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None To Call My Own
"WAIT YOU!"
The shouts were deafening, amplified more so because of the loud and frantic thudding of his heart. Sweat beads were rolling down his face and his shirt and jumper were already damp because of it. Shallow breaths and blurry vision coupled with his cramping calf muscles. He wanted to stop. To take a breath. To heave a sigh of relief.
He wanted to rest.
But he kept running. Didn't stop even to cast a glance back at them. The bullies who were shouting at him to stop right there. But he didn't.
Their shouts sounded angrier now. They were bordering on threats now. Promises of pain. Promises of making his life a living hell.
Like they could turn it even more hellish than it already was.
But nothing could make him stop running. And Shravan kept running.
They had stopped him again today on the way back to his dormitory from the library. They pushed him, called him names, abused him, doused him with alcohol and tore his books to shreds.
They said he didn't belong there. In their country, among their people. Told him to pack up and take his sorry ar*e back to his filthy home.
He didn't have any, in the first place.
Shravan had shoved them off of him and ran from their. He ran as if his life depended on it, which ironically it did.
He ran just like he had from Sumo.
A glass bottle came flying from behind him, missing his head by a couple of inches, and crashed ahead of him. A stray glass piercing his cheekbone. But the adrenaline coursing through his blood didn't make him register the full impact and pain of that injury.
Shravan could see the maintenance building of his campus ahead. He quickened his steps and ducked inside, making a dash for the basement. He could hear the heavy footfalls of his bullies. And Shravan hid himself in a dingy supplies room.
Even there in London, people wouldn't leave him alone. He was still a nerd and a misfit. An outcast. Someone nobody wanted around them. Someone nobody wanted to acknowledge and accept.
Why would they? Rather, why should they? When his own mother had cast him aside, without a thought.
This brought on fresh bouts of tears which threatened to chock his entire existence. But Shravan bit his fist because he could hear them outside, in the corridor.
He couldn't call on anyone for help. No one would come even if they heard him. He was alone in all senses. No family and no friends. Neither here nor back in Delhi.
His best friend had never been his best friend in the first place.
He felt unbounded rage. Towards her, for betraying him. Towards himself, for trusting her. Towards his mother, for leaving him. And his father, for not being there for him.
Yes. Even his father. He too left him all alone to fend for himself.
Shravan heard the retreating footsteps. With promises of the worst kind of pain when they met next.
He released the breath he had been holding and drew out his fist from his mouth. He looked to the side and there, on an old dirty mirror he could see his reflection. And he shuddered.
What he saw made him hate himself. Made him hate all the people in his life.
Hair messy, shirt torn and bloodied with his ripped jeans. Glasses cracked, covering bloodshot eyes and a small but nasty cut on his cheek already stained with the numerous tears he had shed.
Looking at himself he could only think of himself as one thing.
A loser. A weak loser
He wanted to run away from this person he was looking at. But can anyone ever run away from themselves? Even if they do try, do they ever succeed?
Can anyone ever outrun themselves?
The answer was a clear no. But Shravan was determined to change himself in order to outrun this lonely loser that he was staring at in the mirror. He would transform himself in someone completely opposite of what he had been till now.
And with that resolve in his mind and heart, he started running again.
Only this time, he kept running for ten long years.
~~~
And he kept running till he found his home, in the arms of his one true love.
~~~
From
C se Cas.
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