Love Yourself

“Kaushlendra Babu is really very lucky, so beautiful, elegant and educated bride he got. No other woman keeps the beauty like her in our family clan”. Said Bua ji on the occasion of the First night after the wedding ceremony of both Kaushlendra and Kanika.

The room was fully decorated with rose petals filled with sensational fragrance to welcome the meeting of a newly married couple. Kanika in red saree and wearing all heavy jewelry was being seated on a huge and extra soft bed covering her face under a long veil. She was trembling to think of coming moments at the same time she was happy to think that like her elder sister she had not caused pain to her father on the matter of the wedding. Tadaakk! Kanika got conscious coming back from her thinking zone as she listened to the sound of closing doors. It was clear by now that her husband arrived and reached to her. Her face became red while holding her own body tightly. She felt that he was coming near to nearer to her. She was expecting some magical words on that golden night before uncovering her face. After all, such a golden night comes once only in one’s life. Without uttering a single word, Kaushlendra lifted her veil and said with a blank face, “You are not my first love. I love my first love until today. I could not get her. Be clear that I have married you under family pressure.”

Now Kanika was left with no feeling, no excitement, and no dreaming. Someday she read that ‘love never teaches to harm anyone at any point’.

After some months of her dry and dull married life, she asked him to continue her lectureship at a College. She found no charm and no need to spoil her bright career just because of her hollow marriage. But he did not permit her. The reason was his family’s high-class reputation where a woman can’t go out for earning.

Anyhow Kanika managed herself with her inner strength. As she did not let her open to any kind of vulnerable situation. She liked to live her life on own conditions disallowing any negative or harassing hangover on her. She had been a passionate lover of music and reading. Actually, music and reading were her friends at her in-laws home.

Time passed by and Kanika gave birth to a baby boy. She engaged herself in bringing him up in the anticipation that one day her son would understand and love her like a man, unlike his father. Very soon, she realized that her son was not hers but a true copy of his father. A man is totally aloof from a woman’s peculiar demand of devoted desire by melting away herself. Once again after so many years, Kanika found herself alone. Hence once again she got involved in her own created world. A live person with full of energy and modern outlook who firmly believed that ‘until and unless one does not love oneself he or she can’t dare to lead on own conditions. It is always better to design an inner world of self-pleasure rather keep complaining about the agony of the external atmosphere’.

One day she came to know that her son wanted to marry a girl who was neither of their community nor of their state. It was obvious that his wish was at once refused by his orthodox father. But here Kanika took initiative and strongly favoured him. As she was aware of the deep longing for the love of someone and by someone. After her exhaustive efforts, her son could get married to his beloved one.  

Within a few days, Saumya her daughter-in-law developed a very unexpected intimacy with her mother-in-law. Both of them began to live like close friends as if they met after many years. Till around five to six years, Kanika forgot all her grief of her earlier life enjoying to the fullest with Saumya. They used to go for watching movies and shopping. They both spent time together with singing and dancing. On her advice, she also joined the gym to maintain physical health. Surprisingly she got love as a mother in law but for a short span of time.

Her son was in a private bank and posted at a pretty distance from the home. Saumya occasionally visited him as his job was a full-time job so he could hardly get time for his wife.

Normally a three-hour movie has one intermission but Kanika’s life-movie has more than one interval of shock and sorrow in parallel.

One morning she had to face trauma when she got the news that Saumya left the home because of his son’s discontented behaviour. Once again, she was alone. What happened, why happened and how happened despite all her active and alert efforts to make her family united and peaceful. That day she was forced to think that if she wished she also could take the same step for her happiness as her elder sister did. Her elder sister ran away from the home to marry her lover making her father shameful and disappointed. She never thought to hurt her father again although she denied such opportunities.

It is said that bad time, once appears, continues one by one. One afternoon, her husband fell down on the stairs and his spinal cord got broken. His long treatment had to continue on the bed at home. Now there were three people at home. Kanika, her husband, and one servant. She controlled her mental distress and got busy to serve her husband with devotion as a so-called wife.

Sitting in front of the mirror, one evening Kanika talked to her image. “Dear life, gift me more and more challenges and I am here to face it with ever-growing determination. I am now Sixty . Throughout my life, I had been hankering to have love but failed to get so. My father got upset because of his elder daughter, my husband did not love me because of his so-called first love, my son never felt the need to love his mother, my loving daughter-in-law loved more her liberty than me.

Now I can reiterate that long-lasting love is self-love. It has no expectation, no complaint, no obligation from anyone. In fact, It makes you engrossed in oneself focussing on self-enrichment."  Then the doorbell rang and a courier from her gym was there. She was selected to take part in an Over-Sixty-Sexy-Fitness-Show organized in the city as she had been the fittest, agile and graceful lady of the gym.   

Another challenge to prove her will-power to excel as she did always.