This is the second part in a 6 part fictional story series.
Everything in this story is purely imaginary with inspirations from real life.
Any resemblance to any person or occasion in real life is completely coincidental.
2. Perspective
Miraa got up from the bathroom floor, disoriented. She heard her mother bang on the room's door, shouting, "Miraa, what do you want for breakfast? When is your next class?". Relieved that her mother had not sensed her internal battle in the bathroom, Miraa got out of the bathroom, went to the her room's door and tried to reply as calmly as possible, " Anything but Upma ma! My next class is at 12!". She hadn't done a good job of covering up her weak, broken voice, since pat came the next interrogation, " Your voice is low dear.. what happened? Are you okay? Was it another nightmare?". Miraa smiled, understanding her mom's concern.
She had had nightmares of her abuser chasing her, finding her, torturing her and abusing her, night after night for months. Finding no other way to explain her narrow, dark circled eyes, pale skin and tired composure when she had gone to bed fairly early with more than 8 hours of apparent sleep, she had started confiding in her mom of the nightmares and of how it caused her to spend her nights sleepless.
And quite frankly, it was a relief to tell the truth.
Miraa was done lying to her mom. She had told a lifetime's worth of utter lies, lying through her teeth, to explain the bruises on her face, the reasons why she would return late from college and the reason why she constantly was texting a contact named "Vasuki" on her phone. It was only recently, a few months back, that she had broken down completely to her mom, telling her everything as truthfully as she could, sparing the vivid details of the physical abuse. No daughter could ever tell those gory details to the face of her mother and Miraa was no different.
Her understanding mother had helped her swiftly communicate the details of her abuser to her college professors and classmates and had given her constant reassurance that her abuser would never be able to contact her again. Though she was a busy professor herself, she had taken up the duty of picking up and dropping off Miraa at college, sometimes coming during her lunch break to check on her and altogether had been a solid rock of unwavering support.
The trust had been massively broken, yes, but knowing the reason why, helped the duo rebuild their relationship from scratch. Her mother would feel agitated at times when she saw Miraa engrossed in her phone and would insist on her chatting through her device, going to the extent of merging both their numbers together in the same phone. Miraa would feel frustrated at these moments and would scream at her mother that she could be trusted, but at the end of the day, both of them knew it was safety over privacy and they stuck to it nonetheless.
Another bout of the door being banged brought Miraa back to earth. As she opened the door, her mother stood at the arch, looking concerned and livid, frowning at her, expecting an explanation. A hug from Miraa knocked out her anger and she stood there, hugging her back with one eye on the clock.
"Miraa look at the time baby! Its 11:45, you haven't even had your breakfast and I doubt if you have brushed your teeth...what on earth have you been doing all this time?"
"Just meditating mom!" Miraa said sheepishly.
"Dear, whatever you do, do it under my supervision please! Don't make me feel anxious baby", her mom replied, relief written in her previously concerned face.
Her mom made her a cheese sandwich (her favourite) and after she had finished eating, just before her classes began, her mom did the customary prayer, muttering Sanskrit words with her palms over Miraa's head. She had taken up this ritual after Miraa's breakdown, believing in the power of the vibrations to protect and strengthen her daughter.
"Om Chandra Meyli Surya Meyli Kuru Kuru Swaaha" she muttered repeatedly until she felt satisfied.
Miraa joined her online class, muted her audio and video and started taking notes. Paying attention to online classes was a task in itself, and today Miraa felt it to be very difficult. She couldn't focus, not with her previously hidden emotional wounds now raging at the surface, thanks to Past.
Thankfully the lecturer for the day was a student favourite, as she never asked any questions except for the occasional "Is it clear? Am I audible?" and was content to drone on with the subject using the presentation. Miraa relaxed, allowing her thoughts to take her away, mindful of the lecturer's voice, ready to answer if called out. As the voice droned on about the benefits of boilers in industries, Miraa began introspecting.
"Have I actually chained Past?
Have I held on to this memory of Vasuki?
Have I been so cruel and evil to wish Vasuki's death, who is after all, another human being?
Who are you calling human?? No human would have done what he did to you!
He deserves to die, that shameless, manipulative, backstabbing, hypocritical dog!!
He deserves no mercy for what he did, that dirty double faced cockroach!!"
On and on went the conflicting feelings in her mind voice, relentless with no sign of concluding, to the point where Miraa wanted her name to be called out by the lecturer or at least some form of distraction from her own thoughts.
She managed to distract herself by deciding to count the number of words in each slide presented. Soon, the lecture was over, her name called out, her attendance given and her system shut down.
Finding no point in studying her notes, she took out her journal and wrote down each and every thought in her head, unfiltered, as she had done for the past many weeks, whenever her mind had overwhelmed her. Screaming was another alternative but a journal was much less noisy and messy.
As she finished writing it down, she set down her pen and casually flipped back to the previous entries, quite out of boredom and not out of interest. Her eyes fell upon a sentence that appeared in one entry, and as she moved on to the next page, there it was, again!
Wondering if she had read the same page twice, she went back to the page, now alert and mindful of the words she read. She saw the sentence, 'I wish he would say sorry for what he did' and sure enough, it was there, again, in the next page and the next and in the one she had written a few minutes ago!
She hastily went back to the first ever entry in her journal, whose first sentence, ironically, was the exact same 'I wish he would say sorry for what he did'.
She wondered, "Why am I wishing for his death and for his apology at the same time? Why do I want him to say sorry and to die?".
She laughed, thinking, "That's what he would say, every time he hit me.
Sorry.
He would hit me, abuse me, use me and then would sit down, start crying, saying sorry.
Every time I screamed NO, every time I begged him to stop, he would go one step further in hurting me, silence me and then would touch my feet, telling sorry.
Touch my feet and say 'I have never touched any girl's feet except my mother's; I am touching yours.'
Whenever I told him to go away from me, he would tell sorry for disturbing me, promising to go away from me forever, assuring that he would not leave even a trace of his existence in my life...
He would come back the next day.. to try to change my mind.. and if I didn't act according to his expectations, he would try to force himself on me...and if I fought his touch, he would slap me and tell me not to make him feel guilty... he would ask me to enjoy the moment...
ewwww.. how dare he....Bloody piece of filth!"
A visibly shaking Miraa spat at the floor, resentfully. Any moment when she recalled how he had touched her made her cringe and recoil in disgust. If she had the power to burn him to ashes for what he had done to her, she would.
"Bullshit... every single word he said was bullshit...such fake apologies ...that hypocritical imbecile didn't know the meaning of sorry."
A random quote she had seen somewhere suddenly popped up in her mind,
"Don't expect an apology from someone who sees nothing wrong with their actions".
Miraa contemplated, trying to see her abuser from a new perspective.
Though he had said sorry, he had never meant it. The sorry said was only to manipulate her emotions into forgiving him and charm her into trusting him blindly once again, at those rare moments where she had stood up to him and tried to break up with him.
He had literally said, during his peak moments,
"Yes you bitch, you are my slave. You are my dog. You are my puppy. I care for you so much and my care will seem like cruelty sometimes. I will always care for you, always keep you inside my hands, always hit you if you cross limits, because you don't know how to behave properly like a homely girl and actually, you don't even know how to take care of yourself, you are such a scatterbrain.
You act like you know everything and need nobody, but you can't act in front of me the way you act in front of your mother. I know how lonely you are and I am here to fulfil that lack. All I ask for you is to follow my instructions and meet my expectations, is that too much, Miraa? After all that I have done for you, can't you do this for me in return, you disappointment gifting angel?
The world is selfish Miraa and I am here to protect you. Yes I will hurt you and what I do will seem to be like harassment. I know how much it will pain. But that is all for protecting you. It is only for your protection and for your good that I am doing this. I get no benefit from it. I hurt myself in the same way I hurt you, so that I can feel the pain I put you through.
I have given a commitment to you Miraa and I will abide by it, even if you forget your commitment to me. I am not a coward like you to run away from a relationship when it gets hard. I will stay with you, I will guide you, I will correct you, I will take up the responsibility to make you stay with me.
I am not a quitter Miraa. I will fight for what I want, even if it means that I need to take up certain actions against you.
I know it hurts Miraa, I know. But if you don't act according to my expectations of how a girl should behave, I have no way of correcting your behaviour and controlling you other than by slapping you and hurting you. It is the only thing that works. Its what my parents taught me and it is what I will do to you."
Miraa felt her eyes well up with tears as she rushed to her refuge in the bathroom to let out her repressed emotions.
How stupid, how stupid had she been, to not see through his intentions! How blind had she been, to not see his true colours!
She let go of suppressing her emotions and collapsed on the floor, as image after torturous image of her trauma flashed through her mind. Silent tears dropped down her cheeks, falling at her feet, forming a puddle as they fell. She let go of resisting those images and saw all those horrors of her past.
What use was there in resisting anyway, when it had already happened?
After what seemed like an eternity, the ghastly replays stopped. Mira took huge lungfulls of deep breaths, as though she had been drowning and had just now managed to reach and break the surface of the water, gasping for breath.
Hugging herself and rubbing her shoulders, she whispered to herself, "This is his true nature. I was just blinded by love to see it."
"Isn't it of no use then, child, to expect Vasuki to feel guilty for what he did?", Past said.
Miraa turned around, expecting to see a black form, but saw a greyish, translucent shape, barely visible in the light.
"Past..? What happened to you..?", she asked, concerned.
"Is that concern I hear in your voice? I thought you hated me..", Past replied, in a sarcastic tone.
Miraa stood up and replied, "I did hate you because I was ashamed to see you.
But it was because of you that I am who I am today.
Hating you would mean hating a part of me, and I don't want to do that."
"That is nice of you to say. Thank you Miraa", Past smiled.
The chain connecting them and the clasp at its ankles, were now looking threadbare, in utter contrast to their previous state.
Mira had observed this and exclaimed, "I don't know what I did to weaken this bond, but it must have been something amazing!" and added thoughtfully, "What did you ask me? That it was no use to expect Vasuki to feel guilty? Of course he would never feel guilty for what he did; It is who he is and he sees no wrong in his actions. I guess I was hoping for him to validate my suffering by feeling remorse. I just wish he hadn't done those things to me.. I wish ...."
Her thoughts suddenly brought the picture of Raavan from the epic Ramayan, to her mind.
True, she was no Sita, but she could relate with Sita's suffering and could wholeheartedly keep Vasuki in the place of Raavan.
Even at his deathbed, Raavan had felt no remorse for his treatment of Sita; he had just felt awe at the mighty power of Ram. (How egoistic, for one man to appreciate another man's powers and for both of them to conveniently forget the reason why they were fighting in the first place)
After the war, Sita had been put into the fire to test her loyalty, but the same had not been done to Ram, though both of them had been separated and both had equal right to question their loyalty for each other. Social hypocrisy much?
And to top it all off, Raavan had never ever apologised for his ill-treatment of Sita. Not even once.
"If such was the fate for the daughter of the Earth, I cannot expect anything better for myself." , Miraa mused, laughing at herself.
Shaking her head, she said to Past, "I think I've crossed the point where I expect that hypocrite to apologise for what he did. I don't need his sorry anymore."
Past smiled, glimmering like an illusion, and said, as it faded into the walls, "Now forgive him Miraa".
Miraa stood confused. Letting go of the need for an apology was one thing, but how could she forgive that backstabbing, betraying piece of scum?
How could she forgive someone who had turned her life into hell?
As she mulled on this, washing her face and looking at her reflection in the mirror, the answer rose on its own, from her intuition.
Her fingers clenched into her palm and she shook in anger. She hated it, hated having to think about it since it meant she had to temporarily give up on her anger on him, but she exhaled deeply, freeing her hand, knowing there was no other way for her.
She decided to understand why her ex lover Vasuki had chosen to abuse her.
