Zesty oranges and winter afternoons- by Payal Mukherjee

O Esha. E ki bidombona.

Esha says I dont write anymore. I am suffering from a non-writers block. Outside this room is a boiling cauldron than is Chennai. Inside this room is a pleasant 25 degrees which induces me to sleep. And the brat who I call my daughter, goes to school for 3 hrs in the morning, which is all the time in the day I have to wash, clean, work, write, read, rest, and eat my days meal till dinner time.

Yesterday night, finally, after weeks, I felt I could write once again. That pain which makes my hand itch, not with Harry Potteresque magic, but with my own story, of love and losing, of pain and betrayal. Yeah, my life is a Shakesperan tragi comedy. Only, I am THE FOOL. And no comedy has a happy ending for the Fool, as any student of literature would know.
Yesterday I learnt some things.
1. When Chennai has a power cut, you will boil, singe, roast, burn... all at once.
2. Love is just another four letter word, and the others at least are real.
3. All that I can count on in this world was in this little room last night.
4. When someone agrees to marry me, (me, as in, you-got-no-idea-what-kinda-bitch me), he has worn a noose willingly for life. It takes guts to do that knid of thing, man. I should be grateful to this guy.
5. Hope is a bitch. You get that knife and plunge it deep into her heart or else she will kill you. When you finally get rid of her, you can breathe easy. Dead hope is actually such a release, like a huge weight being lifted from my shoulders.
6. My daughters weight increases exponentially with the minutes I am holding her and walking.
7. Fever can get you a bit of rest from duties of hearth and home.
Even seven. Devils number. One of my favourites. Ill stop there.

Let me tell you a story of a girl who was almost an inspiration to me until she fell from that pedestal for ever. She is almost my age, a bit foolish. She ran away from home and married without completing her college degree at a very young age. Then she ended up having kids, with a workaholic husband, so basically lonely and starving for attention, in the thankless job called motherhood.
Then she did something to redeem herself. She fell in love. Childhood sweethearts who had a slight misunderstanding and ego issues, blah blah, the usual... so they had gone their separate ways. Then they met again, quite by chance and love, unfulfilled at the tender age of 15, blossomed again, this time mature, without ego, and with certainty.
She left her husband, went off with the kids to her parents house. When I first heard of her she was trying to support herself and her kids, at her parents house, but at best ignored, at worst abused, by them at every turn... but steadfast in her will to be with this love of her life.
I admired her then. She had the guts to do something I never could. I wished I could have that foolish impetuousness, the acting-without-thinking guts, the unbending love which makes you want to be together NO MATTER WHAT.
And then years passed, two-three. Her children grew to a schooling age. Where was the money to give them the education that we would like our children to have. Not just one, but two kids. Children are a factor which mothers cant work without. It is the greatest constant in our lives. Every mothers life would be quite quite different in it were not for her kids.
Oh well, there is a happy ending to every story, depending on the angle you look at it. And this one says that she went back to her husband. Some said its the wisest thing she did. Some said she should have done this at the very beginning. For me, it was an end of a fairy tale. Romeo-Juliet turned on its head.

Amar golpoti phurolo.