Evanescing The Facade

4. The Fury Of The Storm

"You hold that anger, cup it in your heart, remember where it came from, remember the shape of it, save it until you need it. But now the wolf is out there somewhere in the woods, and you need to see the flock."

And who asks the storm about it's agony? Who asks the storm what tormented it? Nobody does because somewhere deep down they all know they are contributors to the factors that caused it's fury. It's them who provoked the destruction and it's them who will face the consequences. They are all timorous to accept because once they do, they drown, in the ocean of guilt they have been sinking knee deep in. There are tremors of trepidation on everybody's lips but some carry storms in their soul, the storm that brawl into the deep hell until the last layer of strength explodes. With each added wound, the storm inside Mishti's soul was winding in a thicker veneer of pain cracking the walls of tolerance. One stroke to the delicate chord and devastation was deemed.

"It's easier to feel invisible than feeling painfully visible. She wasn't a poem but felt like one and it prickled because she didn't feel like a poem about candy floss in hues of pink....she felt like the one written in blue grieving glory, the one written to spit out pain, the one written in memory of old wounds. And it never seemed beautiful!"

-Niharika

Though Mishti could sense concern in their voices as Abir, Badi Maa and Bade Papa rushed to her asking her about her whereabouts and vociferating about how worried they were, she didn't have it in her to reciprocate, she couldn't get herself to even reply with a few words. She just wanted to run away before they could even get inured to her presence. So she started to move forward only to be stopped by another blight taunt from Kuhu who held her tightly by her shoulders.

K- You did this for attention right? What's your problem? Why can't you let us live in peace? Do you have any idea how worried everybody was?

Mishti jerked her grip. And gave her a satirical smile.

M- I didn't ask anybody to get worried for me. So nobody had to bother. I even left a note.

The coldness in her voice was an innuendo of calamity which shocked every single person there.

A- Mishti please, you have been out for hours. You are unwell, you are supposed to take rest. Where were you, we searched everywhere. And what's that in your hand?

Before Mishti could answer, Abir took the crumpled photograph from her hands and he could feel the earth beneath his feet slipping away. He gasped at what he saw. Sensing the weight of shock dawning upon, bade Papa took the threatening Polaroid from his hand and he could feel the same astonishment. It was a photograph of little Mishti and her birth father Naman Aggarwal, smiling in each others's company. It wasn't the photograph but the words inscribed below it that quaked them, "Like father, like daughter"

"And sometimes we go to places that inflicted the deepest abrasions on the soul, we go somewhere only we know, somewhere we have been vulnerable in truest forms."

-Niharika

M- You didn't search everywhere Abir. I was at the lakeside.

She said looking into his eyes. This was another wave of tremble for Abir, why would she go there? To the place that confined the memory of that one eventful day which broke them apart.

A- Why?

M- I needed to see my true reflection. Mirrors can be illusionary. But nature won't inveigle, the water evinced my true identity. And that photograph.....is my bitter reality.