In a box

It was an unprecedented and unforgettable moment, not just because I am an animal lover and it was an exquisite creature, not also because I felt lucky to see it, while I was just standing on the balcony of my home. Although all these factors did make the experience noteworthy to some degree. But it was actually the feeling of getting doused by sheer satisfaction, knowing I was going to tick one more box from my list of breaking the superstitious laws. For here, we consider them as the harbinger of death and bad luck.

My memory lane was filled with such incidences of defiance. I used to straight-out disregard these ideas that conditioned us to stay in a box.

And why shouldn’t I? The elders had never given me any satisfactory reasoning when I asked why I can’t eat food with my left hand? Or how is it possible to get possessed and go nuts while passing under a certain tree?

For all my ‘but why’, they had only one answer — it brings destruction and despair to the person. I waved off such banal answers and kept on adding fresh boxes in my diary. One good thing happened because of my rebelliousness. They avoided telling me what I should do and how, unless I would do something outrageous to enrage them. I had already checked a lot of boxes by the time I was fourteen and still vehemently refuse to live a life of confinement.

And it was the year when it appeared, out of nowhere, not once but three times, in an overcrowded city made of concrete and dense with pollution. But it chose me. Was it some kind of warning or a lesson to teach me something? For something did happen, the third time I saw it, which resulted in the brief halt to my habit of breaking the myths surrounding superstitions.

At that time my dad was living in a different city because of his work; so, he used to visit us once or twice a month, the same was for my brother as he was in his college. So mostly it was my mom and me having our meals together. Usually after dinner, to just lazing about, I would normally go to the balcony and look at the stars and trees, especially during springtime. That day the weather was extra pleasant. It had rained before and the sky was still cloudy. Wind was fresh, trees were swaying gently just like I was doing, holding the railing with my arms outstretched and looking at those humongous auburn and gray clouds floating breezily. I stayed there longer than usual and as soon as I had started to go back inside, something sitting in the tree caught my attention.

It was there. A real owl. My first ever encounter. I keenly rubbernecked to confirm, and his gaze caught mine. Yes, it was an owl I had no doubt — no neck, scary stare, varied hues of light and dark brown furs.

My mom was going to flip out when I would tell her about this magical meeting. It filled me with such zest; I dashed inside to tell her and almost blew away the door. She was watching T.V. in the living room area. First, I composed myself, for I was about to make some entrance and I walked in with swagger and self-satisfied smirk.

”So, how do I look?”

She looked at me evidently perplexed. “Same as before. Why?”

It was so amusing for me I dragged it a little more. “So….Do my eyes look fine to you? Or have they become squinty or maybe….evil?”

She sighed and, with subdued exasperation, told me to leave and do my homework.

”I just saw an owl outside.” I left the room skipping with joy, then turned around to see her reaction and told her we even had a brief eye contact. The death stare! Of course, it was shocking for her as well. First, seeing an owl is a typical example of a bad omen and second, we had been living there for years and it had never appeared before.

She warned me not to see it again in any case. Her tone was pensive and tense, all the happiness rushing through my body flushed out instantly. I didn’t mean to scare her. Till late at night, I was scheming some stories to sell in the morning, to convince her that owls were just like any other wild animal. They are not the definition doom.

By the morning I finalised three different scenarios, the first two were met with a damp response. I was rooting for the third one — that female owls are generally larger than the male owls, so some misogynist must have gotten offended at this revelation, hence the superstition.

My mom was listening to everything while doing the house chores. When she handed me my breakfast, she kissed my forehead and said that I was always in her prayers. I didn’t know what to say. I smiled, nodded and left.

Many weeks had passed since that day and my mind was occupied by the recondite conundrums of a teenage life. I was not a bright student, nor good at sports. I was yet to find my hidden talent and my friends — they had got nothing to talk about but boys. Before we used to talk about so many different things, illogical daydreaming and wishful thinking fused together.

I was jaded and bored to death and some of them felt the same with me, so they started avoiding me. But not my real friends, who are now my best friends.

Same day in the evening my mom asked me why I didn’t go outside with my one and only close friend there. My mom saw her hanging out with her other friends a while ago when she was having a chat with our neighbor outside. That little piece of information hurt me like a slap in the face. For I called her about an hour ago to meet up and she said she had plans with her family and hung up. However, I gulped down the embarrassment and told my mom that I had to study because my grades were falling like lead balloons.

‘What a flimsy fib. She must have thought. She knew I cared little about grades. Why? Well, I was okay with a mediocre life. Also, my parents had never forced me to study hard, though they used to nag sometimes and sometimes tried to motivate me as well. But they were never strict or demanding.

She told me again and again to go outside, that it was more important than studying and I should be outside with my friends. Before I was just down in the dumps but her constant poking made me lose my cool. Words were grumbling in my mouth, but I held them right there with the little patience I had left. Because I couldn’t tell her everything that was going on in my life, she didn’t have that mindset to understand certain things and how to react to them.So, I just got up, huffed like an angry, irritable kid and stormed out.

I was back at my favourite spot, sky was clear and full of stars, but some unsettling feeling had made its home inside my core. I was getting chills and feeling a little dizzy. Suddenly, I sensed a foreboding stare of unfliniching eyes. l looked in the tree’s direction; it was there, looking at me.

It was our third encounter, the second one happened a couple of weeks ago, that time, the outright outlaw in me dared me to stare straight in its eyes and see who was going to give up first. It was me, when it did its imposing head tilt and my soul was halfway out of my body. I grabbed it quickly, fixed it and ran for my life.

Though this time I was not scared, maybe I was too numb to feel that. Instead, I started talking to it, and told it I had read online, seeing an owl the third time brings death and despair in the family. Then I said I didn’t believe in any of this. This time it slanted its head just a little, like a confused puppy. It was adorable. I smiled and was about to take my leave, but suddenly tears started rolling down in profusion. I tried to stop but couldn’t.

Finally, after some time, I gathered myself up and had just turned to go back and suddenly a loud crashing sound rang from inside. I froze with terror this time. I tried to run but fumbled like I had two left feet. My thoughts were running a mile a minute. Was it me? Something wrong happened to my mom because of me? Did she get hurt because of me? An upsurge of fresh tears turned my vision milky. I wanted to see her and reach her as quickly as possible, but the throbbing in my legs was setting me back.

At last! The relief, oh god the relief I felt when I saw her, that oxygen is still living in her lungs and blood is flowing through her veins, breathing had never come across as such a beautiful thing to me before. She was unharmed and bent down, cleaning th mess of steaming food and broken ceramic pot. I was no longer paralysed and rushed to help her out. I wanted to say much more than this, but just “why didn’t you call me out”, came out of my mouth. I wanted to say sorry for not being there for her, to help her. She had stiff and painful joints.I knew she couldn’t carry much weight, and it was the only task I had to do, just carry some of her burden. And I failed.

She finally raised her head. I knew she was going to say that she did call my name at least ten times. Although her face was etched with fury, but when she saw my eyelids were swelled with tears, her heart melted the same way mine did just a few moments ago. And she took the blame on herself that she shouldn’t have carried two pots in both hands. Again, words didn’t take any form in my mouth and I just nodded.

Later we had dinner together, and I even watched her favourite over the top dramas with her for two hours, while pressing and massaging her hands now and then. She knew I was hurt, and she also knew I would not tell her, so she didn’t ask. But her eyes always asked, why? And the hilarious thing was that she knew why I had been like this since I was little. She just became so anxious and stressful that she wouldn’t even let me breathe and kept hovering over me all the time. Because she didn’t know what else to do for she was not brought up with much love and affection, but she was given a box to mold herself according to that — a good cook, an adroit homemaker, achingly compromising, always there for the family no matter how she was feeling herself, didn’t have her own dreams except to look after her family.

How did I knew all this? Well, she is some talker, she can go on for hours talking and I used to listen to her when little and wondered why she had such a rough life, why even her good moments came as depressing to me, and why nobody stopped her to go there when she was just a kid, and her friend accidentally shot herself in head — that she shouldn’t see such a horrendous scene. It might be the reason why she was so overprotective.

Though I tried to show her so many times how to break free, she always failed to see the motive behind my silly actions, because she was conditioned to think that a child couldn’t teach their parents about discretion.

That night when I was in bed and couldn’t sleep, my eyes again met tears midway when my train of thought was loaded with fear of losing her and my heart was still trembling with terror. Although I knew it already, but that day, I actualised how much I love and care for her. And I made the decision to pour myself into my box, which was always there under my bed, eating dust. I was ready to lose my identity if that was what it would take to protect her. I was ready to do that just like she did years ago.

After months of practising it, I failed. More out of habit than by will, and every time I would ask for forgiveness from someone up there but exactly didn’t know from whom. This was my very own superstition that if I immediately said sorry, nothing wrong was going to happen to anyone in my family. The one which came to me on wings and stayed longer than I expected. But this didn’t upset me. The thing which was going to make me feel terrible in the near future was being too forgiving, which I learned while imitating you. My heart would always melt if I saw tears in anyone’s eyes. You should have scolded me that day if not at that moment than later. At least you should have told me not to take you for granted which I sometimes did just because you were too forgiving.

Now, I am not the same person I used to be. I realised with time I am not cut out to live in a box. I live in a homely nest now. And view is good from here. I can soar into the sky and travel with the winds whenever I feel like. My best friends, yes the ones who stand the test of times, we go on vacations often. And my heart is still the same. I have just learned to say ‘no’ and put my foot down where I shouldn’t compromise.

And I have not achieved much in life, just as we had anticipated. But you are still proud of me for I am living, breathing, dreaming and always smiling, especially when with you. I don’t know about me but you were and are a perfect mom to me and our less than precise words are still more than enough to express our pure love.