Fragile Expectations...

“I don’t hav any right to live….I am not worthy of this life… I cudnot live upto their expectations….”----mumbling these wrds she grabbed the bottle of sleeping pills frm the cupboard,opened it and tossed the contents into her mouth,as if they were a bottle full of sugar coated candies….

Everything in this wrld seemed to move around her as if she ws hvng a ride on the Great wheel in a fair..just tht the element of fun,thrill n enjoyment ws completlely absent..everythng now seemed upside down,n slowly she cud feel her eyes closing as if they cud no longer bear the burden of these bouts of ever ending emotions, expectations and tht enormous guilt anymore..now as she closed those beautiful eyes which hd once cherished dreams of being the next Da Vinci or M.F Hussain, now all seem to elope away frm her life in the form of those crystals of tears running down her cheeks…she cud hazily see one of her creations on the wall in front of her ---
A woman sitting in a crouched position in a dark room,tears rolling down her cheek..lost in memories…carrying a gloomy mein as if lamenting over the irony of her life…

And suddenly evry single emotion tht she hd restrained to herself started to delude her mind.It seemed as if the ever dormant volcano had suddenly exploded somewhere inside her and the magma of emotions were burning each n every part of her soul with the intensity of the anger within her…She felt like screaming, screeching, howling but the cloud of drowsiness tht hd slowly strted to descend over her didn’t allow her to do so…
Every memory tht she cherished, she hated now seemed to dance in frnt of her eyes on the gloomy,morose n equally delirious tune of her soul…the feeling of De j`a vu` incircling her….The frst day she went to school...her frst class teacher Mrs Sinha…..her mom accompanying her to d art classes after school…the frst prize she won in the city level art competion….how much her parents were happy abt it…her evr cherished birthday gift tht imported art set tht her dad brought fr her….the pranks she n her frends played at school …the day mom scolded her fr getting poor marks in class 9…how much she hated science….Her frst crush…the dreaded time before 10 th boards…those sleepless nights….her mom’s constant reminder “u ought to get 90 % to get into the science stream of d best school in the city”…the results equally pathetic…Eh 90% ??Nah!a score of mere 73%...those never ending phone calls of relatives n frends enquiring about her results….whc all seemed just an effort to mock away her calibre…those endless fights wid parents over her decision to study arts instead of science….the whole week tht dad dint talk wid her…and her finally agreeing to study science…tht happiness on her dad’s face…her admission in d mediocre senior secondary school…tht sudden increase of the burden of studies…her mom coming up wid d idea of even more new tuitions everyday after evry discussion in her kitty parties and all this fueled up each time after some XYZ’s son joined a new tution…..Her still continued pathetic marks…those endless lectures by dad…”wid these marks how on this earth will u b an engineer or a doctor!!”(eh?who said she wnted to be one..) …her mom’s dialogue in d same rhetorical way---“ see , d amount of money ur dad is spending on ur coaching, You belong to a family of doctors , engineers n scientist ..how come u came out to be a jerk!cant u fr ur dad’s sake atleast clear AIMS like Mr Mehta’s son did or cant u qualify IIT ..just as Mrs Sharma’s daughter!”....

But how cud she hv when the structure of an amoeba and a phytoplankton both looked similar to her..she still depicted carbon pentavalent while drawing chemical structures…she still dint knew y an electrophile or nuceophile attacked the hexagon resembling figure tht people called benzene…the only thing tht she knew in permutation n combination ws tht 0! Ws equal to 1…it ws out of question to visualize 3D,vectors whn she cud hardly understand 2D theurems…..newton’s n archimedes’s law all seemed same to her…and she hd strted hating all those pulleys drawn all over her physics book!!..again came those evn more sleepless nights before her 12th boards ..n her mom’s oh so same question…” will u get 85 % atleast?you need to get more thn Mrs Shukla’s daughter, Remember she topped her school…your dad will so proudly announce ur results in frnt of his colleagues…remember how Mr Mishra threw a party on his son’s success"…Finally all these expectations come to an end today…a 51 % in XII boards..IITJEE?are u kidding?..AIMS?..out of question…today her disgustingly pathetic results hv made her parents head bow in frnt of all their so called relatives , well-wishers n yah!the-oh-so-famous parents of the next newtons and Einstein’s of the society…..!

She cudnot stand it anymore..the avalanche of pain…the gregarious monster of guilt and failure inside her mind had already taken up a voluptuous form and with the help of its huge tentacles ws suckimg away the Elixir of life deglutitively….the drowsiness now to its extremeties and her eyes now completely closed …her memories , dreams and tht vision now all blending and merging into tht fine line of horizon tht separates between life and death….into the darkness…yes into more groping darkness…

So Sharmistha died…leaving behind a lot question fr us to answer…Why is it tht teenagers like her who have a nack to pursue other things in life not allowed to persue their dreams…Her death is not the death of a single soul but the death of hundreds of sharmisthas who die after the declaration of board results evry year ..overburdened n after failing to satisfy evr ending expectations of guardians, teachers n peers….

In today’s 21st century ,Why is the society still coiled within d rusted chains of age old ideas n notions.We say society hv changed,moved ahead , then y is it tht this change is not evident in the basic beliefs n mentality of the people around us.Why do we still cherish the idea of our sons n daughter’s to be the next Einstein n Madam Curie of this nuclear age n not an artist or a dancer?If evry child was to become the next Archimedes or Ramanujan, then who the hell in this earth will take over as the next Picasso, the next Taansen..?
Why r we still running away from the larger thn life truth tht evry child cant get a seat in the IIT, AIMS or IIM.Everyone cannot be a part of the Intelegensia of the society,there has to be strata of the society tht can be named –the Mediocre’s..

The clic`hed questios tht still lingers in my mind is—How many more deaths of students like Sharmistha will it take for the opionated adherents of our so called Education System and the watch dogs of the society to realize tht the effect of the 11 letter word –EXPECTATION on young n fragile minds is phenomenon….?