Absolutely irritated, I threw my pillow on the ground and looked at the alarm clock. It was 3 am, yet here I was, wide awake. During my conversation with Rudra, I had relived all the emotions and feeling that I had avoided and suppressed since many years. Now that I had relived them, they refused to fade away; the next thing I knew, I had placed a little stool in front of my cupboard and carefully pulled my mother’s diary out.
My Mom had been a very organized person, the types that would write a diary before going to bed every day; sadly I hadn’t inherited that trait from her and was sitting in a room with books, teddies and pillows scattered everywhere as Rudra and I hadn’t finished cleaning up properly.
I gently flipped through the pages of the diary. There wasn’t a day when she had skipped writing. The longest entries were those when she had described her fights with Dad; I had learnt a lot bad words from those entries. ?
I quickly flipped through all the pages and placed my fingers on the last entry she had written; the day before my Dad had chosen his family over her, and left. Having read the diary more than fifty times, I learnt that my Mom had been very ambitious, with a very lively personality and full of joy. I had also noticed that Shivaay and my Dad were surprisingly very similar. Mom had described Dad as a very arrogant and egoistic person who behaved the complete opposite with his family and friends. I guess I had inherited my mother’s taste in this case. However, the difference between us was that I wasn’t going to repeat my mother’s mistake. I wasn’t going to fall in love.
Mom had loved Dad with all her heart while he had chosen his family over her and simply walked away from all the promises he had made. Maasi had told me about how my Mom had shattered. After Dad left, Mom had transformed from a courageous person full of life into a weak and lifeless one. The first time my Mom had smiled after my Dad’s perfidy, was when I was born. Even though I had given Mom a reason to live, I would constantly remind her of Dad and on one such day, when she was driving while thinking about Dad, she met with an accident and left this world.
I hated my Dad for having left my Mom and hated the word ‘Love’ even more. It was ‘Love’ that had ruined my Mom’s life and I wasn’t going to let it do the same to mine.
My Maasi was the only one who stepped forward to take my responsibility and has been selflessly caring for me since then.
I grew up listening to the other children constantly taunting me as a sat alone on parent-teacher meetings since Maasi would be busy working 7 days a week so that she could earn enough to send me to the best schools, colleges and institutes as she was sure Mom would have done the same.
At the age of just 16, I had promised myself that I would never fall in love, face the world boldly and never cry; instead, I would find reasons to laugh and live to the fullest, which is probably how Rudra and I became best friends. Hanging around Rudra was always a blast.
As I started to feel drowsy, I once again closed the dairy and locked not only my cupboard, but the emotions attached with it as well. “When I wake up, I will turn back into Rudra’s best friend and won’t be caring about any stupid emotions.” I ordered myself before closing the bed lamp…
As soon as I heard the alarm ringing away, I cursed myself for not having slept earlier and got ready to go and learn more about business. I took a bit longer than usual to get ready as I was going to go to Rudra’s place after studying.
As soon as I had packed my bag after the lecture, Rudra pulled me towards his car while saying, “Guess what?! I took permission from Shivaay Bhaiya and will be driving today! Its going to be awesome!! And guess what? Bhaiya’s working from home today, so we can even have fun with him!”
While the idea of Shivaay joining us surprisingly made me happy, the fact that Rudra was going to drive horrified me. I loudly prayed “I don’t want to die today, I didn’t eat anything tasty! Please God, save me just this one time!”
Author’s Note:
Here goes the third installment. Thankyou for such an overwhelming response! I’m sorry but i’ll be disappearing for a couple of days.