To Make Them Win!
“I love my school, Amma. Everyone is very friendly.”
“I love my course and the subjects, Appa.”
“I love the new locality we moved into. I made new friends already.”
“My cousins love me. I am the center of attention whenever we meet.”
And many more….
For the last 10 years, Akansha had been saying statements akin to the above, whether she meant them or not. Her parents adored her, and she wanted to always see them happy. She loved to see them smile. Being a made-to-order middle-class family with all the exact specifications, she knew her dad’s salary barely made ends meet. But her parents ensured they never made her feel it.
“Didn’t you want to go to the same tuition your friends go to?” asked her dad during her ninth grade and she just said, “They take a lot of money but don’t teach much, Appa.” She knew it wasn’t true, but she also knew her dad couldn’t afford the pricey tuition.
“I want to do an internship and gain experience in running a business,” she declared during her school holidays and joined her maternal uncle’s food business during the two-month break. While her interest didn’t lie in entrepreneurship, she knew the internship stipend amount would help her mom with running the house. She could see the grin on her mom’s face when she gave her the cash at the end of the internship.
“Please come to the school trip with us, Akansha,” her best friends pleaded. She knew it was expensive and said, “Remember, I joined you all for the movie at the mall only last week. With just 2 months for the exam, I must study,” she replied.
“Thank you for giving us such an adorable daughter,” her parents thanked God every night.
She knew her parents wanted the best for her, and she wanted to make them win. She wanted to make them proud, and she had strived to do that for as long as she can remember. But she knew that for the last 10 years, she had been going through a tough time and living a lie.
“I am going to turn 22 and now is the right time,” she told herself looking at the mirror. “I have made them win long enough from their perspective of what winning meant. They have gone beyond their means for me, and I can’t repay it ever. But if I don’t tell them now, then they will never know how everything about me has been a lie and how difficult it has been for me. If they come to know how much I have been toiling and torturing myself to make them win, they would hate such a victory in which they won while their only offspring lost.”
“It is time I come out and tell them that their Akansha is actually Akash inside.”