Nurturing Scars

1

Stuck at the  end of a tunnel with two more people and yet, he was the only one struggling for his one last breath of life, while the other stood there, unaffected and calm, in complete confutation to how he felt there.

Suffocated and struggling!

That's how Aylan felt sitting beside his parents. Stoic, and broken as his eager ears turned absolutely deaf listening to what they had to say.

"Aylan. Sun rahe hai nah aap!  You are my son. MY SON. Nothing matters except this. Yehi sachai hai. Only this is the truth" Samad Ali Baig, muttered, patting his son's back. Aylan Samad Baig and he would always be his son, despite the root where he came from! Samad Ali Baig surmised.

Aylan looked up to watch the man who had been the best father he could ask for growing up all this while.

40 years of his life and he had known Samad Jaffri Baig as his father. Only to come across the brutal truth of his life. The ruthless truth. The truth that can kill a man with a mere blink of an eye.

" Bacha. Kuch toh bole. "  That wayward cry from  the man who had been nothing but the absolute best father one could even think of.

Yet, Aylan felt like his world just turned upside down with the reality that felt nothing less than an ambush.

" Aylan say something. " It was the soft voice from his mother Faiza. The little petite woman he loved more than anything in this world. Hasn't she faced enough to not to be loved incessantly?

And the contemplation brought back the stiffening demeanour back.

Armaan Waali; and the ghost of his deeds still kept destroying lives!

And Aylan, the delusional Aylan, he thought he was a Baig. Oh what a fool he have been !

He was Aylan Armaan Waali. The man who tortured his mother to the point that she had secretly wished for her own death.

And that was not all. Armaan Waali was a rapist. A bloody rapist! How was he to grasp that context! Insignificant that the sinister was a forgotten face and now was a history, yet, his deeds seemed to have surpassed the borders of hell and sneak back to the human world to destroy lives again.

Armaan Waali, his biological father Armaan Waali, the man who had submerged his sperms within his mother to shape him in her womb and that Armaan Waali was a demon to have been tormenting not only his mother but also Shehnaaz Ali Haider!

The woman who had become nothing less than his mother alike in all these years that they have been visiting their place at every ocassions possible. Their extended family she and Sidharth Sridhar had become to Aylan and his family, he couldn't fathom the purgatory he had brought upon these two women of his life! Specially Shehnaaz Ali Haider!

Shehnaaz Ali Haider, the mother of the woman he was betrothed to get married next month!

Could life be more cruel than this!

" Why! " Was all he could ask for. Why had they kept this truth hidden for so many years!

" We didn't want to hurt you son. " His father said. Voice laden with remorse and heartrending apologies.

" He had been nothing less than your father beta. We didn't want to upset you. Give you this unnecessary tension over things inconsequential now. It's been so long Aylan. " Faiza said to his grieving son. Aylan sat there like a rock. Devoid of any feelings. He felt spent.

" That man is dead son. He's gone! Don't let him do the destruction anymore." Samad tried to reason.

Dead! If only Armaan Waali could be just dead and gone. Even dead and decayed he kept on with his ruination over their families! Faiza wondered.