My Childhood Home

September 7, 2016 Lala Rukh Daily Write-ups, Fiction, Memory, photography, Story beautiful, brothers, childhood, heart, home, memories, mother, shadows, weep

Alone in the shadows © Lalarukh — Alone beneath the shadows © Lalarukh

With her back leaning against the wall, she sits down on the ground. It feels cold to her palms. Despite the fact that it is really hot out there, with sun at its peak in the noon, and with almost forty five degrees temperature, there is a row of trees behind this wall that keeps the passage way where she sits a bit cool with their shadows. And she has her history with deep shadows and darkness.

It’s ironic. Right in front of her, with the opposite wall she used to make a home with long sheets and pillows in her childhood. She’d make a kitchen with small plastic utensils and some snacks and then invite her little brothers to have tea. And she had this pink box with small clippings of extra cloth drops and pieces of laces and threads and a needle and she’d sew these things together to make random designs and what not. And she’d sit there all day busy in her little chores. It felt amazing.

The pink box is gone along with her childhood. Her brothers are grown up and living far away places. Those tiny plastic utensils, her mother safely placed at the shelf in her room along side other useless items she used to play with. Her mother dusts these daily but never ever thinks of throwing or giving away. Mothers. They have their own ways.

A bird chirps from the trees above. Their is a mud pot placed right beside her, filled with water for the birds to drink. It is really hot out there. This house, it used to be filled with laughter and shouting and excitement where a strange kind of silence and sadness resides now. Her mother and father, they have grown old. They look tired when they smile.

Tear, a tear rolls down her cheek and falls on the ground, cold enough in the presence of summer’s bright sun. May be its the tree’s. It’s their way of grieving. Over beautiful lost memories and a cheerless future. Or may be it’s the coldness from inside of her heart. It’s dead, after putting up with so much pain and faking happiness for so long, it’s finally dead. She is scared, this home with all it’s memories and charm, what if it wakes up her heart again? But then dead can’t be woken up, can they?

She thinks of her room. It feels haunted to her. She remembers when she was little, she had an art wall in her room. She would make drawings,paintings,scribbles and art and then stick those to the wall. Her drawings and art work improved as she grew up and it was all there at the wall which she was proud of. And then once while the house had to get painted, she had to remove her art from the wall with her own hands. She was sad. She was a teenager at that time. A long cupboard with lots of shelves was then placed alongside her wall. That cupboard now contains fragments of her childhood and they get dusted daily by her mother.

Those albums with her baby photos, school functions and their family day outs, that car which saw her and her siblings grow up from children to teenagers and then adults, that same TV they used to watch cartoons on, the fans the ceilings the walls, nothing’s changed, everything haunts her. The memories are beautiful. It’s the fact that nothing like this can happen in future that wrings the heart and wrinkles the soul.

She weeps. Head in her lap, hands wrapped around the knees she weeps. Her shadowed self, this mud pot, all these trees and those countless memories that crowded in her mind and flowed through her veins while sitting here, this scene, it would freeze in her eyes and would be a valuable treasure for the rest of her life to come, away from her home.

That day, she buried herself right there, in the passage way, beneath the shadows and under the weight of good old childhood memories to live inside them forever.

I Am That Little Girl Today…..

July 12, 2014July 12, 2014 Lala Rukh Daily Write-ups, Life, Memory, Story care, childhood, emotions, girl, love, melancholy, pain, peace, story

I am the 8 years old me today. Thinking about the time when I was laying in my dark lonely room and when for the first time I cried, not for some childish wish to get fulfilled but with pain… because of intense pain that I felt in my heart. For the first time when I was 8. When I saw one of my brothers sleeping on one arm of my father and the other brother on the other arm. I stood there beside the door staring at them while he told them stories, of fairies and brave commandos till they fell asleep. I stared at his arms and wished for sleeping there for once, only for once but that wish never got fulfilled. Wishes have been abandoned for me since then. Instead of telling my father what I wished for that night, I came to my room and cried. That was my first real encounter with tears. Tears, that have been my friends since I was 8.

And then I remember the time when I was 15. My uncle gifted me a cell phone and I used to send random jokes to my friends when one day I met a wrong number. That wrong number remained a wrong number for me, besides he would talk to me and I would listen. I never knew his real name or who he was or where he lived. What I knew was that he was the one person in my life who would listen to whatever I had to share with him. Every problem, every change in my life, every reality revealed… I would speak and he would listen. He became my one best friend. Back then, I didn’t know that my society don’t understand or accept this kind of friendship. All I knew was that I have got someone who understands me.

And one day my mom caught me texting with him. She read our texts and all that she understood by reading them, was that I was talking to a boy. That was the first time when I got cursed. At the age of 15. My mind will collapse if I’ll try to think about what happened next but all that I remember now, is a miserable me, sitting next to my mother and staring at her lap with a boiling wish of putting my head in there and crying out loud. But I never was able to gather that much courage to do that. I used to crave sharing my matters with her and cry on her shoulder but never got a chance. I wasn’t strong enough to tell them who I am. I was afraid they would abandon me if they’d know the real me.

Every night is a night in hell for me, since then. These nights taught me how to fake emotions and how to wear a smile in public. They taught me how to collapse in the dark and weep till I gather strength to stand up in the day light. I admit, I am emotionally weak and I craved emotional support since I was 8. Yes, I am selfish because I never got expression of love that I wanted and every illusion of love felt real to me since then. I admit that I am hateful because I forget every other thing when a little ray of love strikes my heart. For all my life I have begged for love and care, I have rubbed my heels on broken stones to get a single second of peace and serenity.

I may have done thousands of sins to get a little satisfaction of being cared, but I am not that bad, am I ? Every time I loved, I ended up empty-handed. I am shedding tears in this very room of mine for 14 whole years and I am tired now. I understand that I am hateful and you have every right to hate me. I too hate myself so much that no one can even imagine. I understand that I screw things up for everyone whether it be my parents or the person I love, or the person that I was meant to love. I am tired. If I get to bear the same pain all over again, I would die. And that pain has started consuming me once again. It would have been better if it wouldn’t have gone at all, in the first place.

I really wish memories could be erased just like that…. with a little push on the button of backspace. And I really wish I could sleep one day without the burden of endless regrets, pain and guilt on my shoulders, In tranquility !

Shadows

January 21, 2014January 21, 2014 Lala Rukh Fiction, Story, Trifecta Writing Challenge, Weekly Challenges baby, childhood, fiction, flash, quaint, sad, shadow, short story, Trifecta, writing

He was with me like shadow under the Moonlit skies since I was a baby who’d been in this world for not more than a week. I was certain then, that walls of my room were blue and Lucy, the white cat hated me. And I knew that I shouldn’t cry when my Mom was already crying because she’d not pick me up.

When Mom’d hold me in her folded arms to feed me in the morning, I’d gaze at blue scars beneath her starlit eyes. Those scars’d change their colors and places daily and when I’d try to reach them she’d hold my tiny fingers in her soft hand and tears’d fall on my forehead. She’d whisper in my ear that we’d leave this place soon.

My dad’d smell like medicine when he’d hold me while he’d cut my Mom down with his words. He never left his habits and mom never left this place.

He’d sit beside me with a wooden face, covering my ears with his hands to block the shouts; blades with tiny bayonet pointed firmly at my heart.

I’d laugh when he’d tease me that I broke my head when I was thrown from the sky into the world. Mom never liked him and whenever I’d tell her about him she’d not answer. I’d start talking to him and Mom’d start crying.

We celebrated my 18 birthdays together and he was with me that day when dad brought some quaint people in our house. I heard shouts, dad’s cries were a pitcher of bitterness and mom’s quivering voice tasted of sacrifice.

Dad clamped his hand onto my wrist and pulled me through the lounge where Mom sat squeezed in a corner, mouth covered with hands and tears brimming through her opaque eyes.

Pain paralyzes my mind when doctors pierce needles in my arm and I see his shadow fading into the light of nothingness.

We all have to fade, as we all are shadows on the wall of time.

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This is my 333 words response to Trifecta Challenge. This weeks word was Quaint and we have to use its third definition ( unusual or different in character or appearance : ODD ) in our response. Feedback is always appreciated. Click on the badge to see other entries.