Fighting odds

Story based on True Incident

Rakesh was a cool guy, easy go lucky chap. His father was an eminent businessman and his mother a devoted housewife. His sister was married to an NRI. Rakesh was doing his MBA from an UK University. Suddenly his life changed. Changed forever.

Rakesh lost his father in an accident. He was dumbfounded by shock to grieve over the death. His mother was hospitalized in a critical state. For a longtime, he refused to believe in God. There after life became a struggle to him. And he fought hard – to take care of his injured mother, to complete his studies, to secure a job, to handle all the chaos and confusion in the business, to handle the futile business partners, to bring peace in his sister’s troubled marriage. He negated his emotions and feelings. People spoke about him as a stone hearted guy. Nobody understood him.

Life is quite unpredictable. Rakesh lost his dreams, ambition, career, comfortable life along with his father. Even after years, life was never kind to him. When he married a girl of his mother’s choice, disagreements and arguments ruled his married life. Neetha was overly possessive. She could not understand him. She was not his type of girl. Whines and complaints, threats and mental abuse became a routine. After much accusations and troubles, they parted ways. Many of his relatives too misunderstood him. They also joined Neetha in accusing him. They accussed him of drinking, smoking, using drugs and even bad company.

Rakesh’s second marriage seemed to work well. But Sarita’s beliefs, culture, language, upbringing was much different from his family’s. Some misunderstandings in communication paved way to soared relationships with the inlaws. Sarita faced lot of difficulties from her inlaws. They blamed her for reasons that she never even imagined. She was depressed and became irritable and short tempered. She even showed her irritability on her kid. Rakesh understood his wife a little. But it was beyond his comprehension that his mother can act and talk like this. But Rakesh felt its his life and since he is having a good rapport with his partner and vice versa, he would not allow others to spoil it. It took a long time for Sarita to recover from the depression. Fighting odds gives you perseverance. Today Rakesh is a changed man. He is matured by age and experience, responsible, with lots of patience.

Today, tough with their ups and downs, Rakesh and Sarita are leading a happy and contented life. May God bless them!

(I’ve changed the names of the characters for maintaining anonymity)