Older And Wiser (???)

I always looked older than my age. I was always told that. I felt bad because inside I was just a wee bit older than an infant. I still am.

Soon after my graduation father suffered the third heart attack. It was terrible. In the middle of the night in a room locked from inside. He wanted to get up and open the door but couldn’t because of the constricting pain. At last, he called out to the night guard from the window which was adjacent to the bed. Night guard who just happened to pass by.

He tapped on the window of our room and informed mother. It was beginning of summer. Thankfully, the windows were open. Curtains drawn.

I don’t remember how we opened the door. But the next I know he was shifted from one hospital to the other for three months before he bade adieu to this world.

I didn’t cry much. It was a foregone conclusion that he would be leaving us soon. It was better as that would come as a relief to all the pain and discomfort that his one-after-the-other failing organs brought. Still etched in my memory is how helpless he felt. A man who was reticent about all most everything.

Perhaps I grew up suddenly in those three months. Learnt to cook, keep the house clean, take food for mother to the hospital where she was permanently stationed.

Later, after my father’s death I learnt of privation. What each paisa meant. How ill-equipped was I to earn a substantial income. My first salary was a mere six hundred rupees! Not enough to run the household though we had a simple lifestyle.

Nobody told me specifically that I couldn’t study further. Nobody told me to learn stenography. Nobody told me to grab the job that was being offered. Nobody told me the workplace was too distant. I did all that on my own. Perhaps that was when I truly grew up from a lovingly sheltered life into a dreadful world where I was supposed to learn the ropes quick enough, be street smart and a go-getter.

Unfortunately, I was none. I was slow to learn – naive and stupid thrown into this quagmire unchaperoned to grow up measure after measure the hard way.

And I am still green…still growing…still stupid…still surprised by the sudden-ness-es of life.

I don’t know why I blog about these intimate experiences. Perhaps to wrench them out of my system.

Is this also part of growing???

Perhaps…

Pic from Pexel