Finding the answers..but at what cost

The tora-tora spun round and round, faster and faster. The world was spinning with it, distorted and blurred. She liked it this way. It blotted out the unpleasantness and unfairness of reality. The incessant spinning somehow brought her restless mind, constantly seeking the happiness that had always eluded it, the solace that it could not find in the real world. Her everyday turmoil and frustrations were somehow pushed to the back of her mind. She would deal with them tomorrow.

She was living for the moment – this moment filled with the uninhibited screams and laughter of others, probably like her, dealing with their own internal demons. Her parents, disapproving and judgmental, stayed tangled in the spinning trees. Her husband, whose hand she had held in her pursuit of happiness, but who had let her down miserably, was lost in the melee. The thought of him brought tears to her eyes, and these tears of sorrow mingled with the tears brought upon by the breeze, trickled down the tired lines on her face to fall on the plump, dimpled cheeks of her daughter.

Her daughter looked up and smiled at her.

For an instant all her worries dissipated. This is all that matters – she thought. This child I shall rear and nurture. I shall give her my all – she shall be my vindication, my deliverance from this unfair, unforgiving world. I shall be her shield against all the disappointment, all the tribulations that life throws up – she pledged. She clutched her closer to her heart.

And then the tora-tora suddenly jerked and her hand loosened around her baby. One split second she tried to regain her hold on the child and the next saw her child falling into the void below. Her eyes widened in horror and her reflexes snapped into action. No time for thought or rationale, no time to reach out for her confidante sitting next to her - the man who had promised her a new life in a new city far away from her disappointments, her one ray of hope. No time to discuss or decide – the plunge had to be taken, it was her onus no one else’s. And the mother did the unthinkable.

Unthinkable? She thought. Why, it is the most natural thing for me to do – she reasoned even as she hurtled down to the ground – the dirt streaked grass and the muddy slush closing in on her at breakneck speed. If it is a choice between her life and mine, of what use is my existence if not to protect and save her? A million times shall I lay down my life if it can save her tender existence.

But where is the apple of my eye? Her eyes searched desperately for her child. She hasn’t hit the ground, thank God for that – if there is a God that is. In the instant before her head bludgeoned against the ground she looked up to see her baby safe, ensconced in the hands of a stranger, drenched in her own blood but definitely alive – her traumatized wails bore evidence to that. She smiled her last smile and thanked the living God in words that stayed in her throat – unsaid, unspoken. She had finally seen God. She had finally understood the reason for our living – and why there was still hope for tomorrow. She was finally at peace – her search had ended.