Series Of Grief By Anoosha Aarzoo
Series Of Grief By Anoosha Aarzoo
“Life Without Meaning”
Romaisa was chatting on the phone. She still remembered the argument she had with her mother this morning. It was flashing before her eyes like a movie. She was smiling while chatting.
“Speak now. What happened in the morning?” Her friend asked after making her laugh really hard.
“Nothing dear, my mother keeps on objecting to everything the whole day. Don’t use a mobile phone, learn to cook, cover yourself with a scarf while going outside. Ugh…. Today, I too snapped and talked back.” She wrote an answer with frustration and full of anger.
“So what, dear. She is your mother. You can ignore these things; why did you snap back?” Her sensible friend tried to make her understand.
“You don’t know. I get depressed about her nonsense stuff.” She was writing with a pout.
“What did you say to her?” Her friend became curious.
“I said, when you also go outside the house wearing a shawl, talk with various men. Don’t you realize these things then? Don’t you remember Allah and Prophet SAW then? You only speak in my case. You are the reason for your husband’s death. Surely, he had an attack because of you. You’ve been disturbing him the same way,” Romaisa wrote and sent it. For a while, her friend didn’t reply. She became worried.
“Can I say one thing?” After a long time, she received a dry reply from her friend.
“Speak.” She pressed the send button.
“Your mother raised you all alone. She protected you in sun and shade. Just so you don’t have to tolerate men’s eyes, she did all the work. She tried her best to reform your life, but alas.You couldn’t improve your own ways.” With an emoji showing disappointment, her friend tried to make her recall something. Her mother’s favors, love, and compassion. But it was as if on the other side heartlessness was at its peak.
“I’ll talk to you later…” Romaisa’s mood soured again. Throwing her phone on the bed angrily, she went out of the room. Going to the kitchen to drink water, she randomly thought of checking on her mother’s room. Romaisa headed towards the room and cracked the door. As the door opened in the middle of the night, the scene in front of her felt like the ground slipped from under Romaisa’s feet.
“Mother……… ” she entered the room screaming madly. In the middle of the room, her mother hung from the ceiling fan. Her mother has used Romaisa’s red dupatta as a rope. Romaisa cried her eyes out, clinging to her mother’s feet.
“Mother….! What have you done? I’ve no one else besides you, mother……” She was screaming until exhausted. While moving her feet, suddenly something from her hand fell on her feet. She bent and picked up that thing with a spinning head. Her consciousness told the unconscious part of her brain that it was a paper. She stood frozen for a few moments. In the blink of an eye, she started sinking into the ground.
My lovely daughter!
I have done nothing wrong in my life. You were little when your father left my side, gone from this world. Ours was a love marriage, that’s why you have neither Paternal grandparents nor maternal grandparents. Your father was allergic to nuts, and the day his heart failed was the same day his friend had invited him for food, and when he came home in the afternoon, he was having difficulty breathing. I was wearing red that day, red for marriage and red for blood. It was his favorite colour. He sat beside me, praised my beauty, held my hand and said: I want my daughter to be like my wife. His eyes teared up, and I was staring at him,then he kissed me on the head and said: she should be honest, loyal and modest like you. After a moment, he clutched his chest in pain, and I recited the Kalma to him.”
Romaisa was crying in hiccups. Her only guardian has left her. She regretted her words. A moment later, she started reading again.
When he left, you became the world to me. My life was for you. I would wear a shawl to take your happiness. I couldn’t wear a gown because when your father died I would start suffocating whenever I wore a gown but I didn’t want to die yet because of you but now you have grown up, you don’t need me now when I die your life will become easy.
Romaisa was sitting like a statue in front of her mother’s dead body. Her mother will not come back, and so her regrets were eternal.
It tears through every limit of pain
One word the dictionary calls it regret
The End………..
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