“You can pen down a crying heart, you can jot down what the shuddering voices in your head say but you can never show the world how deeply scared you are.”-
There comes a time in your life when you feel you are breathtakingly screwed and you genuinely trace back to the events that lead to this stage. The appetite of yours that paved the way for this series of tangled events. More convoluted then any of the maize games you ever solved in the newspaper. But if there is something you are clear on, for sure, is that you have to live by your decision no matter how badly you want to redo them.
It all started back in the days I was in the game. The college honored me, mostly the girls’ tough, with the name ‘A selfish Prick’, but who cared. They all envied from what I had and I was the very thankful of them for this.
January 5th 1995, just another usual day I presumed it would turn out to be until I met this girl named Angela. It wasn’t a big deal, I mean it shouldn’t have been for me to meet a woman but this was different. The first glimpse of her gave me the fragrance of rich loam with raindrops in it. Her appearance weakened the mighty sun. I assimilated every second of this glint so that whenever I wish to hold her image in my arms of my imagination, she would prevail in every corner. She was an epitome of love though not literally but in every other sense of the word. I knew I had to be with her for the rest of my days and for the rest of my breaths.
And the next few years passed like the wink of an eye, with so many cherish able moments of me and Angela. By the time I realized I had to take care of my family if I am going to have any, it was a little late. I was dropped from the state college and had no good experience of any job. I randomly applied for many colleges to get on with this issue, asked my father for some financial assistance who was already an established businessman, I don’t know how he pulled out some strings and got me an offer letter from the business School of British Columbian University. I guess it was sign that he wanted me to run his business anyhow it all felt right and I accepted the offer after all I was doing this for the family, for Angela.
Now I had to move to Canada for the degree in other words it was the time to part my ways form the love of my life. She asked me not to leave but I had to. Sometimes you have to choose the paths with the greatest of sorrows for the greater good, that’s what I had in my mind, but life would take so many turns wasn’t a part of it. And so I left with a numb feeling, tears almost trickled down my eyes as I boarded the plane.
A few fortunate people are offered with an opportunity to be a mustang, a horse you can have a blindfolded on faith to win, but why do we forget that even a mustang has to suffer to get to that point. Life as a big picture is just a trade at the expense of the opportunity cost one is willing to leave. Nobody is clever enough to dodge the inevitable. I went on for the race to be a mustang and I did become one, but not for the greater good. I swam in the ocean so long I forgot how it was like to be on the surface. By the time I graduated I had almost forgot the reason I was there in the first place. Greed, lust, and my selfish desires lead me to a darker path.
September 13th 2002, I received a call from Angela, I obviously was too busy to pick her call so she left me a message. She wanted an out. It hurt my ego. I called her back and showed the new side of me in the bitterest way possible. Later on I drank myself to sleep and the next day I woke up for another business deal. The business grew like anything and the day finally came when I made my first million dollar deal, followed by a call from my mother that father had passed away. I rushed my way to home after long seven years. The moment I took a cab from the airport it all started. I started having feelings that I couldn’t control, suddenly I realized I had been missing something, I had been missing my roots, the lovely place I grew up at. On my way back to home I went past Angela’s house and there my heart stopped, it was as if a thunder was rumbling through me with the flash backs of past. By the time I reached dad’s funeral I was already depressed and astounded. Somehow I underwent the painful sight of his burial.
The next day I had to visit supermarket to get some breakfast for mother where I saw her across the hallway, she still had a sparkling smile and starling eyes only now with a few wrinkles but does that matter? A big no. She was as beautiful as the time I first laid eyes on her. She had her cute little son trying helping his mother to carry the trolley and clearly he had his mother’s touch. I could have fathered that boy, I swear I would have been a great father. I could have been the guy standing next to them but that what I left to be a selfish mustang. I couldn’t stand the sight anymore.
And here I am standing ashore on a cliff, ready to give up on a miserable life ahead that I lead myself in to. Waiting for the winds to take me away.
Ubeer Mahtab
~3rd year
