Why Did You?

1. Meera

"Stop. What are you all doing?" asked a young girl to the teenagers in front of her. One of them replied, "Mam, we are doing as you told." The girl shook her head and said, " No. You are just repeating my steps. You are just moving your body. Dance with your heart." She walked towards her students. Her black hairs tied in a ponytail reached her mid back. She was tall and had a slim figure. As she walked towards them, her students formed a circle around her. 

"Dance is a language. You dance to express what you can't say. You dance in joy. You dance in pain. You dance in love. You dance in anger," she said and signaled one of her students. The music played and she began dancing. Her feet moved in accordance with the music. Her dark brown eyes expressed an emotion which her students could not recognized.

Dance was indeed the language for Meera. Her legs moved along with the rhythm and her body language expressed anger and pain. Her vision became hazy but she did not let her tears escape. She could control them now. In the past five years, she had learnt to calm her anger and bear her pain. She had created a wall around herself and never allowed anyone to penetrate it. 

As her feet stopped moving, the students broke into applause. The sound broke her chain of thoughts. She looked at her students and said, "I can teach you how to dance but unless you dance with your heart and soul, I can not help you much." The bell rang and the class was dismissed.

As the students walked out of the room, they talked about the class. "Meera mam dances so beautifully, no?" one of them said. "Yes. It looks like....I can't describe in words." Some one else said, "But I have never seen her talk to anybody. She just teaches us and goes and sit in one corner of the teachers' room. And if she has no other class, she leaves." "Yes. And yesterday the other teachers had gone for lunch but Meera mam was not with them. I saw on Facebook." And the talks continued.

What the students said, was absolutely right. It had been five years since Meera had come to this city - The City Of Nawabs. In these five years, she had not made any friend. She avoided talking to people. She stayed away from them. She had isolated herself from everyone and preferred spending her time in her flat, alone and lonely.

Meera left her classroom and was called by the Head of the Academy, Mrs Geeta Srivastava. She entered her office and greeted her. "Meera, child, it has been five years. I don't know what pain you are hiding within your heart but you need to open up. You need to meet people, make friends, you cannot spend your entire life alone, can you?" Meera stared at her blankly, not knowing what to say. The Head continued, "Yesterday also you didn't attend the lunch party. You have never been a part of any get-together that the teachers have organized. You don't talk to anybody. No one knows anything about you. What exactly are you trying to do? Everyone things that you are an arrogant girl, who is too proud to talk to anyone." Meera took a deep breathe and spoke, "I don't care what everyone thinks mam. I am here to teach and I do that wholeheartedly." Mrs Srivastava sighed and Meera left the room.

Since her classes were over, Meera left the Dance Academy and took a cab to her flat. She lived in a 1BHK flat in Indira Nagar. As soon as she reached her house, the tears she had been holding, escaped her eyes. She locked herself inside and cried as much as she could. The pain that had been in her heart, escaped and flew in the form of tears. Sitting down on the floor, she sobbed harder and harder. She could hold it no longer. It had been five years but she could never forget that night, the night that changed everything. She remembered it clearly, those words, those accusing eyes, those hate-filled glares. Everything replayed in her mind.

"Aaaahhhhhh! Kill me...someone please kill me! Death in much better than this life," screamed Meera. She was right maybe, death would have been much easier for her than the pain she was experiencing. But life had something else in store for her.