‘For nineteen winters I have been a guest to my own convictions. Sentenced to the undying love of my well-wishers, a prisoner to my conservative conditioning. I have faltered at making decisions most of the times, because free will has been nothing more than an illusion to me. Today, I am leaving my fancy jail to find how dangerous freedom is. Do not worry. I will be okay.’
This could have been her first-and-the-last note to her parents but she crumpled the paper after writing on it and tossed it into her brown duffel sack.
Two pairs of socks. One orange muffler. One rubber boot. Three sweaters. A jacket. A thick bar of soap for her thin body. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Sanitary pads. A baggy beanie for her cold head and peanuts. A few kilos of peanuts.
This is what the sack was carrying. On top of it, the burdensome cherry aka the crumpled letter, the heaviest item in her luggage.
A month ago she had made a list of things she would not carry with herself. The list of things to carry along was long and had been compiled and edited multiple times over the years. Running away from home had always fascinated her. But now that she was nineteen, the execution of the plans had to be perfected, and she knew a home full of memories and details could not be carried along.
For a new home to be born, the old one must die. Even if the death is slow and painful.
Time had made her clever. The 254 books she owned, she sold for the sum of 32,600 rupees. Some books had a digital anatomy now. 8 gigabytes of wisdom. Only that she wasn’t sure how she’d keep charging her phone to read. But, one special poem by a poet from Patna had found its way out of the pages and chips. It was carefully written on a plane white sheet and was kept carefully folded inside the right pocket of her jeans. Like a map one would consult when lost. Like the verses from a holy scripture that could heal if hope ethered away.
The first commandment she sung to herself in a low, low voice. Preaching her own religion to herself. A staunch, firebrand believer. A rebel in disguise. A would-be traitor to her classical conditioning.
Doesn't thunder come home
in the hottest of summer
when the vows are broken and a girl runs away from her home?
You must have adored her gold cuffs
It must have been tinkle in their sound that never gave it away
Or maybe they shone too darkly in your stone eyes
and blinded you so
Pray why else didn’t you see how they weighed her down?
And now she tiptoes down this ghostly town
while you fret and fondle in your pitch dark beds,
The little light that she'd been kindling so carefully, so secretly
guides her out, guides her away!
And how you wish that she was more obedient to you,
and not to her waywardness,
this Runaway Girl!
Now what shouldn't go unsaid here is that Annie neither idolized the runaway brides nor doted upon the silver screens. What she saw in the poem was a life being shaped by the tool of one’s own discretion. She was smitten with the idea of breaking chains. The thirst for a carefree living.
At 2.45 am, the last item on her list was checked off and carefully wrapped in a napkin. A week before, she tried experimenting, threw together a rope by fastening the ends of rolled bedsheets. Just like the movie tutorials had taught her. It did not work so she tried a less fancier modus operandi: walking out of the house, from the main door, bravely, but silently.
Courage, in early years of life, fetches wisdom, a rich meal of adventure. But it also comes with a side dish of negligence. Annie was a step ahead. She washed it down with a sour-sweet cocktail of recklessness. And how that helped!
An interesting novel, thanks