So I'm going private this year. This means I'll not be attending school for class 9. I'll go for direct O'levels from coaching. I did ask my friends for whatever coaching they are planning to join. I don't know yet which coaching centers I'm going to join. I asked Kashmira to guide me since she's a year ahead of me. She suggested the best coaching teachers in the country but they're highly paid teachers and my dad's business is not doing so well. Not that he asked me to go for somewhere more budget-friendly but I happen to be a person more worried about my dad than he is. Since the corona outbreak and pandemic and the announcement of lockdown, it's going downhill. Not that it was doing well before but it worsened now and it's the 9th month through the lockdown. We can say that we're upper-middle class. But since our apartment is decorated with simplicity and classy furniture and ambiance and the way we show up and dress ourselves people think we're pretty rich. We're not. My mom's a housewife. My dad is a diamond jeweler. And trust me when I say it never did him any good. My mom would always taunt him for his unavailability of money and how my mom had to lend him money and sell most of her pieces of jewelry to help him out of finances. I don't blame her. I don't blame my dad too. Well, well Jewelleries to women received during the wedding is precious. And my mom really had to give up a lot of it to help finances and she's very naive. They both are really. Once my mom gave her a few gold jewelry to her drunkard of a brother to help him take a mortgage loan but he never returned her the jewelry. And moreover, my mom did not say this to my dad. She did this in secrecy. Later when my dad found out, he was really upset about it. My nana though(mom's father) is rich. Very rich. Too rich. Only with money not by heart. He's a fuck up of a husband and a father. He is the reason why all his kids went downhill. I hate him. But then I don't. When I look at him I see an alone man who doesn't understand his circumstances and how his short temper and trust issues with his own family had led him to a despicable man hated by his own family. He thinks everyone is after his money and property. Guess what? He's right. Everyone's after his Money. Well, as fucked up as he is he sure made himself self-sufficient with money and riches. Turns out he is rich with kids too. He has 9 children and two wives. He increased a whole percent of the human population himself! Well not really, It is the specialty of our country, small and overpopulated.
So this is what happened. He married my Nanu(mom's mother) when she was an adolescent of 15 years. My Nanu on the other hand was a beautiful scenery herself. She had dark raven black hair and dark kohl eyes and a tanned complexion. A whole beauty of dreams right? Well, they used to live in a countryside village then. Moreover, my Nanu was rich. A golden hen. He married her. Had 5 kids with her. My Nanu had to cook, hear her mother-in-law taunt her all the time and when Nana became angry she became the ventilator. He used to beat her, oppress her, and whatnot. He once kicked her so hard that five of her teeth came out off her gums. When I think about this oppressive side of him, I hate him so much more. Eventually, my Nanu gave birth to my mom, and years later when my Nanu no longer appeased his sexual pleasure or no longer felt attracted to her, he married another woman. A milky white WITCH. And as Cinderella as a part of it might seem it really was the beginning of a blooming and then a broken family. My Nanu was depressed. She would cry day and night for the arrival of her rival. Another woman to her husband. She felt broken and empty. My mom was growing into an adolescent now. She would comfort her mother. But she could not do much but watch her broken mother and then cry herself to sleep. Apparently, as time passed my mother found her slice of peace and comfort in music. So she would sing and play the harmonium. But can we have a happily ever after without an evil twist? No! So her bitch of a stepmother forbade her to sing. As she was just spreading her wings to fly, that bitch clipped my mom's wings, her only way to freedom in music. My mom was a great singer. She had an amazing voice and she still thinks about those days when she practiced music and she has two of her music diaries filled with songs kept with her for the past as 20 years.
By this time though stepmother already had 3 daughters. And although there was always fighting for the attention of their dad, which my mom used to crave once was not so prominent anymore. Her older step-sister, Paromita, who was two years younger than my mom once broke a television, and then she and her mom blamed it on my mom, and then my mom had to go through lashes of the whip by her father.
Yeah, the nerve those bitches had then. They tortured my mom right there. If I could go back then at that time, I would make sure to tear every last hair apart from their scalps and lash them out with broomsticks. Anyways, proceeding so when my Nana and Nanu got married and had their third child together, they had moved to Dhaka and eventually had my mom, in the capital city. My Nana worked fruits import and export business and you have no freaking idea how well it proved. If you don't know that is, in Asian countries this business is very prominent and well profitable. So as his earnings got well he builds a 10-floor apartment and apart from two flats that is, he gave the rest for rent. So when he remarried he and his second wife took the 1st-floor apartment to themselves and made my Nanu and her kids, take the third floor. So an introduction to my Nanu's kids:
Milan Siddiqui : ( The eldest son. He used to be a Great student with straight A's in every subject. Intelligent and very smart. Due to his father's harshness and incompatibility in paying a little for his abroad studies, he had to give up on his dream and his only scope to success. As of now, he is leading a sad and poor life, he's now scope to freedom and inner peace is in the countryside apart from his family living in the city.)
Danish Siddiqui:( A bright persona once even in his adulthood but marriage and his dumbass of a wife ruined his life. So yeah pretty hopeless)
Russel Siddiqui: ( Just as smart as his elder brother, a guy, girls would want to hit on neglected by his dad ended up a drug addict and happens to be the one to have taken my mom's jewelry and betrayed her. And apparently whom my mom still considered brother enough to help him with rehabilitation center and after 42 years of rejection from girls upon hearing about his background got him married.)
Qureshi Siddiqui: ( The golden brother really. He wasn't much of a good student but now he has a child and a beautiful wife and has an electronic business that makes a decent amount of money.)
Delilah Siddiqui (my mom): ( Let's just say my mom wasn't a very good student. But she enjoyed her teenage life thoroughly. She had friends and she had punishments in school for keeping long nails I.e. (standing on tables with arms raised above). As of now, you'll get to know her eventually.)
That's the end of my Nanu, the first wife of Zakir Siddiqui's(Nana) kids. And my Nana's second wife has 4kids too. 3 daughters and one beloved son. Pretty fucked up family of mom's right? I know. Guess what? I don't care. All I care about is my parents my Nanu and Mama Qureshi and his family. And guess what? My mom's side of the family seems pretty poor living, right? Guess what? Once my Nana gives them his property you'll be surprised how wrong you really were because really if their life is really as fucked up is because their father never loved them, is a miser who neglected and made them suffer financially and did not help their studies too so they ended up lost men and leading a vain life in a rich family. But once amidst all of this, things were great. Two mothers and 9 kids, it was a family but it ended.
I sit on the stool across my room and touch the keys to my piano keyboard that I bought last year saving all the pocket money through the entire year and my biggest flex would be that I learned to play it by myself. I play "The Sound Of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel. My fingers swiftly press the keys. I close my eyes and feel the melody internally as I sing softly. I love this song so much. Something about it draws me in as if this is exactly how I feel, what goes in my head in the night or when I am surrounded by people. A flashback visualizes in my head.
"Nana, I am here. I came to see you", I said as my little hands flung around Nana's arms and I kissed him on the cheek. But his arms never hugged me back.
"When did you come nanabhai?", Nana asked me, "Who else came with you?"
"Mommy and Olive and me", I said my eyes shining.
"How are you? How's your health?"
"The way God has kept me, how have you been little girl?"
"I am well too", I smile brightly and sit next to him on the bed watching T.V. He hands me 1000 taka and says, "This is your Salami. Ask your mom to buy something you like." I smiled brightly, so happy, and hugged him and he patted on my head softly.
I open my eyes and a tear rolls down my face. How did everything change like that? It was small gestures, small acts of his affection when he patted me on the head or gave me Salamis. Nothing remained like that. Not anymore. I wish I could have those times rewind. I wish things hadn't turned out the way they did in the end. I wish he could open his eyes and see that people did care about him except he pushed everyone away. I guess they really meant it when people said Nothing lasts forever.