Chapter-4

It was true that I was a man of the people. That was the other thing my family did not fancy accompanying me, even in a formal manner. They did not understand why it was necessary to call me and make me introduce myself to her guests and others as they were making introductions to one another. It would be wrong if I said I did not feel terrible, but I had learned to swallow the humiliation and did not expose my genuine expression at a very early age.

And my problem was, I could not beg them to accept me and include me in their happiness from a distance at the same time. I always used to get the treatment from an unsavoury person at my mother's place. Therefore, I was their family member just for the namesake.

They did not bother to include me in their plan, while I did not try to find out where they were planning to go on vacation, watch movies, etcetera. I could not forget. I used to get ready initially as soon as I heard that they were making some plans to go to a movie and stood at the gate wearing my best dress. They looked at meand at the past, but none of them asked me to get in the car. I did not dare ask them to take me to watch a movie, and they did not bother to take me.

But staying at home was a kind of brutal punishment for me. Loneliness stuffed my mind with negative thoughts, and I began to feel rejected, unwanted, and weak. My biggest problem was that there was no one around me with whom I could share my issues and light my heart. I stayed with them even after that; hardly any exchange of words happened among us. But yes, I learned to keep control over my emotions because of their indifference toward me.

When I grew up a little, I made myself understand that expecting acceptance from them was not going to happen in this birth. Therefore, I decided that I would not let loneliness overwhelm me and throw me into the abyss of depression. I began to be inclined towards my friends for company to get rid of my solitude. At my very early age, I realized my presence had no value in the world of my people. It did not upset them where I was all day long or what I was eating.

At the same time, they just did not wish to see me around them. In particular, my presence used to cheese off my mother at least. Therefore, when I grew a little more, I began to spend most of the time with my friends. Despite being around them, I often found myself alone, and that used to bite me a lot.

I ever pretended to be circled around my friends. But in my soul, I looked for my mother by my side when I fell sick. I felt dreadful when my parents did not turn up at the parents' meeting or annual function as others did. But there was none in my friend's group with whom I could share my feelings. Sometimes, teachers ceased to look for my parents. They also knew I was an unwanted child. But yes, their concern for me had increased.

Loneliness always used to bite me and inundate me with the feeling that I was rejected. But I did not let it show up on my face. I did not wish they showed pity on me, or they believed I was vulnerable at any point. I was conscious of my shortcomings, and I understood at an early age that I would always have to fight all the battles on my own.

Thus, I did not let anyone know much about myself, and by God's grace, I had reasonable control over my emotions. My friends had a false impression of me; I was a carefree girl. My parents were of modern thought, and they loved to give me space in my life. And I could read on their faces that they were jealous of me and wished to live my sort of life.

My parents were unaware of my natural face. It was just because they did not want to sit next to me or talk to me. They did not even know what my favourite colour was or what I loved to eat. But yes, my friends were familiar with my likes and dislikes. They had established the wrong notion about me; I was an unemotional person and a self-centred person. I was not an indoor body and loved spending most of the time outdoors. It thrilled me to be with my friends, and I did not look for them. And I was overjoyed that I had achieved success in hiding my right side from them.

I had made a promise to myself at a very early age that I would not let my tears show in my eyes to anyone, no matter what. When I fell while playing and got hurt, I did not shed tears or show my wounds to anyone. Most of the time, I used to do first aid on my injuries on my own and hide my tears behind a brave fake grin on my face.

But I wept a lot sitting inside the bathroom. Bet you I did not forget to run the tap so that my voice did not go out. Yes, while crying, I always miss my new mother terribly. I waited for my mother to come and see my wounds, but I knew she would never turn up at my heart, and I would not rush to her to show my wounds. But yes, my friends definitely came forward and showed some concern and took my care when they were around.

I did not fancy becoming like those girls who went into depression or ruined themselves just because their parents and family were not bothered about them or had no importance in their husbands' lives. I did not believe in a dream world that some miracle would happen someday and my family would begin to understand my value in their lives. I had the guts to accept the truth no matter how harsh it was, so I did not fancy their love or affection.

I knew begging for someone's attention would just lower my image before them, and it would create a more complicated life for me and others as well. And you never know, any of them could make fun of my emotions and take advantage of me, which I could not allow to happen in my life.

To keep me away from any kind of negative feelings and to keep me mentally stable, I always made friends wherever I went. I always tried to keep them preserved. It gave me immense pleasure to think that I had one more friend with whom I could talk and spend some more time because they invariably gave me the feeling that I was not all alone.

Although I was aware of the fact from the inside, I was just deceiving others and myself. In reality, I was evading the truth and leading a fake life. Before marriage, I had a few friends with whom I could share my few feelings to some limit because I knew they would not disclose them to anyone as I kept their secrets to myself only. We used to do some misadventures together and were punished for them. But we were so united that we did not leak the names of one another if any of us was caught, no matter what.

Many times, I just used to do a misadventure to get into the limelight of everyone talking. In fact, I had an attention sickness problem. But I knew about the repercussions as well, if my intimate family came to know about it. I still remember when I was in college. I loved to keep friendships with boys, and at that time, it was considered taboo to make friendships with boys. I loved to violate the rules. That was the other thing. I did not enjoy their company at all. I always lived in constant fear that my complexion would abate if I kept roaming in the sun.

Despite my reluctance, I stayed with them, and I knew other girls were jealous of me, which I enjoyed most. Likewise, I was not too fond of smoking anything ; until I smoked because they considered it a cool and bold measure and that was not such a familiar sight in society or in college. But I always feared that it would stain my teeth. But my family was totally unaware of my college life. I lost touch with a few of them after college, and the rest parted from me after my marriage.

Honestly speaking, I still claimed I had a gang of physical and virtual friends on Facebook. The list of my friends had gone up to over 2000. Ravi always annoyed me because of my spikes in the number of friends list day by day. I had read somewhere recently that those who looked for friendship on Facebook and kept updating themselves were sad and hollow from the inside in reality and led a fake life. More or less, I agreed with that statement.

However, then I got picky about making and maintaining friends, especially physical friends. There would be nothing wrong if I said that I did not make friends with every person whom I met on the way and took them to my home any more than I used to do prior. Frankly speaking, I had become more class-conscious after marriage.

Then my criteria was to make friendships with those who belonged to a well-off family. Even if I did not like them at all, I really could not come to know why I did so. Perhaps it gave me a certain sense of feeling that I did not keep terms with the lower class. And at the same time, I had a hidden competition with them. I had a hidden competition with them as well as the feeling that they were inferior to me.

I was clueless about what havoc I would have created with myself if they had not come into my life. I talked to them incessantly over the phone. And they used to play a pivotal role in keeping me posted on all the happenings in our high-class society. We kept meeting with one another almost at regular intervals. This allowed me and others to show off their recent collection of possessions.

And trust me, we used to provide fair competition for one another. We spent money on clothes and accessories like anything and ensured at the same time that we did not repeat them at our kitty parties at any cost.

We had a group of six friends. We were all fitness freaks and had met with one another in the gym. Apart from the gym, we almost met every alternate day with some excuse or other. We always preferred to have lunch together in some flashy restaurants instead and mostly went shopping together. Other than that, there were several things common among us:

We just stayed with our husbands for the sake of their respective money and tolerated their nuisance to an excellent length. We were all stark alone in our lives. Other than that, we did not feel the need for men in our lives other than our husbands. We all pretended to be extremely happy in our lives. Eventually, we were all leading a miserable life with a fake plastered smile on our faces.

Without a doubt, I loved spending most of the time with them outside the house. But I could not claim that any of them would be worth being my best friend. However, they were all from well-off families, as I was. That was the only reason we became friends. However, I knew from the inside that they were nothing more than worthless creatures.

There was one more common thing among them. They were all afflicted with depression, which was eroding them from the inside. Besides, they had to depend on heavy drinks and cocaine to combat their loneliness. And many times, they create chaos and become a show for others as well. I really felt terrible for them and found myself helpless to take them out of their miserable situation.

I often felt pity for them and thought about what they were doing with their respective lives. They did not accept the fact that their husbands would never come back to them and moved ahead in life; life would not be as bad as they were thinking of without them. But I did not believe in being a busybody at the same moment. They had had to depend on some other ways to abate their stress. One of their ways of creating commotion in another's life, and they did not regret that.

Actually, they all had a weak digestive system and had an unpleasant habit of consuming spices more than enough. Because of that, they could not digest them, so they toxicities the environment. With plenty of time, they turned bland food into spicy food. I was sure either you would not get what I said, or you would get something wrong. It was straightforward, my friend; they had an awful habit of poking their nose into other businesses unnecessarily and spreading rumours about anyone. And most of them were so-called housewives.

I had a big reason behind calling them, so-called wives. Despite having the label of being housewives, they did not have knowledge of the ABC of their house, and they did not feel atrocious about it. According to them, supervising the house was none of their business. Therefore, they were least bothered about their home and home stuff. They had left their entire house to domestic staff to take care of.

They were not also capable of guiding and supervising their staff. Because they did not know how to get things done, and their staff did not stay behind to take advantage of their flaws and did nothing. They were just like that, lazy bums and opportunists. Because of that, their house remained untidy all the time despite keeping a pool of domestic staff. They always looked for some excuse or other for why the work was not done, or executed on time.

But my staff were the opposite; they did not dare to play the same game with me. They were aware I would not spare any of them if I found them lazing around. And excuses would not work for me.

But yes, all my friends counted on me. I had gained their trust. And they could approach me at any time with their issue, and they were equally confident that I would certainly help them to sort out their existing problem. They had no hesitation in sharing their secrets, from naughty to nasty, with me because they knew I would not let their secrets come out, no matter what. They had so much blind trust in me that gave me immense pleasure and made me feel worthwhile.

Many times, I came forward and helped them to decorate their houses according to their theme party. Other than that, I helped them to decide the menu for the food accordingly. And I instructed their cooks on how to prepare the food while standing there. They loved working with me. In addition to that, they took my advice to keep the games for the party accordingly.

And many more things. I literally used to work hard to get their parties rocking. Genuinely speaking, I enjoyed decking them up according to the theme. It literally made me feel so good when they told me that the event had gone successfully. And everyone spoke about the party. And their husbands appreciated them.

Yes, that was my forte. So, I loved to carry the house manager's tag, but Ravi did not count on me to make his business event successful. And I felt atrocious about that. He hired people from outside and did not mind paying them a hefty amount of money, and I was expected to attend the party as a guest. Anyway, not all those friends could help me come out of my problem because they were just worse. I was struggling all alone with my problem. Rather than solving the issue, they would just make it worse if they learned about it.