Jahn be fearless:
For, even after I have gone,
I’ll be your guardian angel
Rehaan and you are my world
But for you, Neetu may come first
Hold onto me for another 7 lifetimes
As I married your soul when I shattered your
ignorance a decade ago.
PS: Always yours
After 7 months of healing from grief:
Jahnvi: “Why don’t you just fuck her?”
Prantik: “I would be lucky just to
fuck my wife once in a while.”
Jahnvi danced a little dramatic moon
dance in her head and heart. The last seven months were as beautiful as they
could get for her family and her. Rehaan was acing classes at school and had
become some sort of a basketball champion in campus at 7 years in the 3rd
grade. He still demanded his disciplined breakfast and treats everyday and
Jahnvi made peace with the fact that all four of them – Prantik, Rehaan, Neetu
and she lived on nonsense food most times. Prantik was focused as ever on work
and had begun his entrepreneurial journey in research partnership with his boss
and friend for life, Raylon.
After a 10 year long tenure as a
partner in Raylon’s firm, he was now training Prantik to take complete
ownership of the business of Software production. Neetu continued her terrain
of nagging and loving Rehaan rotten and enjoyed secret rendezvous with her
boyfriend, John’s caretaker, once in a while when she forced Jahnvi to let her
pickup Rehaan from school instead of the school bus. Now Jahnvi knew the reason
and so she sent Neetu, 34 years, to school in their car every evening.
She still remembered the sundowner
they had thrown in honor of Rehaan’s seventh birthday at ‘The Dome’,
Intercontinental and the brat fooled her into buying him seven new pairs of
Nikes on the occasion of his “Parents and peace together at home” party. She
laughed when she remembered Rehaan barging into Prantik and her bedroom,
stuffing himself in the middle and demanding, “So mom, dad, here’s the deal –
You both owe me delayed happiness and so I have shortlisted the Summer wear
from Nike. I want!”
Prantik and Jahnvi were so satisfied
being friends again and sharing not an intimate yet, but a soulful married
couple camaraderie that while they were discussing the menu for the bash, they
just said, “Your wish is our command sire!” Then as he waded out of the room,
Jahnvi called out sternly, “You better get your Math outta the way, dinner’s in
an hour.”
A long summer of happiness, bliss,
stability and a budding romance between Prantik and her along with her job
healed Jahnvi completely. Today morning as Prantik tore into the room in a
Monday morning hurry to shower, Jahnvi couldn’t take the last leg of her
illness anymore.
Jahnvi: “Why don’t you fuck her
Prantik?”
Prantik was caught off guard but had
the dialysis of the situation at hand like as astrologer. He smiled to himself
thinking, Jahn’s ready now! He answered honestly, “It would be great to just do
my wife once in a while you know.”
He could see Jahn light up immediately
but secretly and he waited with sweaty arms on his waist at the entrance of
their contrasting mirror artwork bathroom in their bedroom.
Jahnvi: “Why did you play me at that
one? You knew how sensitive I was about you.”
Prantik walked patiently to the bed stand,
took the waiting fresh towel that Jahn still put for him every morning after
his run, wiped himself and literally, in his smelly workout racer back and
shorts, picked Jahn in his arms and placed her on his lap with love he couldn’t
even imagine overpowered him for his possessive wife.
Prantik: “Jahn hear me out. Once and
for all, internalize as you listen – A. I love you and Rehaan more than I love
myself. B. All that you think was back stabbing healing was in fact a plan
hatched with Dr.Tripti to heal you naturally. C. When Dr. called me personally
to inform me about your illness, I figured it was because of ignorant pain you
never faced growing up and even in my absence the first time around. I realized
you had to face your sorrow in full awareness in the healing process. I kept
testing your wits with each episodic bout to make you challenge your split and
act as your true self. I was behind you all along. Watching and protecting you.
Who you know as controlling is but a protective husband, madly in love with his
wife and who wants the best for her. Wants to see her independent and flying
with wings, God forbid, even in his absence for good. Each challenge was a trap
for your split to come to terms with the fact that you are stronger than your
defense. I knew that after we got married but I wanted you to realize that for
yourself.
I wanted you to be free of your fears
that made you defensive in the first place. You will call it a test of time for
your man but as your man, it was a test for my babe to overcome each hurdle of
fear and defense like a winner warrior. All these past so many years since your
illness was out there, I took the plunge and let you live a normal life, making
you deal with your defensive split as your true, authentic mature self. Each
test, you fought through hell and abyss of darkness but know that even if once
you’d have fallen, I would have picked you up and put you in the battlefield
again.
I’m not controlling, I just, I wanted
to heal you as really as possible. If I would have confronted you in the beginning,
I bet you’d never heal until out of experiences of the test I put you through
all these years. Talk about, “Learn on the job.” If you hadn’t experienced each
emotion of sorrow, pain, grief, hatred, back stabbing, negativity, you would
not have forgiven your mother and like yesterday, would not have taken grief as
a whole for your cumulative grief yesterday.
I wasn’t controlling you, I was
healing you Jahn."
Jahnvi was motionless yet comfortable
in Prantik’s arms, she blinked hard and staring straight in his eyes, realizing
her true power of normality in that minute, the fact that she could think
logically like Prantik about his healing scheme, she threw back at him, “you don’t
know the pain of facing fear Prantik. The first time you left me, I was
shattered, broken and it was like all the pain and loss since adolescence came
back and slapped me in the face called -
neglect. I faced the world without you the first time like a victim of desertation.
I felt like no one loved me. Understand this, psychologically, you had become
my anchor out of all the pent up family neglect grief for me. When you left me,
I felt all alone and deserted by the world. You were my world. I didn’t care
and lost myself in the chaos of depression which is when I began chain smoking
for the seven minutes of relief. I felt abandoned by the one man I had married
in my head for the longest time even before we tied the knot. That’s why my
insecurity of losing you never died down after marriage and kept popping up in
evading reality through randomness on Tinder. Something we never talked about
in the earlier days.
I don’t think I had forgiven you even
on our first night as a couple in bed. That’s when my split took birth. I
started living two lives in the fear of what may happen if I lose you and soon
my split became overpowering as a defense of insecurity when you got busy in
making your career and creating a lifetime of comfort for us. Materialistic
emotions stopped exciting me and all I ever drowned in was the pain of your
busyness that took me back to you deserting me the first time.
“Why did you leave me and fly away to
Arizona?”
Prantik: “You call it controlling or
foresightedness, when we started seeing each other after you broke your engagement,
that night when your aunt called in the pretext of talking to your mum and you
answered, I remembered you sad on the call with me after that. I picked up a
tone in your voice that I found scary. Don’t misunderstand me; scary because I
knew then you were different from your family. But your tone of prolonged
sadness worried me and I started analyzing your behavior when I’d visit your
family. You were always worried around them, always tensed and your parents always mostly patronized you. You’d always cling harder to me after one of
those family gatherings and I realized you were neglected as a daughter.
Perhaps, this was because you never fit in with them as a creative personality.
I started loving you harder after that
but something told me that if like this we got married, I would be your savior
not your lover. I wanted to be both but at the time I was only your anchor. So
I left to test how you behave in the toxic environment without me coming to
your rescue. Believe you me Jahn, I was always there. Even in Arizona, I lived
Indian standard time, always watching over you. Updates from Sim and your
therapist is what I lived by. You were doing fine when you started writing for
City Times as a city reporter; A drastic change from your lifestyle reportage
and I knew you were going to be fine. I planned to comeback soon after that as
your groom but that’s when I lost you when you got on Tinder.
Your therapist told me it was a
typical case of moving on. I got scared and came running back. My test for you
was half way complete. I forgot about it and thought I nipped it in the bud and
we got married. I thought everything was fine and you could live without me as
your anchor. But then when I got busy with work, your split decided to ruin you
with the insecurity of losing me, slowly paralyzing you with fear in defense and
unworthiness.
Dr Tripti and I hatched the whole plan
to heal you from your vagabond wounds since birth then and so your test began
again.
Jahnvi didn’t say anything for a
minute out of shock of value of her man’s love for her. She was in fact, never abandoned!
That donned on her like the sunrise of a day in heaven and she rested her head
on his shoulders. Then she said, “In my life, I have been neglected since birth
by my family. That is why when I met you online on Whatsapp the first time, I
just knew it was you. With you I began living once again but when you left
unannounced, I was back to square one. Marriage with you made me move forward
in my battle of losses of grief so I never grieved completely. I still feared
about what would happen to me in this wretched world without you. But all these
years while I began healing and writing the ten tenets to normalize mental
health, I faced each fear that stemmed from the fact of acting out of my wits,
I stood the test of your good motive. I understand that now. When I moved out
and started living alone, I realized, I would be fine even without you, incomplete
but safe.”
“Yesterday, I internalized each tenet
again:
Realization
When you hinted I wasn’t okay
Acceptance
When I accepted my situation
Self defense
When my ego refused to move on and I used my wits
Affirmations
When I created my own machinery
Anxiety
When I learned the normalcy of insecurity
Stress
When I learned to face reality over delusions
Negativity
When I started seeing the brighter
side of life
Understanding
When I began thinking before speaking
or acting
Greif
When I forgave others to forgive myself
I became whole again Prantik.”
Prantik held Jahn and they both fell
softly on the bed. Jahn continued, “What did you mean by controlling Rehaan
though?”
Prantik: “Look babe, that’s because he
is a mama’s boy. You don’t care before swiping mine or yours to get whatever
the hell the brat demands. I keep scores with him. Like earn your rewards
Champ.”
They both laughed and slowly but
finally, Prantik undressed Jahnvi after two years.
After a month – A beautiful day in
August:
Rehaan: “Mom! Where’s my treat?! Dad,
drop me off today and pick John on the way as well! I missed my bus!!”
Jahnvi and Prantik were romancing in
their lounge when they were brought to the dawn of light by their brat.
They hurried and attended to his
demands as usual. Once off to school and office respectively, Neetu skipped
lunch and escaped the afternoon to meet Mitesh. Jahnvi was blooming after a hot
shower and decided to launch on her laptop.
That day, dressed in a white silhouette
her husband had gifted her a day before, she began writing the tenth tenet to
normalize mental health.
Fear:
It paralyzes you. It gives you nightmares
and you start living a parallel life of fear of life itself. You can’t function
to your optimal level and it devoids you of achieving your highest potential. It is but the biggest fence of any mental
illness. Be fearless and there is no mental illness. Absolutely none.
How do you overcome fear?
Realize what you fear. Accept your
fears. Understand why you fear what you fear. Affirm the fight against your
fear. Leave your self defense of a negative mindset that stresses you out every
second which then breathes anxiety. Know your possible solution to your mental
illness is in the wellness of grieving your fear and moving on from it.Because, life doesn't pause honey.
That night the family had two large
pizzas at the bay nearby while Rehaan joked about Ria failing Maths for the
third straight time in a row. Prantik absent mindedly told Champ to help the
little would- be daughter-in-law out and Jahnvi laughed hard. Neetu was out on a
date for the third consecutive night. All was good for good.
Next week, early morning Sunday:
Prantik: “Jahn wake up, let’s get
something to eat, Rehaan’s at Sim’s today. We gotta be somewhere. Hurry up!”
Jahnvi dressed on toe and they left
home - Prantik in anticipation and excitement and Jahn in surprise.
They landed at NCPA and Jahnvi was
suddenly in an auditorium full of avid readers, psychologists, professors, academicians
and the youth. Shortly after that, Prantik took over the stage and began, “Ladies
and Gentlemen I present to you, ‘The ten Tenets to normalize mental health,’ by
none other than my wife, Jahnvi Prantik Saxena!”
Jahnvi thought she would faint as she
heard a loud cheering from the crowd and rounds of applause that wouldn’t stop.
He continued, “Mind I say, this is purely experiential content on field and a
classic product of WFH!” The crowd lost it and Jahnvi took the stage to address
her audience. He simply said, “ I would like to thank my husband without whose
love and protection this homeopathy writing would not have been possible and my
therapist who is really my sister from another mother. My son who took full
advantage of my situation and is now the proud owner of the most amount of
Nikes at school. I request you all to treat an illness of fear and internalize
the ten tenets with added therapy to cure any negativity!”
Prantik held Jahn’s hand and they
walked happily into the sun and on a walk of a life time of togetherness. Then
obviously Rehaan was on his dad completely so Prantik was at it once again, “Jahn
want to play another game?”
Jahnvi kissed Prantik and they both walked
hand clenched in hand, a promise to ruin each other with the power of love and
Jahnvi whispered, “This time, I orchestrate it. I was wondering, Tinder isn’t
all that ….afterall… you know…!”
A petal of laughter reached the trees
beyond the heaven’s gate of God and there he bound them together for eternity
in the halo of his own.
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