ENIGMA OF LIFE

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He said I should write all this out…he said sharing will help.. So here I sit writing. What am I writing? I don’t know myself… story of my life? My experiences?

Pains that made me a strong person and en broke me into shreds? Experiences that took me to heights and then, like a savage eagle, left me to drop down and down... Free falls are scary; you don’t have a tiny bit of hope to clench to... No parachutes to depend on... You know this chilled fall will end only with your end…and then…hum I know I am drifting way off the topic.

I know none of you will b interested in reading crap about rise and falls under gravity and out of gravity…But I still don’t know the skill to make my words breath…I don’t know how to make them alive, enough to shout and cry the pain. How can I encapsulate a vast pain in a few words? How can words make you feel the pain of growing up in an imbalanced family? How can I make u feel the torture of being scandalized time and again to b punished for not being ready to give in? How can words express the feelings of hatred that a girl feels for the shit-head guys who think of nothing but satisfying their “out of control frustrations“, emotionally and physically?Can you feel the depth of words “I am in pain and I need help”? Oh he thinks you can..

Though I doubt…but I trust him enough to believe this and ….so I share…It starts with a realization “I am in need of help... I am not as strong as I thought I was…even I have limits to my bearingl…I am afraid of any commitments especially marriage…I am not comfortable with all it brings with it… I am afraid of loosing the game”…


A realization that makes one think: “Why?” and you search reasons…well I never reached a result till I talked... I wanted desperately to talk.

Guys freak me out of my wits… not all of them... no... but all of the typical desi type with those “ egg-sized-ego personalities” and mottos like; “all-I-care-about-is-Me”, “walk behind me coz I am a MAN”, “u brought us down from heaven , so u are destined to always live down now”.

I don’t know really how it all started. what made me the way I am… hum may b a lil peep into the past help… now that I look back I see a number of “MEs” here.. Confusing? Let’s see...
Meet my family:

My dad was married twice. My mom is the second wife. His first wife died, leaving 3 sons so he remarried coz the kids needed a mom. My mom was pushed into the marriage compromise by her brother, who was eager to grab some money out of the deal. This is the shortest possible way I can put the long story of greed and selfishness that ruined my mothers’ life and is ruining ours till today.

Conclusion: I hate compromises… the may make you look like a good person but your life is not just yours. You end up having loads of others suffer... just my two cents.Ok so my mom got 3 kids. Me the eldest in them. She raised the other 3 as well and we lived really well.

The word “Step relations” was forbidden. She totally compromised to her life and we were a happy family. My dad? He never needed a family anyways. The marriage was just supposed to take care of other 3 kids, the new additions were not really welcomed…but he managed. He is a bz man…too bz to even care about home. Job, a big ‘baradri”, friends and then religious activities, he got his plate full.

He loved us…I know he do.. But he likes keeping this a secret…even from us. Sometimes if he expresses a tiny bit of emotion for me, I see this guilt in his eyes…as if he is deceiving sm1. Neither less, I love him crazy and I love believing he loves me too.

There were times when I wanted him to love me, talk to me, hug me cuddle me like all my friends’ dads…but I am an understanding person.Enough about my family!!!So this is me. I was a timid lil girl till my 8th grade but then things changed, the peer effect I guess; I started “pretending’ to have all I missed and no words here can summarize the day to day agony of living in a shattered house where your parents scream and fight and your aunties and uncles interfere far more then necessary and you all stick together for strength and then one day you realize that you are not really one.

A brother tries harming you and you see hatred in his eyes and you know you were mistaken. They don’t love you …you are a partner to inheritance that they never wanted…but the stupid miserable being in you cant give up love... You keep loving them and hurting urself.. Anyways, my “pretending” worked.

I learnt to lie and it helped. If you are not brave, the world should not necessarily know that, rite? So gradually my pretendance overtook me. I was turned to a very confident person. A new “me” emerged and the ragged, fearful timid being was taken over by a leader, courageous and intellectual person. This person had courage to fight all the misfortunes that crossed her path. This new ME was someone others looked up to for support and this new me was a star person soon, with her quick wits and her easy manners.

I loved my new self... but sometimes, at those late night moments when we remove all the masks we wear and try to get back to ourselves, in those moments I missed myself. I felt like I have buried my feelings and my “self” under a big slab of ice. This new “me” was too bold too powerful an image, it knew nothing like pain and disaster. But pain spares no one. We are destined to take our share before we leave this world. My share was not yet over…in fact till now, all my pains were because of my relations…nothing personal…so came the “obvious” share of blow.



The sparrow singing songs of joy attracted a villain. A guy claimed love and this love obsessed him enf to demand a life time imprisonment for me. He was 10 years older en me and saw me at some debate competition or something. After that his mother was on my heels for whole 3 years.

He was full of charms and manners and got everyone who met him under his spell. The guy was from a rich family and he had all that my family could demand…loads more. But I was not saying yes… y? I don’t know.. I had a feeling its not right…but soon I had to give u my feelings for a more logical push and finally one day the hard cored me learnt the lesson of love..the chimes and music was all new and finally I thought of letting a feeling get into my otherwise well governed heart.

I was ready to cherish his love. We were engaged for two days only when I got his first mail…too soon to blow up my palace of dreams, “I saw u, I liked u and so I conquered u. I wanted to own you n so now you are mine. U are too out of control but worry not…I will teach you obedience and….”, this is how it started….i dun remember how it ended but with it went my hopes. “Sick men society” we live in!!!I was totally shaken.. Too afraid to tell anyone and so my next one month is a story of total emotional torture at the hands of this man.


It took one month for the strong me to take over again and say NO. we got to know that this man got issues with his anger and he once even tried to kill some1…the news helped me flee away.No more guys for me, that’s what I thought… o I forgot to add a souvenir for my maternal uncle here…who made me realize the “shit headedness” of men many years ago. He adds to the story, a color of physical torture at the hands of a man who can think of nothing more important then his “insatiable abusive frustrations” ...not even a child’s innocence and purity.


That lasted for about one whole year… and the strong “ME” only emerged after he tried playing the same trick on my lil sister. Somehow, my strength is always evoked when something bad moves towards my lil siblings, like a lioness I attacked him, with a knife in my hand …I told him I will kill you if you dared this again, and he believed me.Strange how some of the people around us wear the best masks and yet inside they are the worst bloody men…. humm so I am not alone in my “acting parade” , I think all the mankind here is on a show of masks …terrifying falsehood rocks… you can never know how evil or good is someone deep under the mask he wears.

My best friend was abused by the man who taught her Quran. Why can’t even the holy book teach us how to behave? I guess that’s because if you stand with your back towards the sun, you see longer shadows…even of yourself.After my engagement, I decided to stand up on my own and be someone. Yet another new “ME” was born. This one was more professional, serious towards studies and all ready to reach the skies.

Now I was a top class student instead of that crazy, all-for-fun type being. I got my engineering degree in computer s/w designing and a bright future was shining down on me. Job was offered but I was planning my PhD. Life was on move again...Here comes in another man,. This time my teacher and project supervisor.. he was on his knees with the love song and all my university was talking about us…a disgusting experience… he was literally shedding tears and was acting all “majno”( I swear I did nothing to get him into this…he thought

I am a “genius” and one day we both will open a software house…etc..). so, when things got all aired, I talked to him…and he proposed.The only problem here was the fact that his daughter was in class 2. He was going to divorce the other woman just becoz she was not well educated…bullshit.I got over him easily.

So anyways, this new “ME” was furious with ambitions and only when I was steps away from my destiny, my fate changed gears again. I was re engaged. How did all this happen? I don’t really know myself. One day they were talking about a guy and next day I was told they are coming for engagement. When I protested, my parents questioned my trust and respect for them and so I….. Silence is willingness. A hollow, terrifying silence signed my destiny. And what other options I had? This was destined to happen so I better get my self tuned to it. Engagement was not a blow but everything after that was.


I am no more permitted to study, my in laws think that “rich, educated, Nobel families” don’t need their women out of house to earn a few pennies. It took me a lil time to settle to this new situation. My fate is testing my strength again. In one hand I hold my goals turned to realities in shape of degrees and scholarships, in other, I wear a ring…I could dispose of this new me as well and create a new “eastern family oriented lady”…but I am too tired of this game. Too confused. Its not like my parents always enforce their decisions on us. In fact quite the opposite is true. the only logical reason for this kind of act is lack of understanding between them. I never in my life saw them agreeing about anything.


They are like east and west bond together. I did everything I could to save my younger siblings from the tearing effect that had… and I was much successful. I made mom and dad realize the sin of upbringing kids without love and growing them into confused beings.

I taught my elder brothers how we can all change the word “step relation” and I made my parental “baradri” realize that just because my mom is not from their family doesn’t means we are strangers. My home was a new place soon and my dad was finally a responsible person. I was with him on property sites and religious meetings…everywhere. So in short, I fought my mother’s war and I won.

My mission was to give my younger siblings what I never had… I wanted to save them, in all honesty, from the tortures I had. So they love me? Huh: “you towered over us and so we never got parents’ love. . .every one loves only you and you set such high standards for us, we can’t compete. You ruined us ….” In a way it is good. At least they don’t think father don’t love them coz he never wanted them.. Instead they think “I never allowed him to”…I am getting married in first week of April. Never saw the man I am engaged to… I can built hopes but I feel frightened of them..

Dreaming can ruin us…it had done that to me many times…I am no more ready to fight …and giving up is not my choice as well…. Somehow all three “ME” are intermingled now. I am no more certain about anything.I look into the mirror and a total stranger looks back at me…I know nothing about my myself anymore... nothing with surety…and don’t know why, but inside me, there is no will to live on.. Death looks like the only escape door.. And even that is not in my hands.

Each breath tires me more and I go on… Roaming the desserts with a destiny in mind is a quest…what do we call it when there is no destiny??? What can keep us going without hopes…without dreams…without will??? There must b something because that “something” is keeping me alive. Hum I think it all makes no sense…I told you I can’t make words breath. .. But he said writing it all down will help…




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/In Quest requested.
A lavish moment… celebrated..
A doomed harmony……… achieved
A horrendous pain….. Conquered
A cutting wound……. healed
A deafening roar….. Silenced
A chain of Fears …….
brokenNow the quest begins…
The start of me
The end of myself



............................................................Asma 24.

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