Happiness.

Will the tattered pages stay tattered forever? What good will these fragments be when the mind is too old to think for itself and the heart remains anchored to the past? Lying crumpled in a corner, when every touch hurts, do you think it’ll do good to dwell on dreams then? So get down from your high-horse man, it’s time you realized that your little world is not our little world.

Dad, I won’t be just another branch in your family tree, your benign insinuations and seemingly innocuous opinions have eaten at my every nerve and sinew like termite. My aspirations are shrouded by the guilt of having done something terrible; the ignominy of being a misfit. I’m not playing the blame game; I’m just laying out the signs of a society which is so obsessed with awards that it oversees the fact of the matter. Yet, I’m overcome with shame, because you have sacrificed your life for us, and I want to repay you with the very same sacrifice.

“You’re an all-rounder!” No, I’m not. I don’t intend to integrate everything that I do, just to be given this trite tag. I’m compelled to be an “all-rounder”, in an Indian house hold, where being just one thing, isn’t enough. Failure is an absolute feeling that persists as cancer to your confidence. So no, I’m not modest. I was made to be modest.

So clearly, I don’t want to be the good girl anymore. I don’t want to fall in line with millions others who live to earn and die. For getting a nice car, a nice house in the suburbs, travelling abroad once a year, a gym membership, honor and respect of being “important” in this society, is not happiness to me. And never will be. I shall perish before I have to “settle”, in some way or the other. But I shall. I shall be like a phoenix, rise from my own ashes. Die, before I have to live again. Shan’t I?

Oh happiness, how you live in fissures now that the bulwark of innocence has been broken. Afraid, of the fear that lingers over you, fear which exhilarates at every chance it gets to come close to you, constricting the throat and distracting the mind by erupting butterflies in the belly. But the heart is not a fool. It shall protect you, whenever it has to. And when it gets hard, it shall bleed in tears. And let me know, that I should try harder to keep the forces away from you.

Until I have to rise again, happiness, please stay .