Pocket full of stars

14 [RAHI]

The answer to my questions was with the elders—especially my parents whose existence to me was dubious.

Mother has left the world and I don't know the whereabouts of my father.

He was supposed to be dead.

But I distinctly remember seeing him in a supermarket once.

You don't forget the face of the person you hate.

The voice, that crooked smile, the furrow of the brows in anger, the gravity of the face, even the hardness of the palm that held your hand—everything remains registered in your five senses and you recall it over and over until you start hating the remembrances.

My father didn't have a prominent presence in my life.

He was there for the first six years and after that, he went AWOL after leaving me stranded in the middle of the road on a stormy night.

It amazes me how my parents were so eager to make me leave the world.

They tried everything in their capability to erase the mistake.

If there was an eraser that could erase people, then they would have been the first in line to buy it and obliterate me leaving no crumbs behind.

Such hatred towards the one they have brought into the world; they are the epitome of impulsive people who later regret their actions and go on deleting their activities off their social accounts and other devices.

But I was not an effaceable option.

I came into this world and I have to stay until my Creator decides that it is time for me to leave.

Until then, they had to tolerate me every second of their life—such an unfathomable sorrow.

I never held it against them for hating me so much.

Everything happens for a reason.

I simply wanted to know the crime that led to my punishment.

Maybe, that's why, as an answer, I saw my father standing before me, while I was leaving for the office one Thursday.

The familiar face, the familiar built but much older than I remembered.

It was hard to recognize him at first but I did.

He didn't expect to see me, it was written on his face as he took a step back hesitantly.

Many questions fought in my brain for their chance to come out of my mouth but I kept my lips shut firmly.

I refused to register the fact that I had met my father. I wanted him to be an apparition, a hallucination.

It would be easier that way.

But he was standing there obstinately.

I clenched my fists and opened my mouth to ask him to move when my aunty came out in a hurry and halted behind me with a loud gasp.

Getting some courage to breathe, I slowly turned back to look at her.

"Your lunch," she said hastily trying to disrupt the tension in the air as she held out the tiffin bag towards me, "you forgot your lunch."

I took the bag from her hand, slung it over my shoulder and with a newfound brevity, walked out of the gate, past my father.

I did not see him, the words echoed in my head.

It would be better to delete that memory.

But curiosity got the better of me.

There were innumerable questions--questions that made me want to rush back home and demand the answers from those scheming, lying adults.

My eyes stung that day, as I tried to wipe away the image of my father from my memory but all I could do was revisit the night of my abandonment.

I could hear that little girl's cries, the screams, the shattering loneliness and fear when the thunder struck a nearby tree and the way I ran aimlessly with the rain beating down torrentially.

How could they become parents?

What did I do to them?

I stopped in the middle of the road and broke down into tears.

My legs gave away and I squatted down beating on my chest to stop my tears and soothe the pain somehow.

I was late for the office but I needed to let those tears out.

I wanted them to cry the same tears that they made me shed.