This story is part of a novella – A girl was born

Do check out the first and the subsequent chapters – https://firsttimemommy.net/category/a-z-blogging-challenge-2018/

The next morning, Tara woke up late. In between bouts of crying and helpless anger, she managed to sleep only in the early hours of the morning.

She entered the kitchen with eyes huge and swollen. Her mother gave her an ice pack and hugged her.

“Take a shower, you will feel much better. Then we have to go to the temple for puja. Remember it’s Thursday today, we need to offer prayers to the banana leaf.” She said.

“No!” Tara shouted.

“I am not doing any puja henceforth. And no fasts either.” Then with force, as her fingers were swollen too in the morning, she started taking off one ring after another and throwing them on the floor.

“I don’t want any of these either. Fat lot of good they did to me.”

“At least ask Himanshu what happened,” her mother pleaded with her.

“I am doing nothing of that sort. I waited for him for 15 months, he said he didn’t want to marry just yet, and I agreed. I did whatever he asked me to do. And this is what I get at the end of it. Rejection.” Tara was furious with herself. She was furious with her destiny and all the Gods in the world.

“No one will ever talk about that wretched man ever again in this house,” her father entered the kitchen at just that moment and announced. Her mother nodded her head.

It wrenched his heart to see her daughter suffering so much. He felt his chest constricted and his eyes heavy, but he didn’t cry then. He needed to put up a brave front. He wiped his eyes with is kerchief only once he was alone in the bedroom. Curse that man!

It was time he found Tara a good husband. A husband and kids should make her forget about her past.

She took sleeping pills to make her sleep. But, even they refused to work on her. Tara woke up in the nights with wet cheeks and pain in her chest. She wondered how one could feel so much pain and still go on breathing. Sometimes she felt she should cut her heart out from her body. Her life had shattered and scattered into a million pieces and she did not know how to pick them up. She was not even sure if she really wanted to.

Her parents saw her moving like a zombie and hurt inwardly. They did not know what they could do to help her. Their child and they could do nothing to wipe off that permanent doomed expression from her face. But how did you comfort someone who did not need comforting?

Love was such a scary thing. It overwhelmed you till you were just putty in its hands. She felt she was in a bog of memories, however much she tried to get out of it, more the memories would pull her down and haunt her.

Himanshu had once asked her, “What will you do if I leave you?”.

She had replied cockily so sure of this turn of event never happening, “I will haunt you for the rest of your life”. The truth was that it was him and his memories that were hell bent upon haunting her.

Will Tara ever find love and happiness again? Stay tuned for tomorrow’s chapter!