Short Story – Growing Up the second time
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“How could you even be so ungrateful? After all these years of love, this is what you give in return. I am sorry but you failed me as a son.” Mrs Ahuja could not take it any more. It was a mutiny and what if her own son was the enemy. She could sustain any of her son’s nuisance but this was greater than that, now he was standing against God and that was something she was not ready to give an ear to. She was not going to listen to any of his brainwashed arguments.
“But Mom! I am a good human being. Isn’t that enough? Why Do I have to believe in God?”,exclaimed Ayats.
He was not expecting this from his mother, afterall she was such an understanding lady. “What could even go wrong?” he had thought, “She is my mother afterall, she would understand. Who else will? She would have to”.
Many questions had been vexing his mind from a long time but now that their were no questions left to be asked and that he had got his answers he was wondering if he was in right mind to even think of “coming out”. Thunderstruck, dumbfounded, Ayats was trying to recollect his thoughts.
Ayats had not always been carrying the torch against God and was a firm believer once himself. Sadly, this pattern of extreme religious adherence afflicted him until he went to college and started studying Theology. His transformation from an orthodox religious person to an atheist took many years and incarnations, but a constant threat to his intellectual growth was the interpretation and criticism of his mother.Despite this fear he had decided to come out firmly and told his mother that he was not a believer anymore.
He did not see his mother the whole day until dinner when she looked in a mood of having conversation. As soon as the oppurtunity arrived she jumped to the conversation of morality. Ayats attempted to distract her and downplay her adversarial tone, but that failed as she sternly focused on his rejection of religious orthodoxy. It quickly became apparent that she was very angry and that she had discussed his apostasy with someone else — most likely a priest. In her opinion, he didn’t receive the “right kind of theological training” and his loss of faith was the fault of his educators.
He attempted to dissuade her from this conversation, to make light of it and move on, but she couldn’t let it go. The worse offence according to Mrs Ahuja , was that her son’s actions were snubbing her status and the least Ayats could do was either to come back to faith or mask his immorality with a facade of religion. Any attempt Ayats did to appease her was interpreted as a continuation of his “disrespectful behaviour”. He tried again and again to negotiate common ground, but after being confronted by continually escalating histrionics, in which she characterized him as “the devil” and declared him to be “immoral,” Ayats recognized the cold fact that her faith was more important to her than their relationship.
There was nothing to be discussed now and the motherly affection and support he was expecting was no where to be seen. He felt cold and solitary, the only person he turned to in times of dejection had closed her doors to him. She was more willing to accept him as an imposter than his genuine self. But strangely he felt liberated, now that he had let it all out he did not have to be closeted. This liberty was all he was left with and Ayats had to now start growing up the second time.
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