Broken Strings

Until her

JAY POV

I was listening to the song 'flightless bird' (recommended by Pinterest) when Maanav came in and announced that he is going tomorrow to buy books. I gave him a look and returned back to the music. 

I didn't fully understand the full meaning of the words. A jumble of sentences with no meaning but when they are put together, it is like it's trying to say me something. Something that is found and that I have to look for it too. But what is that something is truly beyond my scope of understanding. I decided to ask Maanav later about it. Putting the song on repeat I started cleaning up the house and Maanav helped me with the dinner. Silently. Maybe this is one of the reasons why Maanav was the only one who ever knew about my............lack of emotion. Because he doesn't need me to say or express or to show in any way. He just knows. He always does. Though I can't say the same about him. That makes me feel something. Something very alien. The kind of feeling you get when you are walking under a gloomy sky. The kind of feeling you get when you keep running and then suddenly you realize that there is nowhere to run now. the kind of feeling that you get when you finally realize that there is no Santa Claus when you have spent your entire childhood believing in him, hoping he would take you away from this hell if you pray hard enough. I was frowning full on now. I hate it when I can't interpret what kind of emotion I am going through.

"Why do you look so sad?" Maanav asked looking at me from the end of the table.

"Is that what I look like? I am sad?"

"Well..........You look like it"

I nodded. Dr. Chatta once explained to me that there is no analogy to identify what a person might be feeling in that situation. And there are many types of emotions. You can be happy in a million different ways and be sad in another million ways. Since I can't distinguish what is what He just advised me to go with gut feeling. Even though I can't feel only one of the emotions that a human is supposed to feel, slowly it's taking over my other emotions too. Maybe that is the reason why Maanav insists on these medical sessions a lot. He is afraid that I would end up dead or worse........Living dead. I shook my head to clear out my thoughts and concentrated on eating.

.............................................................................................................................................

That night I had the dream again. A woman screaming, tying a cloth around my mouth and pushing me below a bed. She would always say to hide. Always. And then the dream shifted.

After they found me that night half-burned and dead state, the firemen or more precisely Sanjay, I don't remember the last time, took care of me. He was the one who dragged me out of the house and the one who took care of things while I was in the hospital, recovering. I didn't say a word about what happened that night and as people started pushing in I stopped talking altogether. And through it all, he never asked me about that night and said that even though I didn't say anything he understands. He would talk with me though. He used to talk a lot. About his family, his wife, how she would love to meet me. And I used to smile at him. He was the only person I used to smile at. It was like I found ray sunlight cutting through the haze of darkness I filled my world with.

When I was strong enough to walk he left me in a foster home promising me that he would come back and that he would adopt me and that we would be together forever then. He said that I would have to stay here a few days to legalize everything. I smiled at him then, believing him.

He didn't come again. Not once. I used to wait for him every day at the entrance looking for him but he never came. Finally, one day, while I was waiting, a kid came towering over me sneering. He asked me whether I was waiting for the person who dropped me off here. I nodded. The silence was the only ally I had in this place and I was not ready to let go of it. He laughed then. He said that Sanjay has a son now and that he would never come back for me now. He said that he came in yesterday and has withdrawn his adoption forms and that I should quit pinning for him.

I cried myself to sleep that night. From the next day, I was punching bag for all the older kids in the foster home and the nurses never cared as long as I did my chores and stayed alive. After almost 1 year I found a newspaper talking about the death of a brave firefighter. He died the night he left me. I wasn't angry at the kid who told me to give up. Instead, I would have given anything to make what the boy said as the truth. That day was the second time I cried myself to sleep.

After one and half years in that place and after one and a half years of bullying and bone-breaking chores given by the foster home, one of the kids threw me off the first-floor window saying that I was being deliberately dumb to earn sympathies from the people who come to the foster home to adopt. I was taken to the hospital. A woman whose identity I don't know off came into the hospital on the day I was being discharged and said that she would be adopting me and that she would take me away the next day. I didn't believe her.

All the elder kids that night came into my room and beat me up so hard that my grey worn-out shirt turned a dripping sickening pulsing hot red. I didn't scream once or even flinched. I was half dead by the time one of the nurses found me. I couldn't feel anything anymore.

I don't even know whether they found out who hit me since I didn't open my mouth about them. But that night was the time I realized that at the end of the day no one cares about you, your pain, your words, or your life, that I have no one now. Not anymore. At the end of the day when you are all alone, all you can do is suppress everything you have and lock it down in some deep dark place that no one can find. A place I built after what happened that night. A place where only I can go. A place I never want to go again and never let the world see.  But for the first time that didn't hurt me. Because I locked it down. I locked down everything. And I never felt pain again or remembered what exactly happened that night. Not once till now. Not until I saw her. Because she looked like that woman. The woman who rescued me from that place.