kill my mind. After spending a total 48 hours in a lonely big house and with a sick body that reads 136F on the Fahrenheit thermometer a little headache is something you can expect. I just want to move my ass out from these drapes and throw myself out of this house. So I did. Slowly I stepped towards the bedroom door. As I stepped out of the bedroom I turned and glanced into it. Pillow fell on the floor, drapes curled and pushed to one side of the bed. I turned towards hall and taking one step at a time I moved towards the hall’s main door. I turned it open but the rusted lock jammed. I turned it a little harder, it jammed a little tighter. Just 2 days on liquid diet made me so weak that even my rusty door knob doesn’t care me anymore. It irritated me but I insisted.it. This time I turned it showing all the strength my thin flabby arms got in them. Yeah, it opened this time; No one can win over a stubborn girl like me, not even a sluggish door knob. I expected a shower of warm sunlight waking up the millions and trillions of the cells in my body which are thinking I am still sleeping in bed. But you know what? Life is full of surprising shit. The sun had already set but its bright light still clinging to the horizon and reflecting back to earth.  But warm air gently hugged me as a compensation for the already set sun. I stepped out and sat on the veranda steps. I saw few kids playing some random games on the end of the street. Except that the street is completely inhuman and filthy with dried leaves that fell from old trees on road sides.

Yeah it’s still lonely here but better than those four walls surrounding me, remembering me the memories which I pretend I forgot.  It is just a ghost; the whole house is now a deceased body with no soul. But every corner, every closet, every door, every part of it has a past that that my mom shared with it. She’s the most beautiful women I have never seen in my whole life. Of course we all love our moms. But not all of us have the past like I do which demands to be forgotten. 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. I just shake off all my past except the part that has my mom in it. I am her first daughter. I have witnessed her struggles more than my sister. She was born 4 years after me so she hardly remembers all that which happened. I remember the nights my mom cried silently, I remembered the days my dad bate her and locked her in the room. I remember my mom trying to commit suicide by taking all the pills in our medicines box at once. I remember the day when my dad shouted at my mom and packed a big suitcase with all his belongings and left us but never came back. Even after all that I never really hated my dad; I just didn’t understood why he is hurting mom. He left us forever, I have never worried for that because I have mom and she’s all I ever need. But he also left something terrible for my mom that even my mom didn’t know at that time. My mom went to some local jobs and used to stich cloths at home for money. Some relatives helped us too. I saw my mom beginning to weaken day by day, sometimes she used to suffer with fever for weeks together. She became so weak and so pale that she looked like just a skeleton wrapped in a thin layer of skin. Soon her condition became worse making her unable even to talk, move or do anything.

She became completely bed ridden and my uncle began to take care of us. He used to bring us food daily once. Sister was too young to do anything so I used to take care of mom, change her cloths and clean her bed. It was during my early college days that I came to know that my mom is actually got ill because of AIDS. Till then I didn’t understood why some relatives stop coming to our house and why some tried joining her in an old age home. But they didn’t join her in old age home probably because the old age homes didn’t accept her due to her condition. None of my relatives even tried to take her to government hospital or seek help from any welfare societies and I was too young and completely under the control of my uncle to think of such things. She used to lie on bed, not moving, not talking, just like chairs, tables and other lifeless things in room. It kills me to watch her like that. Every time I tried to talk to her saying about my college, my studies few tears roll down from her eyes. There was the time I just wished her to be dead rather than suffering all that torment.

It was too late by the time I became strong enough to do something by myself. She was in the dead bed counting her last days. She died right when I topped in final exams. She died in the same bedroom I was in before, on the same bed on which I sleep every night. Since then I began to understand the darkness behind the people’s fake smiles. I felt malice in their soothing words. Everyone I met is double faced, selfish scum hiding in the masks called ‘good people’.

After my mom’s death me and my sister where taken to my uncle’s house and he said everyone that he will take care of us. But he lied. Our lives are nothing better than a working maiden in the house. He joined me in a degree college only to grab the public sympathy. But he stopped my sister’s schooling. I tried running away but I failed every time I tried. I somehow made through that hell, got a job and moved back to my mom’s home. But sadly my sister died in that hell only. It was during my degree final year when my sister got jaundice. I am paralyzed to do anything by my uncle. I was helpless to do anything but see her leave her last breath as her soul slip away from her big beautiful eyes into thin air.

 I always imagine her with me. It might be because of my over imagination that sometimes I even see her around, just like now. I can feel her sitting beside me listening to my thoughts silently as she always does in past when she’s alive.

After my sister’s death I have left with not a single reason to live anymore. But I just don’t like the idea of dying because my mom hates it. The day after she tried killing herself she took me into her lap and told me a lot of things which I didn’t really understand at that time. Now I don’t exactly remember what she said except one thing, she said while wiping her eyes: ‘never quit. Never ever. No matter what.’ That is the only reason for me not to commit suicide.

But I have no interest in living. I go to office, do work, avoid shitty people and take my payslip at month’s ending. Comeback home, wander alone inside trying to feel my mom in every possible part of it. It doesn’t hurt me anymore as I have learned to proudly wear my blues as a sapphire in my life’s necklace.

It is my mom’s home, she build it according to her taste, painted it in her liking colours. They are fading now but they are my mom’s memories so they still look brighter to my eyes. But some people say that this house is haunted. They claim to see my mom through the open windows, wandering in the empty locked house. May be that is the main reason no one purchased it when my uncle tried to sell it. May be they are true. I wish they are true. But I have never seen her anytime, not even a single glance. Neighbours say that they hear noises from my house at nights. Even I do sometimes. But I am not sure are they coming from my mind or from this house. I still don’t believe all these gossips but sometimes I did felt my mom still being in this house. Like when I forget to switch off the stove and go back to kitchen to do it but find it already turned off.

And also in some nights when I wake up thirsty in the middle of the night and find a glass full of cool water beside my bed. But I have never seen her. I wish I could.

The evening turned to night with streets becoming dark except for the few still working street lights here and there. So I went inside slowly closing the door behind me, still feeling weak and fatigue. I felt thirsty. I opened the fridge and found empty bottles. I took two pieces of bread and closed it. I went back into my bedroom. The bed is neatly dressed and drapes are folded perfectly. As I sat on the bed I saw a glass beside. I took the glass into my hands and felt the coldness. I took a sip and bitted the bread. I looked around at the empty room and whispered silently:

 ‘I love you mom’.

[written by 'Majety Chakradhar (MCD)']
[image source: https://i.pinimg.com]