A New Beginning – Pooja Nemade

‘Go Forth’ – played the new levi’s commercial on d flat screen. ‘I am’, thought Anita.

She was catching up on all her favourite soaps after 2 weeks. But she knew they hadn’t changed the tiniest bit unlike her life. Last 2 weeks…she mused as she pressed the coffee mug to her lips. Each day had been the same. She had worked all day long and come back home itching for some well-earned sleep. But it eluded her. She felt like an insomniac. She had no clue if she had even spared some time to eat. She checked the sink to find some unwashed dishes stacked in it and got back to the couch again. She muted the television not interested in the commercials. All was calm around. She could faintly hear the rhythm of classical music echoing in the neighbouring house. The storm of utterly mixed feelings raging inside her in contrast with the peaceful calm outside disturbed her. She switched on the audio again and increased the volume. She wondered if she was doing the right thing but before she could ruminate further on it, the title track of a soap ushered her into a dizzying nostalgia. She almost heard her 5 year old son and her husband’s stifled laughs behind her crackling their own private jokes and the usual yell, “Mom, I‘m hungry. Please give me something to eat,” right at the start of an episode. She was on the verge of getting up when she smiled to herself and settled back down on her couch knowing fairly well that today she could watch the entire episode from start till the end without having her son around aching to pester her and make her get up from the couch somehow but that did not make her feel good. It irked her rather. The unfairness of it all irked her. Her hand reached out to grab something lying on the table next to her. She closed her eyes. She had always been a pantheist but now she felt betrayed. She did not believe in Him anymore because her mind reasoned that if He did exist, He would never let that wretched drunk truck driver smash into their car 2 weeks back. She thought of her son and her husband smiling, laughing lost in their own world just before the truck hit their car and felt bile rise up in her throat. She swallowed it down. The immense unfathomable pain of the shock of their deaths had eased a bit now. But the emptiness she felt had not ebbed away even a bit. Her hand tightened around the gun she held. And then suddenly her eyes shot open. She couldn’t do this. It was almost as if she realized the implications of a call she got an hour back, as if she now understood the words she heard an hour back. She couldn’t end TWO lives. Though the emptiness she felt was suffocating, someone needed her to live. Now there was a hope living inside her. Anita got up from her couch. She knew this was a new beginning.

 

-Pooja Nemade