Sunday Story: Towards a New Life

Avantika had had it now—all the bottled-up frustration, helplessness, and discontentment she had from her life had begun to show. While all of it made sense to her and her daughter, it did not, at all, to the rest of the world, because the rest of the world was seeing the grass from the other side.

For the rest of the world, Avantika had everything that it actually desired—a grand mansion as a home, a fortune that would last generations to come, a husband who addressed all her needs, as far as materialistic needs were concerned. Everybody thought that she was living the perfect life and that given all that she had, she ought to be extremely happy with her life for she had more than what most of them even dreamt of. Little did they know about the inside story, the behind-the-scenes.

Though Avantika had every materialistic pleasure that one could dream of and more, her life lacked some of the basic emotional needs—love, a sense of belonging, a sense of independence, and a sense of contentment. And people failed to understand, how despite “having everything” she could feel them be “missing” from her life—only if they knew what it felt to stay in such a huge mansion, which she was forced to call “home”, all day, for all seven days of the week, with nobody to keep her company but herself and the house help; to have a partner who never asked about how you were or how your day went; to have nothing to do but stay at home all day doing nothing but tending to it; to stay disconnected from the world.

This had been her life for the past 20 years. And she could not take it anymore. She had tried voicing her feelings, her concerns to some of her “confidants” when she had first started feeling this way, but she was brutally dismissed and her feelings adjudged foolish and she, thankless. Even her brother, whom she loved the most in the world and thought loved her back equally, was of a similar opinion. It was when he too questioned her feelings did she truly feel completely alone and helpless.

After 20 years, her bottle had filled up to the brim and could not hold it anymore. The world had tried to cork it all this while but even that seemed to have stopped working for the bottle had started showing cracks. And then one day, it burst—it took Avantika just one moment to decide enough was enough, and she decided to move out. On her own.

That day on, Avantika started meticulously planning what she wanted to do, where she wanted to go, how she would support herself, what she would do, and every other detail she needed to work out to live on her own. It was an utterly daunting task for her since she had never done anything of the sort on her own ever before in her life, but she kept at it—the frustration and the need to feel alive and human again outweighed everything else.

Finally, the day came when she had decided to quietly move out. She woke up before dawn, when her husband and the house staff were still asleep, left a letter for him by the bedside table, took her belongings, and headed out. Though she was gripped with anxiety and guilt as she was doing so, she kept at it for she knew she was ultimately going to feel happy and alive at the end of it. As she stepped out of the door and walked down the path through the expansive garden in front of their home, she looked ahead, feeling a dozen different emotions, her head filled with a thousand different thoughts in anticipation of what her new future had in store for her.

Liked this story? Here’s another to read with your evening chai—Accidental Finding.