The Broken Pieces Of My Life

I wiped the tears off my face. Never before in my life had I felt so weak. At that moment, I could literally feel my body burning up, and I was going through so many emotions at once. But at the same time, I felt empty from inside. Like my worst nightmare had come true.

“You can do this, Come on!”

Somehow my inner spirit was keeping me together, and a tiny part of me hoped that things would work out.

Maybe I was lucky enough.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t.

She opened the gate, and I saw her for the first time in my life. I had no idea what to feel, I mean I was meeting her for the first time. All I knew was that I had to be strong, the way that I had been all my life.

I rang the doorbell twice, until an old woman came out. She didn’t look familiar to me. She opened the door and asked me what I wanted.

I looked at my mom, who had been hiding at the side. She came out and was face to face with the woman. Seeing the look on that old lady’s face on seeing my mom, I could make out that it was her.

She was my grandmother. The lady I had been trying to find since 15 years.

I had no time to think or react. My grandmother was as stunned as me. My mom quickly went inside the house, before the old lady could react and I did the same. We came inside and settled on the sofas.

No words were exchanged for a few minutes, until finally she said, “How did you know about our address?”

My mom did all the talking, while I turned my face away. I was now in tears but I didn’t want my mom to see me weak, I was her strength and I could not let her down at this precious moment.

I turned my face towards the old lady sitting in front of me- My Grandmother. I was not willing to call her my grandmother, she was not worthy of it. She had last seen me when I was 2 years old and after that, she hadn’t even bothered to find out whether I was alive or dead.

My father had died when I was two, due to heart attack, as he was a regular drinker, leaving my mother a widow.

At this moment, I was numb.

Blank

Not a single thought in my mind.

No amount of words could describe what I was going through, what I was feeling. Can you imagine I was meeting this woman after 15 years; I had last met her when I was two years old, and there she was. Sitting there, turning her face away from me, and not even acknowledging me as her granddaughter. And the first words she says to me are not words, but questions, asking me where I had found her address.

After talking for a while, my mom said, “Doesn’t she look just like her father?”

You could’ve seen the look on my grandmother’s face.

“Not a bit, she is just like you. I don’t think she resembles him a single bit.” she looked offended when my mom compared me to my biological father.

This woman, seeing her face, I could imagine how brutally she must have harassed my mother. All the stories came running into my mind. I remember how my maternal grandmother had told me how she used to torture my mother, by not giving her food for days, making her do all the work of the household. She was treated like a servant, doing all the chores, and no communication with anyone from her family. Their taunts scarred her life, and she was mentally harassed every day. This left her confidence broken.

Yeah, she was the perfect Mother-in-law.

My mother had grown so thin, that her weight had reduced to 43 kgs. This was why by the time I was born, I too was underweight.

Anyways, too much of the flashback. Now let’s go back to the main part of the story.

How I located her.

My father died when I was 2 years old because of a heart attack and my mother came back to her parents for she couldn’t bear the harassment of her in laws. She started doing a job, in order to raise me, the only ray of sunshine in her life. She had tried fighting for her rights but after a lot of trying, she gave up.

Meanwhile my paternal grandparents married their daughter, sold their properties and shifted somewhere else. And all this while, they didn’t even bother to know whether I was dead or alive.

As I grew up, I had always wanted to meet my grandparents, ‘my other family’. My mom knew the address, so we decided to meet them, but to our shock, we got to know that they had sold their house, and had shifted elsewhere after marrying their daughter.

I was deeply hurt that time. All my official documents, whether it be my class X result, my national kickboxing championship or my passport, my entire documents had the name of my father. But my grandparents didn’t even feel the need to acknowledge me as their own, just because if they did, they had to give me property.

I was always taught to respect the elders, but what about those elderly people who don’t know how to perform their duties, and are not even ready to accept their granddaughter as their own.

At the same time I can’t repay the debt of my maternal grandparents who had three daughters and were still ready to accept me as their fourth daughter.

So, after finding out, about how my paternal grandparents had sold their properties, and fled.

I was disturbed for few days, so I just decided to research through the different papers from the time when my mother had decided to fight for her rights. While just flipping through some of the papers of the case, I saw an address of some relatives, named Chaturvedi, who lived in Noida. I mean, there was a chance that we could find them, it might be worth it.

I had to try that address.

So one fine day, we set out to find their house, thinking that we could find out her address from my aunt. So, we set out for Noida. On my way, I had so many anticipations of what would happen- how would she react, what would she do, would she freak out on seeing me, would she want me, and the most important question in my mind- what if the address was wrong?

We set out on a lovely Sunday morning, which I knew wasn’t going to be that lovely. When we reached Noida, we went to sec 41. We knew the block number, and house number, so we got out of the car, and starting searching for the house.

I found the house number, but something about that house, didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem to be the one I was searching for. I opened the door, which was opened by a boy of around 20- 21 years old. When we asked him the details, he said that he was just a tenant and he knew nothing about any family living there.

We were so disheartened at that moment, and it felt like all our hopes had been crushed.

We sat back in the car, but my mother hadn’t lost her hope. We kept on asking the neighbours but in vain so we just thought of coming back. We roamed around different sectors randomly asking the neighbours, feeling helpless. Just then my mom gave a last try and told the driver to take us to sector 40, the same address, but different sector. We had to try; we had to give our best.

Although I had lost all hope, we still decided to give it a try.

The car stopped in front of a beautiful house. We rang the doorbell and a retired army officer came out. I turned to my mom, and I could see the tears coming out of her eyes. The uncle asked us whom we wanted to see, and it was when my mother completely broke down in tears. She told them the whole story about whom we wanted to see, our purpose behind this, everything.

The couple was really very sweet; they took us in, and decided to help us. I was really moved by their gesture. Seeing them made me realise that kindness still prevails in our society. We told them how we found the house in sector 41, but it was inhabited by a tenant.

The couple said they knew about the owner of that house, as often their mails had been exchanged due to their same address, but different sectors. So, they asked him to come over to his house.

After around 15 minutes, he came, and we asked him about his house, his tenants, and whether he knew about the people living there before. He said that before the current tenant about 10 years back, they had given their house on rent to some Chaturvedi’s and they were his friends.

My mom and I exchanged looks which meant that our mission was just about to complete.

So, the thing is, the house we were searching for was given on rent to Chaturvedi where my aunt was married. We had hoped to find out her house, so that from her, we could find out the address of my grandmother.

On talking with the owner of the house, in which my aunt had lived before, we got to know about my aunt’s current address. The owner was perplexed as to why we were asking all those questions, so he kept asking in between the purpose behind all those questions.

We told him our story, and it was then the final pieces of the story began to assemble together. He said he knew about the current address of my grandmother, the one that I had been searching for.

The both of us thanked them from the bottom of our hearts, and we immediately set out, having found the address.

We sat in the car and went off.

So, now as we sat in my grandmother’s house, my home, which frankly didn’t feel like one, I started realising all the sacrifices my mother made for me, all the hard work she did in bringing me up. This experience opened my mind.

I am really thankful to the Punjabi couple who helped and listened to us, and even called the owner of that house. I would not have found out about my grandmother, if it hadn’t been for them. Through this experience, I got to know the reality of this world- that sometimes your will come across difficult situations in your life, but God is with you, and he sends blessings in the form of angels who help us through our tough times.