With a perfect image of small town girl carrying a suitcase full of memories and a diary full of dreams and longings, Varisha took her first step into the city of her dreams. Here’s a short story by Sehar, exclusively for Different Truths.
When a child begins to dream in India, there are many conventional dreams, desires, and expectations that get attached to our choices. With every step we take and with every dream we see, most of the times our choices get diluted and fade away.
But someone rightly stated not very long ago that dreams are not those that we see during a sleep, but are those that don’t let us sleep. Here’s a fictional story I wish to share. It is close to the hearts of many.
With a perfect image of small town girl carrying a suitcase full of memories and a diary full of dreams and longings, Varisha took her first step into the city of her dreams. The dreams she had once perceived as a teenager, lying under the moonlit sky today looked into her face as a gleaming smile across her face and the crystal she wore on her index finger.
Two nights before her 30th birthday, she sits in her room, scribbling some lines in her personal diary, a night-time routine she had followed since her early days at the hostel, while in school.
The studio apartment Varisha owned in the suburban district of Turkey was part of her dream since her teenage. Her room smelled of books, paper, and cigarettes. Away from her homeland, she had slowly and steadily built her nest of dreams and aspirations, where every day new stories cropped up on blank pages and half of them died a premature death.
Her instincts to put emotions into words started surfacing when she was in school. She began writing essays and contributing to school magazines. But as time passed books, academic syllabus and the rat race to grab marks and divisions took over the pen.
Her father’s death in a tragic accident made her put her pen down completely, then pen seemed too weak to bear the pain. But as she travelled one phase of life to another, her connection with the pen was re-established, heartbreaks, betrayals, loneliness and a soul too sensitive, convinced her that the ink in her pen was her better companion than any human.
She slowly and steadily began her journey as an amateur writer and one day as she read a novel describing the faraway land of Turkey, she suddenly felt a longing to be there. Soon she began her journey of saving up for her ideal home and her ideal retirement from the corporate life.
Varisha was 18 years old, her father’s sudden death in a car accident was still fresh in her mind when she landed in Delhi with two large suitcases full of dreams, desires, and memories. After completing her graduation from the University of Delhi, she stayed back in the metropolis to earn a master’s degree. Her stay in Delhi had brought to the surface a strong woman who was hidden underneath the overprotected child. Being the youngest in the family, she always thought of being incapable of taking her decisions and in need of extra care and protection. But on her 16th birthday, Varisha very well knew it was time for her to fly off from the cosy yet suffocating nest.
Birthdays were usually the time when Varisha spent time reminiscing things from the past. Her mind much like that of other human beings was a mixed bag of good, bad and ugly memories…
Finishing her writing ritual, she scribbles at the end of the page, “Let’s make a new beginning that aims at a happier ending”. She closes her diary and puts it safely in the drawer of her cupboard. Her diary was the space where, Varisha had managed to re-create her inner world, where all her untouched memories lay safely locked up.
Varisha was 22 when she finished her masters and took up a job; her work profile consisted of creating juicy and sensation content for an online news portal. In her past life, Varisha had been switching jobs as none of the work profile matched her dreams or managed to keep her but for a few months. She earned to pay bills and save for dream, but the initial phase of her career left her with nothing by the end of the month. Her dream was big and looked far away but she knew she had to achieve it, not for herself but for the father who believed in her even when she was oblivious to her talent.
Lying on her floor bed looking at her reflection in the full-length mirror that hung on the opposite wall, Varisha had spent almost an hour rewinding her past.
A tumultuous past, a hazy present and a future unknown, Varisha knew that her journey had been a topsy-turvy ride but today as she looked into her reflection, she saw the woman she always wanted to be. She smiled at her reflection but a tear dropped down from her eyes. She wrapped her arms across her body, closed her eyes, and all she desired was to feel her father’s warm hug. She could still hear him speak to those words, “Well done beta, you are my star”.
Closing her bedroom’s door, Varisha lit up her post dinner cigarette and opened the book she was currently reading. But memories! They surely have their own ways, Varisha’s mind tonight was a cauldron full of memories of her past. Her aspiration to be a writer was a dream her father had shared with her, but his sudden death had led the family into conditions which made making the two ends meet the priority. Dreams had taken a back seat but with every passing day for the family. But for Varisha her dream to be a writer strengthened with each passing minute and she took a journey which was long and arduous but she knew the end would be blissful. From India to Turkey, from a small town girl to a passionate writer, from an unknown identity to a prominent individual, life is all about choices and the choices we make in life play a vital part in framing our future life.
Varisha can be any of us, living in any of us, it is the element of passion and desire that makes everything seem simple or difficult.
As Varisha’s father always said: First deserve then desire, and for deserving something we need to be passionately desirous to achieve it.
Career choices are life-defining and fighting all odds to be what you are and be what you want needs a fire to be kindled within each one of us, and my dear readers it never too late.
Ignite the fire and just say: Bring it on!
Visual from Different Truths
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