3rd Jan
Diary, once again it is 12 pm. Ma is in foul mood tonight. Seeing me awake at this hour will aggravate her mood but still I have to write. I can clearly hear Dad footsteps in the roof but Ma is silent.  From the very first day of my life, I have been seeing this couple. Yet I could never understand them. Sometimes I feel I am acquainted with their outer habits only but not the self. They direct me, tell me what to do but rarely bother to explain why? My parents’ just rule over me!! Granny has left us six years back. But she was only person who treated me as a friend. May be only a highly mature mind   can understand the need of a immature mind. She   told me once  “Understanding  comes  with age. When ego is sobered, a person can invade every mind.” Yet with all the understanding and spirituality, my granny was a conservative soul. Because of her, I could not attend a co-education school. Her invisible presence still guides our life.

Ma had come from an aristocratic background. Her upbringing does not permit her a public display of feelings. She controls her temper and hides her pain and becomes sick in the bargain. In social interactions, she plays the role of a perfect housewife .She wears few jewelry but her sarees come from fashionable boutiques of Gariahat that sell hand-made designer cotton tants. Dad had gifted her the Sony colour TV last anniversary but she rarely watches the TV soaps. Her evenings are spent alone with her old Sitar.

Shayan —my elder brother is a journalist at Delhi. He earns more than enough to  support himself. Financially we are well off and there is no apparent reason of unhappiness in our family. Yet, neither of my parents are happy. Seems they have had enough of each other in their   25 years of togetherness. Now, they simply wait for  excuses to break apart  and excuses are not difficult to come by.

Today only Dad had thrown a small party. Six of his intimate friends had visited him in the evening. He had invited them well in advance but intimated Ma just before the event. Dad’s party is never complete without alcohol for which Ma has special aversion. Dad says – drinking is a manly weakness, which enhances the appeal of a man. But when he handed over a kg of   Vetki fillets  just before evening to    Ma and ordered for her special fish fry, the appeal did not work at all. Finally the item had come from a nearby hotel but since then the atmosphere of the house is tense. Once the visitors had left, alcohol had opened up his lid. He had expressed his unhappiness about Ma’s selfishness for letting him down before his friends. He told her that such high-handed behavior is unbecoming of a person who is financially dependent on him. 

Ma did not answer but she had skipped her dinner. We are quite conscious that in patriarchal society, men are the supreme commanders and shoulder the family’s financial responsibility.  But few of them can word it as vulgarly as my Dad does. He reminds Ma of her financial status at the smallest excuse and Ma goes into depression.It sounds ironic too. My father did not marry a penniless Cinderella. Her parents had invested considerable amount to bag a doctor son-in-law. The bride was adorned in 60 tolas  gold and house had received costly teak furniture. They also wanted sponsor his higher education at UK but Dad was reluctant to divorce the comfort of home and slog at a foreign land. But granny said “ Dad was much too attached to her to leave her alone in India”. Sometimes I wonder what the truth was?  What sort of a man my Dad was in his carefree bachelor days? Could he be that much attached to granny—even to compromise his career? I don’t know. In fact I don’t know men. I have not studied in co-education school and I don’t know boys intimately. Dad was always in favor of free mixing but he too has his limitations. He does not encourage mixing beyond his class. His friends are mostly doctors and he had always encouraged me to mix with his friend’s children. He is never comfortable with people who are above or below his upper middle class circle. A staunch supporter of Communist party, he would never acknowledge this consciously but his action shows.

Today, almost the entire class had gone to a matinee show by bunking afternoon classes. But I didn’t feel like going. But I did not want to attend the classes too. Bunking class, I came home! After a long gap I sat with the piano but had no concentration.  While a child, music used to fascinate me. When I did not even know the basics, I used to listen for hours. Music used to penetrate my core. But with age I have lost that heavenly bliss. That self-merging heavenly- loneliness is slowly dissipating from my life. There was shell of contended-ness around me, which I don’t feel anymore. An unknown restlessness has replaced it now; there is a hollow of unknown origin, which does not get filled by anything. Is it my abnormality? Or is it a part of growing up? What do you think diary?