Birthday
Yet another lonely day in the city where it is a crime to be lonely, an offense to be sad, an unforgivable sin to get depressed especially, when it’s your birthday. Had I been a poet, I would have written a poem to describe how I’m feeling at this time, just like the clouds that are withdrawing themselves from the sunshine it seems as if I’m withdrawing myself from this life. It feels as if the biggest truth of life is death, cold, ruthless, unbiased at the same time it appears to be the biggest mystery. I don’t know how one feels when one dies because I’ve never experienced myself. But hey, I’ve heard ‘em say “You gotta try everything in life!” Ironically, it is something that can’t really be ‘tried in life’.
That was a pretty gloomy introduction to begin my story, but well ,I can’t even call this a story for two big reasons, first I’m no story-teller and second, this is kind of a one-day’s-tale, see I don’t even know what precise term they use for it. But I’m pretty sure if you haven’t given up reading this yet, you will be bored enough to read the remainder of it. I forgot to tell my name, my name is Radhika Kaur, I’m 28 years old and have a family of three which includes me and my parents. We have been living in this city for over a decade and have become quite familiar with this place. With its shopping malls, metro, stray dogs, high rising buildings and equally deep pits and little kids with the tendency to fall in those pits, their parents who let them fall in those pits and the media who covers this bullshit and broadcasts it the whole day as if that’s all we care about...! Wait, where did I start from, oops it seems as if I just digressed a bit but the point is that we belong to this terribly-awesome city of Delhi!
So, back to the dour introduction where we had started from, its my birthday and nobody has wished me yet, and if you think I’m going to get a surprise in a few minutes time then you’re wrong, why? You’ll get to know later. Don’t worry I’m not going to commit a suicide after all it’s a crime and I hate going to jail, no, I haven’t yet gone to one but you know what they’re like, creepy places with shitty washrooms and policemen with big moustaches and an unmatched tendency to harass women! (That’s what I’ve seen in movies!!) So, I won’t kill myself. A few days back we all were witness to the Supreme Court’s decision of legalizing passive Euthanasia, after that- Aruna Shaunbag case. It was really moving, but I gotta tell you one thing, I had got to know about Aruna a few years ago when my mom told me about her. It was when I had joined an MNC after completing my degree and used to come home late at night. Mom told me that it was dangerous to wander about in the streets of Delhi at night, I said “Yeah Mom, why not!” and she said don’t take this matter lightly dear, if you really aren’t serious over this issue then go and see Aruna Shaunbag, you’ll get to know why I’m getting worried. I asked her “Who’s Aruna Shaunbag?” and she told me the story, from that day I knew that no matter where you live, even if you live in a metropolitan city, as long as you’re a woman, you are constantly under threat from almost everyone, including, obviously, yourself.
Goodness, again I took another direction, birthday, yes I was talking about birthday. So I think I’ve made my point by now why I’m committing this felony of getting depressed on my birthday. Not even a message, my facebook’s wall is as unfilled as a politician’s stomach. How could they forget such an important day, I mean its like forgetting a National Holiday! How unfeeling they are! If you’re thinking whether my boyfriend wished me then mister, for your kind information I have no boyfriend because no guy in this city would like to hangout with a five-hundred-pound elephant, that’s what my mom says. I don’t like this behavior of hers, I mean I know I’m fat, but ain’t I earning a salary as fat as myself? 85,000 bucks a month! What if I’m not getting married? Well, I do care about this issue but right now I’m more focused on my career and I’d love to remain the same as long as I am myself. I tried to get rid of this depressed state of mine by invading the shopping mall but its not working. “I won’t ever call these heartless people whom I call –friends”, this is the pledge that I took as soon as I stepped out of the shopping mall, won’t call them, switched off my cell phone. I completely forgot about my parents, you would’ve been thinking by now whether they wished me or not, well I should’ve told this to you earlier that they went to the US a week ago to attend the wedding of my mom’s sister. Yes, Dolly Aunty’s finally getting married and that too with an Indian in US!! How Bollywood-ish it sounds, doesn’t it? But she didn’t fell in love with one rather her parents arranged it up because they were worried if she didn’t get married this year then they’ll have to bear with her forever. Plus, no person with brains would ever think of marrying a woman who finds mistakes in anything, everything. “Radhika you’re looking fat in that dress!” “Preeti ji you’re hair is terrible!” “Manju ji your clothes look as if you’ve bought them from Shani Bazaar!” and bla bla bla! Only an NRI would be as foolish as to marry our Dolly Aunty!
You would have, by now grown accustomed to my habit of digression, it is better if you do it right now, or on the second thought, leave it, this tale’s gonna end soon. Hmm, so I left the shopping mall and decided to lose some extra kilos by walking to the bus-stand. Yes I use buses not because I don’t know how to drive but this way you don’t have to worry about getting the car parked. The bus-stand was little less than half a kilometer far from the shopping mall, and the area in between was semi-deserted wasteland occupied by petty workers and street shopkeepers. I heard some sounds from an under-developed house, some sort of weird commotion, I decided to overhear it, but as if a lightening had struck me I saw in front of the house, a man with a gun pointing it towards a girl who would be in her twenties, both the man and the girl appeared to be civilized, I mean they surely belonged to well-to-do families, and the man saw me standing there, in a sudden outburst of fear and anger he pressed the trigger, and boom, Radhika was shot dead. Not, Radhika Kaur, but Radhika Tanwar.
With a pool of blood beside her pale body, she looked as shocked in her death as if she didn’t know why he killed her. As shocked as her parents and peer group would be once the news hits the TV Channels, and the one from which I came to know her name this night, told me that she indeed was a college going girl, 20 years old. Her parents had no idea about why this happened to their child, her friends and college mates seemed to be stern and indifferent with banners against the government and questions for our very celebrated CM Ms Shiela Dixit. Now if you ask me what I did when I saw all this, like a deer running away from a lion who has killed its sibling, I ran away, like a coward, with nothing but fear occupying the grey cells of my brain. It was a foolish act, I admit, but it was involuntary and an unstoppable rush of adrenaline guided me towards the bus stand from where I never looked back. I decided to pen it down, as a story to tell to myself every time I go to sleep, that on the eve of Women’s Day I could do nothing to save the life of one. That, in this city, the biggest crime, more deplorable than being alone on your birthday, is...being a woman.
Author: Ketan Sharma
Date: 8 Mar ,2011