Team – Qissa
[ READ THE PREVIOUS PART OF THE STORY HERE ]
Roohi went
to school and Tara to her life that is office. Shekhar was left alone in the
house to measure its length and width. Despite a hardcore routine today Shekhar
wasn’t sitting in his study and struggling with thoughts and words. He sat in the
balcony on a low wooden stool with a lighter and a packet of cheap cigarettes.
Half the packet he had already smoked since morning and the prevailing dark
patches between the first two fingers of his left hand were narrating the story
of his love affair with cigarettes and thoughts!
At this age
of his life he had begun to loose positivity of thought and often looked at the
ideals he had followed all his life with doubt. He would have become a writer
of many published books but what he was left with was a writer of one published
novel and lots of rejected manuscripts. Whatever respect he had left for
himself after so many failures was being slowly but steadily taken away by the jeers
of Tara. Society was never a concern for him; it was something he wanted to transform
by his writings. At times, he would wonder that perhaps he was born in a wrong
age. He believed he belonged to the age of ideals and ideologies, not this age
of consumerism and thoughtlessness.
Shekhar’s
insistence on not having a cell phone for himself and still writing on white
papers with an age old typewriter which at times he himself would repair by
staining his khadi kurta and smearing his hands spoke a lot about Shekhar the
Man. His current writings still dealt with the misery of peasants and the Naxal
movement. His wrath for capitalists and profiteers held the thunder of angry
clouds. His first novel was a classical
story, in which innocent love was caught in the brutal class war. He had to
change the ending from sad and melancholy to something sweet and happy. Though the
novel did well but it had a very bad impact on Shekhar’s sentiments. After the
first 2 year contract was over he denied its republishing by citing a will of
changing its end as he had originally written. No publisher wanted to change
the End part since that had become the selling point of the novel. Shekhar
turned adamant so he himself republished it but this edition doomed and so did his
writing career. Only a few books got sold and most people didn’t like the
current version.
Instead of
drawing a more flexible writer in him, this incident turned him into a more
rigid one. Most people become arrogant after their success but he had become
arrogant and unyielding after his failure!
When the
manuscript of that book was selected by the publisher they had requested a
change in the ending of the story which he wasn’t willing but they had sent
Tara from their Media team to convince him. Though, she was young and
inexperienced but her persuasive power was already well observed by her
superiors. It was a chance for her to prove herself and climb the ladder or go
back to where she came. She succeeded in convincing him but she paid its cost
by falling for him. In the process of convincing him for what the publisher
wanted she fell in love with a person who didn’t even satisfy a single item
from the list she had for her perfect man. Tara wasn’t very much interested in
his writings but his writing career prospect. He had the flare of a soon-
turning-into-a-literature-celebrity. Wife of a celebrated writer and a high
profile media professional – an endearing thought for a woman who only knew one
thing in life and that was Goal and Achievement, not mental peace or ecstasy in
a simple life.
She had put
her heart and soul for the success of his first novel. Consequently, she was
very much disappointed when Shekhar had refused to renew the contract and put
forth his condition. This happened just after their marriage and that was two
years after the book launch. She again put forth her persuasive might to get
him to sign the contract but she failed to do so. It was the first time when a
bitter thought for Shekhar had crossed her heart. It was the first time she was
compelled to look back at her decision of getting married to a man that belonged
to a different world than Tara.
Time passed
and so did the problems. Shekhar had begun writing new stories and soon Tara
found herself pregnant. He could foresee the forth coming crisis so he started
taking freelance work and that too in a way where he didn’t have to make
compromises and question his own writing integrity. He even wrote articles for
smalltime news papers but they soon stopped giving him work. When the whole
country was ranting that Kashmir belonged to India he was writing in articles
that either Kashmir should be left independent or a greater autonomy should be
provided. When the Naxal movement was spreading like cancer in India and
turning into a grave internal threat he was writing articles in their favor and
blaming the government and capitalistic thinking for naxalism.
When Roohi was
born he was somehow able to make ends meet but then things had changed. The
rain of freelance work turned into a drizzle and then into a trickle. Soon,
Tara took the reigns in her hands and earned enough to give her family a good
life. The more she would grow in her career the less love she would find in her
heart for the imperfect husband. Initially her frustration was limited to the
complaints but then, it slowly but steadily began turning into disrespect. His
love for Tara was still what it had been at the time when they had married. He
knew the desperation of Tara with which she wanted to be free from him and his
world but the love for his daughter Roohi turned him unjust and shameless. He
was even ready to listen to the worst things from her.
Though,
Roohi was not old enough to understand the intricacies of relationships she had
understood the dysfunctional relationship of her parents.
In the
balcony, when Shekhar lit the last cigarette from the packet, he longed for the
death of not his physical self but his metaphysical self. His loyalty for his
ideals or principles gave him nothing but a life of humiliation. Simplicity of
his life and thoughts was not admired but questioned and mortified. Now he
wished to throw that simplicity out of the balcony into the heap of garbage
round the corner.
“Me and
My Team are participating in 'Games of Blogs' at Blogadda.com. #CelebrateBlogging
with us”
[READ THE NEXT PART OF THE STORY HERE ]
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