Strings Attached

~Chapter 9~

"I don't really say anything to provoke her. She leaves no chance to insult me, even then. Just today, she practically called me a beggar in front of her friends. Can you believe that?" "Achha (Really)! What did she say?" dadi asks, shocked. "Uncle Jabbar called her to bring me home along with her, I think, as it was my first day... she has a car, you know. And she doesn't want to be seen with me, ever. So the arrangement was a little irksome to her. But she let me ride with her anyway."

"When her friends asked about me, do you know what she said? She told them I am the daughter of their old cook, before I could say anything myself. And that they are financing me to study further!" "What?!?!" dadi shouts into the phone, deafening my eardrums for a split second, and then proceeds to mutter profanities I never knew she had in her vocab. "Is she a little loose in the head?" she asks me after she has recovered from the outrageousness of my narrative. "I really think there is something wrong with her. She has an annoyingly extreme split personality," I answer solemnly.

ly felt like running away and taking a taxi home. But I don't know the directions yet, so I was helpless. I don't know for how long I'll be able to endure her, though."

"Do you want to change the family you're living with?" dadi inquires seriously after some time. I ponder over it for a few seconds. Abba doesn't have time to listen to my sob tales and take more leaves to find another home for me. Besides, it hasn't got so bad here... yet. I think I will live... or at least, I'll try to. So I answer her with a 'no'.

There was only one bright spot on my first day of school, and that came in the very last period. I found that Poulomi has chosen this city too, and she will be in some of my classes. I tell dadi that and she orders me to stick to her, if I don't want to go insane.

"And now, give dadi a hug because I'm going to go pray," she says finally, her voice shaking a little. I hug my phone teary-eyed and after saying goodbye, I disconnect the call.

Dadi doesn't let me know but she has become very weak in the past few months. I really fear for her life. She has no qualms about going to her heavenly abode, though. She thinks she has bossed everyone around long enough. Her task in this duniya (world) is complete.

She's had it really tough in her life. My dada (grandpa) had a habit of gambling. I got to know about it from dadi herself, although she doesn't want me to think ill of him. Though temperamental at times, he was an extremely caring person, and so, to increase his wealth for his family, he started to gamble. My dad was really young at that time, barely even fifteen.

Initially, things began to go really well for him, he won quite a lot of money. Dadi warned him against temptation time and time again, but he brushed her worries off as baseless. He even bought a small piece of land with it, and sent my dad, at eighteen, to do his Masters abroad with all he had saved from his government job. It was a fairytale run for five years, but suddenly, he started losing. He lost a lot, even more than he could afford and it affected his health.

Finally, one day, dada lost really bad at one of his bets and died of stroke, leaving a family of six (wife, son and four daughters) behind him, devastated and ruined. Dadi bore it really well; even though she spent hours crying alone, she never let any of her children know.