The day a bird followed me home part 7

It was finally all coming back to me. 

like a torrent of memories. 

Yes, to air something, I need to take it out. Out in the sun, out in the open at least! 

So whatever, I needed to get out, to be able to deal with whatever had happened, I needed to acknowledge it, process it, express it, and then file it away! 

Otherwise, I would be haunted, as these shadows will be following me always, just like the birds that had followed me. 

And just accepting there were things that needed to get out of my system, I already felt a bit lighter. 

I no longer had intimate friends, at least not since, a long time... and now, if I wanted to have one, who had been knocking at the door to my heart, I had to finally open up. 

so  I had decided to pen it all down and started to write, finally, what had happened! 

When the aeroplane had taken off, I had taken a long breath, a sigh of relief, a feeling of being finally, stable, alone, and in control, at least till I landed!  

I can still feel it. How I had felt 15 years ago!! 

It was like a feeling of coming off a roller coaster ride, but at that stage, I had not known, how it feels to ride a roller coaster. The dizzy feeling that you get on such a ride is unmatchable.  And what one feels when you get off it, on the ground, shaky, but stable.

And that was what I was feeling, when I sat down comfortably on my seat, my very first time on an aeroplane, finding my feet, steady and strong, on the moving floor of this business class section of the aeroplane.

Once the marriage had been settled everything had gone like a movie scene , yes, in a blur. 

The 'boy', or the groom,' who was in his late thirties, had come from overseas and my older sister had been the one on display, I was just the sister, accompanying her, to have tea with him at a relative's house, and sitting with her, while the boy had eyed her. He had tried to make a conversation, but she had hardly said anything, and kept her head down, so I had talked a bit. 

And, that evening, a bomb shell had exploded in our house. 

My mother had come running to speak to me in the back veranda.  

I was standing there lost in my own day dreams, not knowing that the dreams were going to be broken into thousand pieces that very moment. 

He had chosen me! The reason was my fair complexion. My sister was a bit more olive colour like our father. 

My marriage was settled, celebrated, and honeymoon was over and the groom had left me to follow him, all in 3 weeks.  

My sister never spoke to me again. My older brother, however, did speak to me, but roughly, not as honey dripping, as he used to. 

They were both my step siblings and especially with my brother, the age gap was quite wide. I had always avoided him. He made me uncomfortable, especially in the last four years, after my father had passed away.  

After our father's death, who had left behind a wife, three daughters and two younger sons, he had become the head of the family. 

So whatever decision was made, I couldn't even say anything.  

I couldn't even meet the person, I had thought, and wished, would be my dream partner, to say goodbye, or explain what had happened, I just had to break every tie with my girlhood. 

After all, a girl, who had a widowed mother with five children in a crowded house, who all needed to be settled, a marriage proposal and an opportunity to go overseas, and not being a burden on her step brother's meagre income, and being a target of his unwanted favours, was a windfall. 

That's how I was supposed to take it. As whatever in my life had been familiar, good or bad, and normal, I was ready to give that up!  

A simple ceremony and a suitcase, wearing a red chooda,  and a golden Mangal sutra, my nuptial/wedding symbol on a black thread, I had left my town forever.  

Spending almost two months in my in-laws house, in a city far away from my town, while I had waited for the visa to join my husband, feeling all alone, with nobody to actually talk to, I had been a prisoner in myself. Not letting anyone see what I was going through. 

I was supposed to be the lucky one  I was told by my mother, my mother in law, my sisters in law, and a friend whom I had told about my marriage! 

So why did I feel the way I had been feeling! 

Fear of the unknown, and apprehension! 

After all, I was now on my way to start a new life in a foreign land with a man, whom I hadn't known or seen just 4 months ago, and with whom I had spent just five nights, and six days, and a few hours. 

And this interval of few hours in-between, was my own time. 

I ordered a rum and Coke, just as I had seen in a film, someone ordering this drink, and tucked my dangling feet up under me, and went off to sleep, missing dinner, and woke up after breakfast was being cleared. 

I took out the dry bakery biscuits, rusks, that at the last minute my mother in law had packed for her son, and nibbled at a couple, while sipping another rum and Coke, yes, rum and coke at 7 o'clock in the morning!

In business class anything is possible! Though, I didn't know, I could have ordered hot breakfast, at least, saving myself from suffering the hunger of that long day! 

By the time I had found out, the perks of a business class ticket, I couldn't travel in that class anymore.  

Yes, I was to find out a lot more in life!