A Sore Retrospect!!!!

First Piece of semi-fiction from Collection of Short Stories…………………………

By

Sadaf Fayyaz

A Sore Retrospect!!!!

Laila logged off from her computer and sighed deeply. She looked at the wall clock and wished she could work for long hours, since so much of her work was pending. She was unable to concentrate any more towards her creative work, due to the mental strain she was undergoing for the last few days. She never liked being a part of the environs around her. She looked at the pieces of rough paper on her work table and wished if wasn’t that messy.

“I was never that messy and careless during my school and college life”,

She thought quietly. It had been a very humid and hot evening, leading to a drearier way of mind. Her mother brought her the evening tea and looked at her questioningly,

“I think someone has misbehaved with you these days, you look very down”, she enquired.

“Should I tell my mother what I am going through? It may have a unconstructive impact on her relations with her family people,” thinking silently.

“I have to come out of this dilemma and share it with someone closer. I need a suggestion”. Her mom went downstairs without asking anything.

Being born and bred in a comparatively amateurish and un-groomed family, she always thanked God that her own parents weren’t un-civilized and coarse like others. She liked to stay away and keep a distance from her relatives, which most of her family people took as a “proud” and “snobbish” behavior. She always disliked her family people because of their illiterate ways.

“It is so hard to make them understand the difference between “Attitude” and “Pride””, she used to think at times.

Her ingenious and altruistic work always acted like a fuel and deep inspiration towards her life objectives. But she could feel the weight of years stripping away the frolicsome parts of her personality, adding extra responsibilities and a new way of looking at the world that she could not have anticipated or even comprehended in her twenties or her thirties. Along with the decades had come a new realization that the shell world was becoming faster and faster, with a lot of escalation opportunities. After a few moments, she realized how her parents had always insisted and gave her very high-quality schooling.

She remembered the golden words of her father,

“Try to learn the difference between degrees, education and knowledge.”

With every passing day in her life, she realized the difference between the chronological and mental growth emphatically.

“It is not my fault that I belong to a family of people where girls can’t even use social networks properly.”

The only off beam and misleading conception in the minds of her cousins was that social networks were used for flirting only. Their mental horizon could not think beyond that. A few days back, she received a mail from her cousin, reflecting a very verbally abusive and immature kind of manner. She didn’t like his chic of using words and childishly brainless talk. Even after she blocked him, he kept bothering her through different channels. She had always pitied her relatives for their shoddy style of philosophy and language. She developed a highly progressive outlook towards life after her twenties and didn’t like much involvement of her family people in her goals. She took her mother in confidence and explained her everything.

“You know what, I am not shocked. I was a rebel myself too and ran away from all these things, but now I won’t tolerate such agonizing issues hitting and disturbing my family members”, her mother sighed deeply.

“I wish I could change them and their minds. But I was already sick of such things. I could only groom and educate my children,” she briefed Laila softly.

“Our people put so much emphasis on their make-ups and clothes, if they put the same kind of emphasis on grooming their children well, our society would have been a much better place to live,” she argued with her mother.

“It was something they could have done decades ago and it transferred from generation to generation. At this time of life, you can’t change them or their style of thinking. The same tool can be used for constructive as well as destructive purposes. You carry on with your work. If we have granted you the permission to work, no one else should comment on you or your work.”

Laila felt much lighter after sharing this with her mother as if some burden had been removed.

“I can’t change the world or anyone around me, let them think their way and have to come out of this irritable conduct and have to follow my own path. If a generation doesn’t want to adopt progressive attitude, it leads to their ultimate demise”.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she logged on to see her incoming mails.