His Wife, My Mother

His Wife, My Mother By Bissme S


My dad was an affectionate man. He was never afraid to shower the people he loved with caring gestures. But when I turned 15, all this changed, drastically and dramatically.
He completely stopped loving me or anyone else for that matter. He became restrictive with his emotions .To a certain extent, his wife, my mother, was responsible for this radical change. She promised that will be together forever. But she failed to keep to her words.
She left us and my dad couldn't accept this fact. On the day she left, my dad was emotionally upset. He shed tears uncontrollably. He was raving like a mad man. He begged her to stay, he begged God to change the fate.
But God and my mother disappointed my dad immensely. Indeed their refusal had made him a broken man... too broken to have any more love in his heart.
That was the last time I saw any emotion outburst from my dad. Since my mother's departure from our lives, my dad and I rarely had any more intimate moments.
He left the responsibility of bringing me up in the hands of nannies, maids and tutors. I saw more of them than I saw my own dad. He buried himself in his work.
He hoped that his work would distract him from remembering the pain in his life... his wife, my mother. Over the years, my dad and I became more like strangers.
Many times I have tried to bring down the barrier between us... and be father and daughter again. But I failed miserably. Dad was not cooperative. He preferred to have a distance between us. He didn't say this directly to my face. But his action spokes volume.
After my mother, he was afraid to get too close to anyone including his own daughter. Maybe he was afraid that I might leave him the way my mother did. He was not ready for another disappointment.
He did everything in his power to forget her. He put away anything reminded him of my mother away in the attic. He forbids anyone to speak about her. He didn't want any memories of her lingering around. He treated her as if she never existed in his life.
But no matter what he did, he never really forgets her. The fact that he remembered her name in the last moments of his life simply testified this fact.
Truly, my father had loved my mother with all his heart. I remembered my mother once told me in one of our intimate moments, "Simran, I am the luckiest woman alive. I hope that when you grow up, you will be as lucky as me to have a husband to love you as much as your dad loves me."
Still my mother left him. I learned the hard way that love is not enough to sustain a relationship. But to be totally honest, I can't fully blame my mother.
If she had her way, she would not have left my dad. It was fate that had the last say and I must add that fate was cruel to us. My mother was involved in a car crash and the best doctors failed to save her. She was barely 40....really too young to die.
For the doctors, she was just another patient that they lost... another casualty. But for us, she was an important part of our lives. We loved her with all our hearts and emotions. Our world come tumbling down. Indeed our lives were never the same again.
All the love in our house and our heart was buried together with her. Looking back now, I think my mother, my father and I, should take some blame as well. We should learn to love each other a little less. Perhaps then her death won't have a drastic consequence on my father and me. Truly, we should learn to love each other a little less.

Forgetting Adrian

Forgetting Adrian
Truly, I believed, one of the hardest things in life, is watching the person you love, love someone else. I was madly in love with Adrian but he never loved me back. He only regarded me as his best friend and nothing more. I didn’t want his friendship. I wanted his love. I wanted his body to touch mine. I wanted his lips to be on my lips. I wanted to carry his child. When he introduced me to the woman he loved, my world came crashing down and my heart was broken to thousand pieces. I was no different from the Humpty Dumpty that sat on the wall and had a great fall, and no one can fixed me back.
Frankly speaking I can’t totally blame Adrian for breaking my heart. I never confessed my true feelings to Adrian. I never had the guts to reveal what was in my heart. I never showed my pain to Adrian. I put on a clown mask and pretended to be happy for his happiness. I attended Adrian’s wedding with smiles in my face and tears in my heart. I reminded myself that love and marriages were fated and it was not in my fate to be Adrian s soul mate. I tried dating other guys. But no one can take Adrian’s place in my heart. Forgetting Adrian was not easy. May be I was fated to love only Adrian and no one else.

*****
The first time Adrian and I met, both of us were hardly 12-years-old. Adrian and his family were our new neighbours. Our parents become fast friends. Both of our parents had so much in common and spend so much time together. It was only natural for Adrian and I to become close friends. My feelings for him didn’t only remain as friends. Slowly, I find myself falling in love with him. Love happens when you least expected it. I began to have dreams about us falling in love, getting married and living happily ever after, just like in the fairy tales. I learned the hard way that some fairy tales are not meant to come true.

******
I cannot understand what Adrian saw in Anita. She was just a plain Jane. But in Adrian’s eyes, she was the most beautiful creature to walk upon on his earth. He sang high praises of Anita like angels sings sermons in the praise for their creator. The first time they met was when Anita s car broke down on the highway. And the shining knight armour who came to her rescue – the love of my life – Adrian. Naturally the numbers were exchanged. Out of gratitude, Anita took him to a dinner. That was not the end of them meeting each other. Soon more dinners followed. Slowly, love blossomed between them and naturally the next step was to get married and start a family.

******
I had a hard time accepting the fact Adrian was not my lover… Adrian was not my husband … Adrian was calling another woman as his wife. Loneliness became my faithful companion, bitterness enveloped my life and pain never stopped dancing in my heart. I have been told some disappointments and some broken hearts are good for your soul. It makes you a stronger person. But I never wanted to be strong. I just wanted Adrian to love me.

******
Like most men, Adrian was jumping with joy when he learned that his wife was pregnant. He wanted me to be his wife’s doctor and bring out their child into the world. He wanted me to their child’s god mother. Life is full of surprises and disappointments. I dream to be the mother of his children. Instead I was becoming the god mother to his children. The day finally came where his wife was in the delivery room. There was complication and her life was in my hand. My pain robbed me of my rationality. My life didn’t have a happy ending and I didn’t want Adrian to have a happy ending either. My dreams had turned into disappointments and I will do the same to his dreams. I made sure his wife and his child didn’t survived the operation and like I have hoped, the tragedy made him a broken man. His life became be a carbon copy of my life.
Loneliness became his faithful companion, bitterness enveloped his life and pain never stopped dancing in his heart. Adrian tried dating other women. Like me, he can’t never find a woman who can take place Anita’s place in his heart. “Basanti, may be I am just fated to just to love only Anita and no one else” he confided in me. Strangely he never blamed me for his wife’s death. If anything he blamed God for his extreme sadness. He stopped going to church. He never forgive God for taking away his wife and his child. He was furious at God and anything that has connection with religion. “Doctors are not God,” he pacified me. “Life and death is in the God’s hand and God always has the last say ,” he added. Our regular church priest, Father Joseph Convin tried to convince Adrian to love God again and to come back to church. But Adrian was adamant to hate God. “The day my wife died is also the day God died for me,” Adrian told the priest. “The next time you come to my house, it will not me who will welcome you, it will be my dogs. And my dogs have fierce hatred for priests,” he added. Father Joseph Convin never visited Adrian again.

******
I never wanted sadness for Adrian. I had loved Adrian with all my heart and I have always wished all the happiness in the world should be showered on Adrian. But I can’t see him being happy with another woman in his arm. Like I said earlier one of the hardest things in life, is watching the person you love, love someone else.

The End

His Father

His Father By Bissme S

I have always prayed that my son must never find out the truth about his father. The moment he asked me about his father, Ihad painted a picture of lies.
Convincingly, I told him that his father was a real warrior... a real hero... a soldier who died while protecting his country from the vicious enemy.
But in reality, his father was a man who had committed the most hideous crime. Truly, the truth about his father will only psychologically scar him for the rest of his life.
The truth has broken me. The truth has brought unspeakable misery in my life. Even now, I have a hard time digesting the truth.
I don't want my son to go through what I had experienced. He must be protected from the truth at any cost. He must not suffer for the sins of his father.
I didn't face any difficulty painting this picture of lies. Firstly my son has never met his father. He died before I gave birth to Ajay.Secondly, nobody in this town has ever met Ajay's father. When I arrived at this town, I was a four-month pregnant widow looking for a job and a new life.I created a different identity entirely. I had to. If they knew the truth, they would probably outcast my son and me.
They would probably spit in our faces. They wouldn't want a convict's family to live within their community. His father and I were teachers in a small town. The first time I met Ashok was at the teacher training college. Slowly we became more than friends.
The moment we graduated, we tied the knot. I thought that I knew him well. It appeared that I was wrong. After two years of marriage, I learn about his terrible dark side.
Apparently he had been molesting some of his male students in the pretext giving them extra free tuitions. He took advantage of their innocence.
His secret was exposed when one of the student, Bala, made a complaint to headmaster as well as the police. My husband was arrested.
At first, I doubted the charges against him. Later, it became difficult to believe in his innocence. Bala managed to reveal some intimate details about his penis... a certain dark patch. Bala's confession gave courage for other children to come forward and speak out. In the two years of my husband teaching career, he had at least molested 25 children.
Out of shame, my husband committed suicide between the four walls of the cell. He was found hanging. I wonder what happened to the shame when he was doing the unspeakable act on the children. Perhaps he was more ashamed of getting caught compared to the act of molestation.
The town folk felt immensely cheated when my husband committed suicide. They felt that he had escaped the law and punishment too easily. In their eyes, justice was denied.
They were furious and frustrated beyond words. They directed their angry emotions at me. They felt that being his wife, I had to pay for his sins.
Whenever I went, they were throwing insult and curses at me. Shopkeepers refuse to serve me. I was not allowed to enter the temple.
Suddenly, none of my friends wanted to have any more association with me.The headmaster hinted that it is for the best that I resign. Apparently parents have been threatening not to send the children to school if I was still working.
I find the society is more unforgiving when the crime involved innocent children. When I learnt that I was pregnant, I had decided to leave this town and find somewhere else to start a new beginning. I don't want to subject my son to their anger and to their punishment.
Off I went, to a new town with a fake new identity. It has been 30 years since the incident. My son is a successful lawyer, happily married with two children.
To this day, Ajay doesn't have a clue that I have been lying to him all these years. Looking back, I have no regrets telling those lies.
For sake of my son's happiness, the lies on his father were necessary. Even on my dying bed, I would not tell Ajay the truth about his father. I will carry his father's crime to my grave.

Separation

Separation  By Bissme S

When I wanted to separate from my brother, my mother was not happy. She was convinced my decision would bring nothing good except extreme sadness into our lives.
She begged me to change my mind. For the first time in my life, I never listened to my mother. I broke her heart. I wanted the separation at any cost.
I was tired of living in my brother’s shadow. I wanted to have my own identity. I wanted to have my own space. I have wanted to my own voice.
As long as my brother and I are together, I will never have my dreams come true. With my brother, only his opinions mattered. He always has the last say.
For years I have allowed my brother to walk all over me. I have allowed my brother to bully me. I have kept quiet. I have suppressed my frustrations.
But now I wanted my freedom. I didn’t want my brother to dominate my life any more. Seeing my mother’s grief, my brother didn’t want us to separate.
He promised that he would change. He would become a better man. He would become a better brother. But I was not convinced.
”A leopard can change its spots but not my brother,” I said to him.
In the end I had my way. The separation took place. I thought I would have enjoyed my freedom. I thought I would finally have happiness.
But I was extremely wrong. My mother prediction became a reality. Our separation had a sad ending. Indeed it was a sad ending that was beyond my imagination.
Our separation killed our mother. The stress of our separation was too much for her to bear. In the end, she suffered a heart attack and died immediately.
My brother was furious beyond words. He held me responsible for my mother’s death.
“You wanted the separation so badly and now our mother is dead because of it,” my brother shouted at me.
“I can never forgive you. You are dead for me. We are no longer brothers. I will never see you again. We will be separated forever. ”
My brother just disappeared from my life. For many years I have written countless letters to my brother asking him to forgive me … asking him to forget the past… asking us to be brothers again … asking for a reunion.He never answered any of my letters.



*****

Twenty years later, out of the blue, finally my brother wrote a letter to me, agreeing to have a reunion…agreeing to let bygones be bygones… agreeing to forgive and forget.
I was jumping with joy. I prepared all his favourite dishes. I thought we are going to have feast and remember the good old days. But what my heart desired didn’t come true.
My brother didn’t turn up for our reunion. A few days later he wrote me a long rambling letter telling me that he can’t forget the past…He can’tbring himself to forgive me.
“Mahatma Ghandi said that the weak can never forgive,” my brother wrote in his letter.
“Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. But I am not strong enough to forgive you. I am not strong enough to forget the past. May be you are right when you said a leopard can change its spot but not your brother.”
His letter broke my heart. Now I am certain our reunion will never take place… we will never meet again… we will never be brothers again.

*****
Indeed separating me from my brother was not an easy task. There was a possibility one of us could have die. There is always a danger in separating twins that are joined.
Instead the operation went smoothly. We survived. But our mother didn’t. In the waiting room our mother was worried to death about our safety on the operation table. The fear that one of us could die was dancing heavily in her heart.
After the operation was completed, the nurse arrived at the waiting room to deliver the good news to my mother. But she was no longer alive.She was found dead in her chair. She suffered a heart attack. Her worries killed her. Her fears killed her.
When my brother and I first heard her death, we had a hard time digesting the news. She was only 50 when she passed away. Indeed too young to die.When my mother first gave birth to us, she cried her heart out. She was totally disappointed and dishearten.No mothers wanted freaks like us as children and my mother was no different. It took her weeks before she laid eyes on us.
Once she held us in her arm, her heart melted and she stopped hating us. We became the joy of her life. She never allowed any surgery to perform on us. She was afraid that one of us would die on the operation table.

“I cannot afford to lose any of my sons,” she said to the doctor.

My mother was happy with she had. My mother was grateful with what God have given her. But my mom was not in my shoes. She cannot feel the misery I felt. She cannot feel the frustration I felt.

She didn’t have to endure the weird stares I got whenever my brother and I were out in the public. Joined twins always attract unwanted attention. I felt like a circus clown.

She didn’t have a domineering brother who will not allow her to have her own voices. In the end I broke my mother’s heart to pursue my own happiness. I would rather take the risk of dying on the operation table than enduring a life full of sadness… a life full of frustrations.

But happiness didn’t come the way I had imagined. If I have known the end will be like this, I would not have agreed to have the operation. I didn’t want my mother to die. I didn’t want to be separated from my brother forever.I would remain glued to my brother and suffered in silence. Sometimes silent suffering is necessary. It can be a key to happiness.