Bhanne lai Phool ko maal
Yo katha baikuntha jaala.”
(A garland of gold for the person who is listening to this story
A garland of flowers for the person who is narrating this story
And thus shall this story rise to the heavens…)[break]
Jijumua concluded her stories with this phrase each night, lulling my fatigued body to sleep and awakening therein my innate self.... my wild self. My grandmother’s stories released me, allowed me to think, ponder, question, understand, long for and even wander off.
More than any thing else, her stories kept the truth of my being alive; submerged yet alive, somewhere inside of me. Now when I look back, I am convinced that Jijumua’s stories actually saved me from decaying, from dissappearing into the oblivion of forced and falseful thinkings. Her stories laid bare the primordial fact of the wild woman blended with the wild nature. It was her fairy tales, myths and stories of the good woman, the bad woman, the daring woman, the evil woman, the wicked woman reigning the world of the clouds, the thunder, the lightening, the rain, the sun, the mud and the skies, the trees and the flowers that nurtured that very innate self in me... the self that is wild, the self that is a wanderer and the self that never stays constant.
Now there rages in me a war between two selves. Am I the wild woman that I am born to be or am I the harnessed woman that I am expected to be? I ask my self this question each day. I am trapped in this dilemma. I suffocate each day, wondering to myself who I really am? Am I Sanjeevani, the one moulded into an accceptable form? Sanjeevani, the gagged one, the unaroused, compressed, harnessed, the socially conscious and socially accepted one? Or am I Sanju, the wild one? Am I Sanju, the one who carries the stories, the dreams, the songs and the memories of the absolute, undeniable and irrevocable bond with the wild.
The thought is scary and chilling. I look around my self, bewildered and completely lost. The cold, steely sense of death is all around me, concrete and hard. It is almost stiff and unyeilding... towering over me like an iron cage, impenetrable and almost suffocating. It is a sense of being trapped, caged in rather. But am I in this alone? I think not. We are in it together. WE, my entire family, the remnants of the great Singh clan, established years ago by my dead grand father. These are people I am supposed to love and care for... feel for. But do I... really?
I know this is not the right time and definitely not the place for me to interrogate my sincerity towards my family. And besides I have, as Razat has reminded me often, been a selfish person. ‘It is amazing, Sanju, that you do not really see people! For you they are nothing but appendages to your selfish needs. You live, madam Sanjeevani, in an intensly lit haze that shifts and shines according to your selfish desires.’
Razat’s words did not pinch me then for I agree that I am indeed a selfish person and live for myself alone. Did I not only think of myself when I broke my engagement with Nabin? My parents were shattered after that incident. My father, recently having lost his only son now walks around haggard and resigned… looking far older than his age. He has no hopes now, and a hopeless man is as good as dead. I know I killed my father… my father who was always hopeful, always aspiring. I took the last breath of hope out of him by being a shameless slut. Yes! That’s what I am - a shameless slut. I know people call me that behind my back. It rarely bothers me though. But I am hurt somewhere… knowing and realising that my father too becomes a victim of these stains on my character.
The Week has had an exclusive peek into Facing My Phantoms that will launch today in Kathmandu.
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