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There is something peculiar about the way life pans out whether one tends to like it not the top of the mountain is always the bottom of another. You never know what is going to hit you next, but you do know something will. Isn’t that why there is an old myth that says don’t laugh too hard for the tears follow harder. Maybe, that is exactly the point of life. A younger Umeed would have attested to this as a theory, but an aged Umeed fifteen years later looks back at those forty-eight hours as the most character growth driven moment of her life. The full circle of life.
August known as month of transition truly did live up to its name. One evening Farjaad and her are celebrating their tenth anniversary. The next evening Umeed is standing next to a motionless Farjaad his form marred by ominous stains of blood in a dimly lit intensive care unit. Growth, they say, transpires as swiftly as the flicker of a light bulb, and within Umeed's soul, she sensed the flicker taking hold.
She did not know how process that grief in that moment and even today she does not know how she kept processing life after losing the love of her life. But a hazy part of her memory still remembers holding onto a lifeless hand of Farjaad and pleading with the softest whimper “uth jao nah Farjaad, uth jao. apni Umeed ke liye. apni Arzu ke liye uth jao. for our miracle child…Farjaad”.
Umeed remembers her whimper being echoed back to her in the deadliest silence of that room and wishing for the ground to swallow her whole. Exactly fifteen years later today the memory of that silence haunts her. The phone call telling her about the accident haunts her. The sound her heart beating in survival mode haunts her. But nothing haunts her more than the loud shrieks of her ten-year-old child then who screamed “what do you mean you couldn’t save baba? Wou nahi mar sakhte wou nahi … he can’t leave his Arzu alone. nahi”.
Umeed thought registering the word “widow” “a dead Farjaad” was hard for her brain but all of that pain, anguish, and grief vanished at the sight of her daughter’s loss for her baba. It was the kind of helplessness that she wished upon no parent and the loss upon no child because who knew this better than her own self. And if all this wasn’t enough to add to the mix to have a child who has a decade worth of shared memories, antidotes, and warm love to live with in contrast to a child for whom his father lives in memories, pictures, and longing. Quite the juxtaposition.
So, when Umeed wasn’t battling fires of memories for her children, she found the darkness enveloping her in the wee hours of the night. She found herself longing for a touch that was her own, a fragrance that was familiar, and the voice of the man who made her world twirl amidst all storms. But the relief never came. It just never did instead her grief fuelled her to work harder and keep going. It was no wonder that Niggo often chided her about missing that real Umeed instead of this Farjaad 2.0 cloak that Umeed had adorned as an armour against life. That's the thing nobody understood that while a new normal had taken over life and while she has her moments of utmost joy a part of her consistently longs for that one person who was her everything. Her true partner in crime. Her soulmate.
‘Moth thak sath chalnay ka wada kiya tha Farjaad. Budhapay mein sath chalnay ka wada kiya tha. Phir aisa aklea tanha chodh gahay apni Umeed ko… bikul tanha’.
Umeed spoke out loud to the picture of them sitting on her nightstand more like his nightstand which she had taken over. With misty eyed she picked up the frame and kissed the last picture that they had taken together encapsulating them for time and memorial and whispered.
‘Happy twenty-fifth anniversary my love. I miss you.’