Past continues
20. True colours...
Maliha moved to the side of the room and watched as all her friends recovered from her melodramatic speech… helping themselves to a drink to speed up the process. She smiled, and touched the glassy bits of her necklace, a habit she had when she wore something she liked, always checking to see if it was still there.
She moved to the balcony, an odd thing to do considering her experience in this part of the house not so long ago. But she did not feel nervous and although she expected the sequence of those events to come rushing back to her, they did only a little differently than one would imagine. She had forgotten those dark days, she had worked hard to replace all those memories…with ones from her now ever changing life. She had forgotten how deep the wounds were before she rushed to cover them instead of leaving them to fully heal! Why she was choosing to have these morbid and disturbing thoughts on the evening of her birthday party was not clear… but special occasions call for some reflection…and recovering from a head injury caused by a semi hypnosis driven jump off the ledge of a balcony is a better trigger than any.
Losing her parents had been almost as though she had lost herself. Her entire world had been taken and tossed upside down and shaken so badly that any sort of recovery seemed unrealistic . But like anything, with time, it got easier to live with, easier to deal with.
The story of Maliha’s disturbing past dates back to when she had just lost them. Her parents, both in business had left behind a sizable fortune. Of course this was enough to attract the exaggerated sympathies of some distant and unknown relatives in the hopes of receiving monetary gifts for their acts of kindness. Maliha saw right through most of them, except an uncle, who seemed genuine at first. He had a completely different agenda it turned out. He knew that she being an adult and only heir, would have complete rights to her inheritance. Unless he could somehow show that she was being cared for by him, as she was mentally unstable. Farfetched though it was, it was not an impossibility, after all she had been under a great deal of stress, and the traumatic incident could have had alarming results on the young girl’s mind. Slowly but surely her uncle began gaining evidence of her alleged mental instability quoting her out of context, collecting recordings or writings from her , conveniently omitting rational explanations for them and soon he had built a case of her ‘insanity’ from nothing. Somewhere during the course of this plan, Mali began to realize her dear uncle had greater interests than her well being but by then she was already outnumbered, the world against ‘Crazy Mali’…”Oh poor girl..she’s been through so much..look at her eyes…yes they look empty..shhh…don’t provoke her” comments whispered like this became common, and soon everyone had labeled her disturbed!
Her uncle would soon have control over how Mali spent her inheritance and that would mean it would be his to use… the atrocities people will commit for money. Soon enough the air turned hostile, his gentle scolding’s , turned violent and cold, and he eventually resorted to force, keeping Mali confined. All this while Mali should have been attending college…
What her uncle did not know is that Mali had always been bright, and she always kept an escape door, a backup plan. She had started to move around some of the money, and ensured that every bit of paper work was duplicated and air tight, the only claimant could be her. So she would escape the clutches of her greedy uncle, it was only a matter of time. She decided to give in to her supposed insanity and provoke her uncle, but that made things worse. He locked her up, afraid of what he had gotten himself into. Then she calmed down, only to be locked up again. Her uncle, so overcome with desperation for this wealth, decided to take the extreme step…he would kill Mali and make it look like suicide.
As all such stories go, the night that happened turned disastrous… for her uncle. Maliha had opened her large home to her uncle, again by force. Her uncle had picked one fine evening to commit this terrible deed. Luckily Maliha was one step ahead. She knew his plan…she had just sensed it. She had decided it was time to run. To get as far away as she could from any family she had left and lead life on her own terms, make something good for herself. She packed her things, hid them from view and waited till her uncle came around to ‘check’ on her. He had decided to go the old movie way, poison her, making it look like she took the drastic step herself…She smiled, played along…but later in the dead of the night, she made her move… she would throw her bags out the window, get out and take a train out of the city. Of course uncle came knocking , he had to check if the deed was done.
When he found Mali, poised to run, he did not know how that could be. Overcome with fear and rage, he chased her…and she ran…through the house, down the corridor, to the room on the left…but in reality she could not jump out of the window.
There she was face to face with a real life villain, faced also with the choice of running or fighting. She fought. And that is how the letter opener on the table by the window, ended up a few inches inside her uncle’s chest… killing him.
Self defense. That’s what it was. The legal system agreed.
She could have jumped…and run…but she had to honour her family…she had to cause him pain…she did…but she had hurt herself too.
In the end that was how Mali got free, got on her feet and started to live again. But she had not forgiven herself for what happened that night. She could have handled it differently, she felt…she had defended herself, but she had not forgiven herself…
That may have been why she was overcompensating by helping everyone she ever met and also why she moved, never staying too long, because her memories always had a way of catching up with her!
1 comments:
Mind Blowing! Really!
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