“I felt like floating in darkness, my eyes are clueless where to look at: and I try to make an estimate of what time it would be, ‘may be past midnight, or beyond’ I calculate the time slumped on my crumpled bed in my hostel room. Barring few intermittent whistles by the security guards three floors down, the silence blending with surrounding blackness is forcing me to go into an unknown confusion”
Nevertheless, I fight back to remain hopeful and stay quiet in this sneaky room, crowded by five other batchmates – deep in sleep not bothered by the opposing cries deep inside me. I’m becoming aware that the call of hopeless negative thoughts asking my eyes to go out and have a look at the height of three floors below: suddenly I see myself holding the parapet wall and looking at the dark shadows all over, tears with their presence making a blurry vision before me. Thinking of my next step, my whole body shivered, hands became damp, fingers trembling, heart raced with weak fear; suddenly, the reckless beast inside me has become stubbornly fearless, and I could make out that the blackness before me is ready to swallow me, “I’m positioned to jump and put an end to all this unhappy life, the pressure and uselessness of my studies, my holy obligation I owe to my parents and my emotional inability to face them at this sixteen years young age”.
Let me introduce myself. I’m a bubbly young girl rearing to enjoy carefree days as any sixteen years old would commonly think about. My heart jumps out for free will. I want to decide when I want to wake up; I like to sit in huge sunlit classrooms, looking at the bustling corridors shaded by thick trees around, walk down the wide pavements chatting with playful punches, sipping tea in crowded tea stalls. I long for to sit around with books looking intently leafing them in one corner of the library, looking out through bright windows allowing a cool breeze and kind sunrays inside. I am fond of going back home tired sitting on a crowded bus, daydreaming about the next day’s fun and frolic. I wish to choose my learning vocation and strive to decide how my every day gets better perfecting it. I’m asking for daily sunshine and I understand my personal freedom is my daily sunshine.
Dear mom and dad, I want to see the world with my eyes, not through your desires, allow me to take my small steps walking humbly to daily tiny victories: don’t push me into a race I’m not physically and mentally ready. “Don’t put pressure upon me” you made me go through the circus of exams and grades in the school standing behind me demanding, “You better perform well in the next exams, and we expect better grades than my friend’s son”. I’m devastated; I neither have the courage nor the language to defy the pressure both of you hoisted on me. Now in a shock, I find the demons started growing in me as I’m forced to spend the next four years in a hostel, which I describe as “academic detention centers”. Or ‘the coaching lockups’. You can never believe when I say, the classrooms are overcrowded, the residential spaces choking, curriculum overburdened, lecturers uncaring, food unbearable, sleep scarce, relaxation zero and my mind overflowing with self-destructive thoughts. I conclude for myself inflamingly, “Do I have a choice except to finding ways to end this pain!”
I remember the happy days spent at home pretty well dear mom and dad. When I was a toddler returning from pre-school, early evening, my face wilted, miffed; you standing with worried eyes and heartfelt eagerness to see me walking in home. You are all ears to my rant and chatter and your attention is full until I’m halted. Both dad and you rejoiced in my infantile doodles, pleased with my whispering jingles. My weekend outings, were I use to look forward madly, to movies, ice-creams, long drives, made me think at one momentary tick, “Oh God how lucky I’m to be in such a delightful presence of my dear mom and dad, I’m ever thankful to you” I fantasized the future to be even more delicious.
Ten years later, fatefully, like the unlucky episodes are mandated to strike their obligatory blows in my life, today, I was thrown in by the same parents, who had delighted me as a toddler, into this dynamic modern day dungeon: to complete my intermediate and coaching for competitive exams.
Just look at me, my every moment, every thought, and every task is filled with anger, desperation, and disappointment. I have nothing else to accept or agree excepting the offensive thoughts that fill my every living moment, “how could my parents do it for me, don’t they ever get down to know what I’m really looking for,” “Don’t they ever consider that my love is in sports, I enjoy music, I’m good at painting, I want to excel in literature and the last thing on my mind is engineering or IIT”. “Don’t my parents for last sixteen years have any damn inkling of where their daughter’s heart is?”All the previous accolades I had had no significance at all to them! “It doesn’t demonstrate anything of their daughter’s ‘born-with competencies’”. “Don’t they see me as a bundle of personal desires, and my innovative talents don’t amount anything to them” and the only premium you put on my head is I have to participate in all competitive exams and be a topper. Is this your agenda to have me thrown into this “exam coaching fortress’ then, if that is the case; mom and dad, “I’m sorry, I can’t, I quit, goodbye”.
However, as a young girl with a gentle mindset: I started off, though oppressive, adjusting to living in this ‘hell-hole’ life in the hostel reeking with pressure and harsh conditions. Early mornings I wake with a firmness, “Let me invest my learning efforts in some ways, lest, your financial stake, ambitious hunch shouldn’t be gutted” but at end of the day, dear me, I find myself respecting less and less the morons disguised as lecturers and more and more slogging not to damage my self-dignity and reverence for the life once I’m out of this “pressure-cooker facility”. More tests, less sleep. More supervision, fewer marks; more teaching, nothing understood: in short this is hopelessness incarnate – your daughter.
Honestly, dear mom and dad, suddenly when I’m wake up restlessness on top of my mind, one vicious idea runs wild, like, “ compared to this daily torture and humiliation, fear of failure: death seems a tempting alternative to find relief and put an end this inexplicable pain”. To any teenager like me in whom the invisible torment – both physical and emotional reaches to oppressive levels: the folly – thinking about suicide – would start like a swarm of bees buzzing in mind. Loud and clear and definite. For me too, when this pervasive idea crosses my mind I cry a lot in darkness, thinking about you and dad. But the menacing grip of it doesn’t allow me to think clearly, it pulls me back again and again into the black hole of self-destruction. Believe me, these thoughts spin with higher gravity than the pull of affection I have for both of you. I wish you can see my defeated body of predicament. I want to fight but I can’t – the fear of seeing every day filled with suffering has been so deep-seated that any hope of amnesty doesn’t merit as an alternative. Let the world listen to my plight!
Dear parents
Children are your natural gifts; never see them as mementos: carefully safeguarded within glass-doors to be kept on display to advertise about your feats, your conquests. Your children like butterflies go through their own pains and gains, experience many adversaries and advantages but sooner or later they, like butterflies, seek to be independent, strengthen their wings and fly into their freedom. Your role is to understand this deep passion of the living miracle called – Your children.
Yours, Bubbly Young Girl
