Chapter-2 The Past
It was Sunday and everyone was at home. We lived in a joint family which included of me, Mahi, maa, papa, my grandmother, uncle-aunty and their son Samrat. My father and uncle owned a joint business and with god’s grace we were quite well off, one of the wealthiest families at that time. Sunday’s were days which my father usually spent with the three kids. But that day, papa had to go to office because of an urgent call. It was around 11’o clock in the morning when he had left home…but what happened that day was strange and unusual. Dad usually waved his hand at us and left for work but that day he had hugged each one of us and then left. At around 1:30 in the noon when maa asked him about where he was..he answered that he’ll be returning in another 30 mins. After 45 mins of waiting for papa to return, maa received a call from an unknown number. The person on the other side informed maa that papa had met with an accident. We reached the hospital where papa was admitted and what we heard next was shocking and disturbing.
The very news of dad passing away had hit us all very hard. Everything seemed to stop for us…destiny had payed its card. When everything seemed next to perfect, things began to fall out of their places. I was 16 and Mahi 13 that time. I saw maa falling to ground, tears never stopping. It had been only 2 days since dad had passed away, another turning point in our lives came when my grandmother too passed away of heart attack. These 48 hours turned out to be the worst times of our lives. I had lost too of my most favourite people…and the harsh reality killed me. We just couldn’t sense of what happened to our happy family all of a sudden..we were shattered. I saw maa’s health deteriorating. She had spent so many days hardly eating and drinking anything. She would faint often and Mahi would never leave maa. It pained to see the audacities of life. I wanted to be strong..I knew I had to..for maa…for Mahi. 2 months passed by and we were in the same condition or even worse when my uncle took charge of the business and property and asked my mother to leave the house with us. He gave us 3 days to leave and threatened to throw us if we didn’t leave. My mother and I gathered all our stuff, belongings, our important documents. I saw her quite worried that night wondering where we’d stay. We decided to move into the house that my father had gifted to maa on her birthday which was located in the posh areas of the city. And we continue to live here after 9 years of his death. It was in a society which was well maintained. But living in such a society meant high expenses and maintenance which we could hardly afford that time because of no jobs. But as a matter of fact we needed a place to stay and that was it, we moved there. Maa decided to work, she was educated but a home maker. It was difficult for a lady who has no work experience to take up a job at the age of 41. Maa started working as a teacher in one of the schools of the city. She took up teaching so she could return home early. Those days tuitions weren’t very common, so we took up tuitions. I helped maa in tuitions and as Mahi grew up she joined us too.
Life seemed very tough and ruthless to me but I had decided to overcome the obstacles and live my dreams. I was the school, college and university topper that gave me various internship offers at different colleges, universities and companies. I finally got my dream job as an English Hons. Professor at the IP University. Mahi too started taking up internships along with her studies. We saw the most difficult times in life but with the three of us being each others strength, everything was back to place but whom we certainly missed the most was ‘papa’.
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Hey everyone! I am back with the second chapter. Hope you all like it. Do comment, pls. 🙂 🙂