A New Dawn

People can't stop praising me enough these days. To my parents, I am the most doting daughter. To my friends, the most decent girl in the universe. But I was not always like this. Let me tell you the story of my transformation……

If I was not really my dad's little princess, I was my mom's pet for sure. I was the younger of my parents' two daughters. If I was not exactly a stunner, people used to notice me even in crowds. Naturally, I was quite arrogant and wild at times.

Till class seven, both my elder sister, Anwesha, and I, Akanksha, were class toppers. My Baba was a high school teacher whereas Ma was a homemaker.

Then Anu ( I used to call my sister by that name), got through the Board Exam in flying colours and my parents decided to admit her to a school in our hometown, Kolkata. Soon afterwards, I was staying with my Baba alone. Though he was a friendly guy, he was quite strict with us. For reasons not very clear to me even today, I learned to keep a safe distance.

What had to happen, happened. After Anu's departure, my performance in the exams started dipping. By then, I was in class nine in high school. One evening, I came back to our quarters quite late to find Baba pacing up and down in the drawing room.

"How come you are so late when school was over by 3.30?" He asked me in that threatening tone of his. 

"I's busy decorating the class room." I replied apprehensively.

"You were the only one decorating? I saw Lhazin walking past our quarters a long time back!"

"Tshering Dorji Sir asked only three of us to do it. You can ask him if you don't believe me." I uttered curtly.

For reasons I don't know Baba didn't seem to believe me. In the days following, the distance between us grew even more as Baba buried himself in his own world, and I did into mine, feeling utterly desolate and disowned.

Consequently, my performance in almost all the subjects in the Half yearly exam was horrible. That's when my parents decided to shift me to Anu's new school. I was admitted to CPS back in Kolkata. And life had to move on. But life in Kolkata didn't turn out to be any better either. My Ma by then had found herself a job and Anu was busy preparing for her HS and NEET exams. We used to leave for school together in the morning but from there she had to attend her tuition classes right after school. She wouldn't be back home before 11 at night most of the days. The result was that I stayed as lonely as ever.

Due to my loneliness, I spent hours on the Social Media. I found out a channel called Textgum for making friends and created my Profile there. Within no time, the number of my friends multiplied.

The name of a stranger, Dip, cropped up on the screen one day.

"Hi, Aksh. Is that your real name? It's devine." That's how it began. 

Judging by his profile picture, he was a handsome bloke.

On another day, he texted me :

"I think of you all day long. Even in sleep I have your serene face haunting me? I'm getting restless. I wanna meet you, touch you, hold you in my arms just to see if you are real. Where can I meet you?"

"Are you back from school? Why are you avoiding me? You didn't answer my call last time. Can you send me some of your pics? Have pity on my suffering soul."

His final text read :"I dreamt of you and me together last night. Only you and me. Beside a waterfall in a glade. You looked so stunning, Love, that I lost control and pulled you towards me. And you came in my arms willingly. I did what I wanted to do from the first day of our friendship. I KISSed you full on those temptingly bewitching lips…"

My mobile mania made my Ma suspicious. One day she was back from office earlier.

"Give me your phone."

Having switched it off, I handed her the phone as directed.

"No, open it. I want to see who you were chatting with." She was unusually livid and wanted to snatch the Android from my hands. In the ensuing scuffle, I held onto it with all my might due to sheer frustration. She tried pushing me to the bed with her free hand. The mobile flew out of my hand and hit her under the chin.

"How dare you hit me! God! Why did you let me live to experience such a horrid day?" She was yelling and crying but I didn't feel like apologizing.

That night, lying in bed, I realised my mistake and felt remorseful. And in the wee hours of the morning, I made a resolution not to make my parents unduly worried on my account again. That bleak night had to be the last night of doom and gloom for Aksh. 

By the time the dark clouds outside the glass window gave way to the morning glow, I had already made a pledge to myself to embrace the new dawn by trying to be a decent, polite and mature Akanksha from then on.