‘Why don’t I have a better mother? Rita’s and Sam’s mothers are so much fun. I wish my mother was like them. Why can’t I be proud of my mother?’ – these words kicking in Nyla’s mind as she spent the rest of the day locked up in her room, angry, hurt and embarrassed. Reminiscing all the gibes people threw at her mother for her callow and obtuse behaviours, Nyla silently screamed her livid throes and wept herself to sleep.
Her mother knocks at her door incessantly, shouting, ‘Nyla open the door! You are too much…where are you learning all these bad manners from? I know who taught you to be rude…your friends and cousins and Aunts (and she mentions anyone Nyla knows)…you are such a wretched child why don’t you just die…or just leave…I didn’t like it when you were born…I wanted a boy…Now you are here to eat my heart out’….and the tantrum goes on. Nyla silently listens, trying her patience, thinking of any penance to feel sorry for her contrite birth.
Nyla opens the door, fulminated and marred at her mother’s callous candor, and screams her part of the story and shuts the door again devoured in her recluse self…and this continues…once in a while...no…maybe quite often.
‘I should have been patient. I shouldn’t have lost my temper on her. She’s my mother and I should have silently listened to what she says even though it hurt me. When others mocked at you I should have laughed at it as a joke. You didn’t have to be a ‘fun’ mother. You could have just been there beside me’ – these words kicking in Nyla’s mind today as she spent the rest of the day locked up in her room, gloomy, hurt and repentant. Reminiscing the unpleasant rows with her mother, Nyla silently wept herself to sleep… her mother’s photo in her hand.
11th May'09 7:15 pm
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