Adopted

” We all hold our secrets deep inside us, some extremely dark and trivial with the times that we live in. Somewhere, sometime what if our truths come before us questioning our own existence and showing us the bitter reality that remains hard to accept and live with.”

Sometime ago, when the time travels back to the mystical phase of my life, where I was timid, unknowingly curious about a truth, I realised something that changed my life forever. My story takes its inception on an afternoon when I was exposed to the obnoxious truth that I was not the real descent of the Saki family.

In the year of 1972, when I was 17, I made an unusual excavation into the old store room of our house; Beaten to boredom on the long summer vacation I started exploring the rusted iron boxes filled with those things that engulfed flavours from the past. Digging into one of the old boxes that had my father’s possessions from college, I found a short book that had something written in amateurish calligraphic strokes. Unfinished poems and phrases of prose flashed in between as I flipped through the old note book which was eaten away on the sides by the rodents secretly surviving in the same manor with the Saki’s.

Opening a random page I found this, “Watching those tears of happiness in the eyes of someone you love is priceless. I cherished that moment with a delighted heart when my wife touched our one year old son for the first time with her teary cheeks. We would erase the fact that Saketh was adopted from our minds and adore him with all the love in our hearts. Oh! God let the moment never perish from our thoughts till we breathe our last”.

My heart raced faster than anything I could ever imagine. I realised that I was the adopted son to my parents.

Quickly turning to the first page I found my dad’s name beautifully composed in calligraphy and matchless with the amateurish one written in the pages, sharp in its strokes and elegant on the curves. I didn’t move away from that room. It’s the unbeaten curiosity, fumes of anguish and fear of insecurity that made me to sit on the dusty table in that dark store room with a lantern on my side to read the story that would unveil my genesis. I continued reading;

“It was those days when the country had seen its dark phase, where its air carried the foul gusts of black magic, people’s life cursed with the evil superstitions, families drenched in the blood of the innocent young ones falling prey for the malicious honour killings. Time was rotten, dark and unforgettable. Coming from a lineage which was considered to be an upper caste I was aware of the circumstances but nothing could stop me from loving Shefali. She was an orphan who grew up in a small school for the homeless; Bright student she was, always spontaneous in putting up questions and equally enthusiastic to answer the most typical ones posed by the tyrant professors in the college. Her words of compassion and acts of simplicity attracted me a lot. She taught me upon being responsible, being independent; I couldn’t teach her anything, all I could give her is unconditional love that she had been searching for.

Getting on the edge of graduation made me insomniac. I was worried about our relationship. After a series of sleepless nights I decided to study far away from my place which would kill time and also stabilize the traumatized situation of honour killings. Convincing Shefali and my parents on different aspects separately, we moved to a distant university that banked on the eternal Ganges.

Staying away from those terrible conditions and being emancipated from family restrictions earned us our freedom. Misusing it at times never bothered us in those unforgettable sweet moments. We were never guilty about what we had done. It took us no time to realise that destiny is no man’s friend. One evening Shefali confronted her pregnancy”.

 

Bewildered, I stopped reading; I never had the idea that my parents who were revealed to be the foster ones were in love from college. I always assumed it to be a procedural arranged marriage between them. Hearing someone walking by the door I quickly wrapped the book beneath my shirt. Being vulnerable I didn’t speak to anyone. That night, looking at my unusual behaviour my little brother bothered to ask me what I was going through. I couldn’t resist myself from asking him something which was haunting me.

“Samar, what if you realize that I am not your real brother? What if I was adopted or something of that sort, what would you do? ” I spoke lying on my bed.

I couldn’t pose this question looking impassively into his pitch black eyes. Waiting anxiously for his reply my lungs expanded twice their size. After a minute pause he started speaking “You have been my brother for so long that I can’t imagine you being an outsider to the Saki’s. Tomorrow if I come to know that you were adopted, I wouldn’t care. You would still be my brother, for this life”. I remained speechless.

Watching him asleep, recollecting his unforgettable words I quickly switched on the bed lamp and continued reading.

“We were drowned into a situation which made us realize eventually that we weren’t mature enough to handle it. Shefali was stubborn with the idea of aborting or abandoning the baby. She never wanted her children to experience what she was subjected to. Times being conservative, raising a baby before marriage would encounter us with myriad suspicious questions from the society. World being so small and mean it would deliberately place us in the most horrific situations we could ever imagine. It took me months to forcefully convince her about giving away our baby to someone where he/she would be safe and happy. Though I was selfish lover then, on a rainy day being a father I wept like a child holding my son for the first time in my trembling hands. Taking our new-born baby to his foster parents I walked straight to Shefali with a devastated face filled with the tears of guilt, I spoke “Never forgive me on this sinful act of mine”. What Shefali has done was an epitomized sacrifice ever made by a mother. We left our unnamed child with Farooq who was a distant friend.

Completing the course I went back to my dad with an irrefragable business idea. Within no time Shefali teamed up with our business and we created fortunes. We always had a tacit empathy towards each other’s guilt and suffering. Seeing our progress our parents eventually agreed with our marriage proposal. It was my father who convinced other people in the family. Post marriage, our guilt proliferated like an uncontrolled fission reaction. Success and money couldn’t buy us happiness; food didn’t savour our appetite, nights were abominable as we had to face each other.

After a few months I heard that Farooq’s wife was expecting a baby soon. Deliberately agreeing upon my wife’s decision to move far away from these haunting memories, I made my final visit to see my son for one last time and to aid the modestly earning family to meet their clinical expenses. Entering into the local maternity ward, I have seen Farooq in a pensive mood. I heard the sweating midwife predicting dismissal chances upon Farooq’s wife survival after the extremely complicated delivery. Farooq was shattered; he put my son in my arms and rested back on the wall crying silently. I adored the warmth in my arms; I could take my eyes away from my child.

“Take your child with you, he deserves more. I could never give him such affection that you would render. He is yours, take him”, Farooq spoke with a mumbled voice. I didn’t know what to say at that moment. I considered it to be a humongous gift from him, evidently a second chance for us. I brought him back home cooking up a tragic story about my friend, where the year old boy being the lone survivor of it. My parents welcomed my real son to be the adopted one, later we named him Saketh”.

Completing the book I was contented, I heard what I wanted to. I was not the adopted one. Next day, I went to my dad’s work place; seeing my radiant black eyes and the book in my hand, my father struck a paradoxical expression. Putting his hand gently on my shoulder he took me outside.

Before I could break the awkward silence he interrupted me saying “Saketh sometimes “the truth” can be so satisfyingly deceiving that you want nothing except that believed part of it to be confided. We all settle down happily with that comforting piece of truth but there is always a part of it which gets ignored with the time.

Looking into my eyes sharply he continued “That day when I met Farooq for the one last time in the hospital, he has asked me a favour. A favour that reflected me in him, a favour that made me emancipated from all the guilt I was suffering from. When I was about to leave the hospital carrying you in my arms contentedly, I heard him calling out my name with a shaky voice. I turned back slowly; I have seen the same guilt in his eyes that appeared in mine when I have given you away in the past. 

Rubbing out his eyes and cheeks that were red and moist Farooq sobbed “Would you like to take my child with you? I know how deeply you were traumatized leaving your own child to me. If you think allah has given you a chance to recuperate from your guilt, you can take my child and raise him. I am a selfish loser, I am nothing if my wife dies here; I could never imagine a day without her.  I never know what would happen to me. These kids have a future; I don’t if a bad omen takes my wife”. 

He broke into tears. 

I took a deep breath and started speaking “If you think you can’t handle this, I would happily take your child with me. He would be raised as a Saki. He would be my blood” and it has been 15 years till then; Farooq never returned for his son, Samar. 

After that we left to a distant place across the seas hiding your brother for two and half years.  We returned with a spurious truth that he was the real son conceived by your mother and you remained adopted. What has happened is complicated and we never wanted people to know the truth, “Sometimes in all our lives we realize that few truths are extremely trivial“.

Holding me tight, he said “there is something which is mightier than just being a truth, it is compassion, if you still wanted to hear the truth, here it is; we love both of you. I hope you would realise it soon”. Patting me affectionately, my dad left. I never asked what his intention behind writing that book was.

I looked at the black cloudy sky and words of my brother resonated in my ears “Though you were adopted, you would still be my brother” a tear that rolled down my cheek coagulated with the first rain drop of the monsoons. Clouds started pouring down cleansing the trivial truths about my origin. The zephyrs of monsoons consoled my little heart that had to conceal the biggest secret of our lives; intensely looking at the murky clouds, I tossed that insignificant book far away from my hand. Somewhere in these terrains, sometime in the past, I thus started believing in one thing; that invincible feeling, called love.

I remained “adopted” all through my life happily.

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