A suicide note

I was seven when I found out a suicide note while rummaging through a drawer.It wasn't a regular suicide note; not that I had seen so many. It was written in one of the diaries in which my mother used to note down recipes, home remedies, beautiful quotations and keep cuttings of unfinished sudoku puzzles. I had just learnt reading and would try reading anything that came across. She wrote that she could no longer bear the pain, abuse and suffocation of her marriage. She has decided to kill herself along her three children. That she is going to poison the food and make sure we die before her as we are her responsibility.This was all in hindi. I read and re-read the letter with my hands trembling and heart pounding at rate which I could hear.

The bigger problem was there was no date written.Was this an old letter? Was it written today? But last fight was two weeks ago when mummy didn't eat anything for days. Did she write it then? I stopped eating for days after days. I would come up with some excuse or the other. Watch my mother make the food. Observe every fight more closely. Try to read her mind. Try to find if she is happy now or do something to make her feel that way. Make her give up that thought. I no longer feared school punishment for undone homework. When there is no hope there is no fear.

But I was only losing weight and hope. Every fight would leave me more devastated than her. I would pack my bag for school half heartedly for it's possible there will be no new morning.  I had a million questions to ask her. Ask her why you don't  fight back?  Why you just don't leave him? Why you just keep on suffering? Why you are the one who stop eating after every fight?  Is suicide the only escape? Wouldn't you give us a choice to live? Would you give us a chance to make you happy? Wouldn't you make the recepies you haven't made yet?  Wouldn't you solve those unfinished sudoku puzzles?
                     

But I didn't have the courage to ask back then. I don't have the courage till today. How strange is it that I find it okay to be this read and known by hundred strangers but not you mommy .Sometimes I really want to ask why you contemplated death because I have and I know what place it is to be. That even now every time you and papa fight I start crying due to haunts of past. That I vividly remember every single word of that note. About what happened in the past there was a relative( her brother) who had come to stay for month. I was relieved that she wouldn't think of suicide now. I started to eat ; she began to smile. I decided to confine anything bad that happened to myself and not upset her.

I get how trivial this incident may sound. But it wasn't trivial for a seven year old and even a grown up me for that matter. What happens with you as a child stays with you, builds you and moulds you. This incident instilled a mistrust and misandry within me that only increased with time. She teaches me to study hard and be on my own so that I can afford a divorce unlike her while also teaching me to forgive and forget no matter what someone does to you.I still don't understand her completely. But I guess that is okay. The answer must lie in the attempt.

 Someone said that there is no greater agony than bearing the pain of an untold story within you. So here I am entering the coming year with one less pain and lot more hope. 

Sunaina Mishra #rolestroll_8

खाकी रंग दीवारों
पर लटकती गाँधीजी
की बड़ी-सी फ़ोटो के
पीछे से दुपहरी में
एक लंबी-भूरी-सी
छिपकली निकलती है

रेंग कर ख़मोशी से
इर्द-गिर्द फ़ोटो के
गश्त ये लगाती है
और जैसे ही कोई
कीट-पतंगा उड़ कर
पास से गुज़रता है
धर दबोच लेती है
पंख नोच देती है
माँस चबा जाती है
ज़िंदा निगल जाती है

फिर बड़े सलीक़े से
जैसे कुछ हुआ ना हो
कोई भी मरा ना हो
रेंगती हुई वापस
गाँधीजी की फ़ोटो के
पीछे लौट जाती है
                ~हुसैन हैदरी

Movie - Mukkabaaz
   

She is a mute girl and a niece of an influential sports mafia who is the head of State boxing federation. Things starts to entwine when she falls for a boxer who retaliates against her uncle after having constantly put to do personal errands rather than boxing practice. She loves to see someone who doesn't see her as a handicapped woman, is different from the male chauvinists around her and even promises to leave his career in order to fulfill her dreams. She is fearless and stubborn. She is living in a world where casteism, corruption , cow vigilantism, political diabolism, crimes, male dominance are so rampant. Her disability signifying that women have no say whatsoever as the one having voices are even more silent than her. She wants to complete her further studies and get rid of the pathetic world around her. She follows her husband to every match, supports him, understands him,  love him without saying  any word showing how some hearts understand each other even in silence. She always wears black announcing her rebellion and aggression. Her story exemplifies that silence is the most powerful scream. 

Maya #rolestroll_7

एक दफा वो याद है तुमको ,

बिन बत्ती जब साईकल का चालान हुआ था

हमने कैसे भूखे प्यासों बेचारों सी एक्टिंग की थी

हवलदार ने उल्टा एक अट्ठनी दे कर भेज दिया था 

एक चवन्नी मेरी थी, वो लौटा दो 

मेरा कुछ सामान तुम्हारे पास पड़ा है

सावन के कुछ भीगे भीगे दिन रखे हैं

और मेरे इक खत में लिपटी राख पड़ी है

वो राख बुझा दो, मेरा वो सामान लौटा दो

पतझड़ में कुछ पत्तों के, गिरने की आहट

कानों में इक बार पहन के लौटाई थी

पतझड़ की वो शाख अभी तक कांप रही है

वो शाख गिरा दो, मेरा वो सामान लौटा दो

इक अकेली छतरी में जब आधे-आधे भीग रहे थे

आधे सूखे, आधे गीले, सुखा तो मैं ले आयी थी

गीला मन शायद बिस्तर के पास पड़ा हो

वो भिजवा दो, मेरा वो सामान लौटा दो

एक सौ सोलह चांद की रातें, एक तुम्हारे कांधे का तिल

गीली मेंहदी की खुशबू, झुठमूठ के शिकवे कुछ

झूठमूठ के वादे भी सब याद करा दूँ

सब भिजवा दो, मेरा वो सामान लौटा दो

एक इजाज़त दे दो बस, जब इसको दफ़नाऊँगी

मैं भी वहीं सो जाऊंगी, मैं भी वहीं सो जाऊंगी|

Movie - Ijaazat

                          

There is nothing about her which inspired me but everything about her that intrigued me.She is a idiosyncratic girl who is still not over her lover Mahinder who is now married to other woman,  Sudha.Sudha is mature, forgiving and even empathetic towards Maya. She is epitome of what a woman should be like in contrast Maya belongs to the other extreme end. Her love is not glorified but only construed as a mistake and forgotten in vain.She is impulsive,  irresponsible, reckless, lives for the moment, passionate, poetic, stupid enough to romanticise death and everything one should never be but I fear I almost am. She only does damage to herself and people around her even if she doesn't intend to. Her poetry instills you with familiar longing and an inexplicable affliction. She is the face of the characters living insignificant lives,  meeting an unnoticed and dismal death ; earning blasphemy of society and a burden of pain.  

Shilpa #rolestroll_6

"Never try to be different. Society fears what it doesn't understand "
Movie - Superdeluxe
                             

 She is a transwomen who returns to her abandoned wife and son after many years. While the whole family is shocked and distraught after seeing her as a women the only person who is pleased is her little son Rasakutty. He has promised his friends that he would introduce his father to them as soon as he returns and put an end to everyone teasing him by calling a test tube baby. When Rasakutty asks her why she turned into a women she tells her that sometimes god makes a mistake in hurry just like when we put wrong shoe in wrong foot ;god made an error and doctor corrected it. But she had to face the disparaging remarks of her own relatives, lewd behavior of strangers, molestation and assaults by police. She isn't allowed to enter her son's school and loses her son on her way back to home. She gets petrified, searches for him for days and fights against her deep buried agony and guilt. She once trafficked two children in the past for some meagre sum of money and found those very two children later on footpath begging except that now one had lost his eye and other his leg. She assumes its her punishment for that past sin until she finds her son safe and sound at the home.We can see her as vulnerable yet audacious, a victim of society yet a fighter when she retaliated against the policeman who questions her feminity. She is cheerful yet carries a baggage of sorrow and guilt in her heart and is definitely one of the most impactful character ever seen on celluloid.