Prerna – The Inspiration – Episode 3

Prerna – The Inspiration – Episode 2

After the first meeting both the parties decided that they would want to go ahead with the union but Piyush insisted that he would want to know Prerna a little bit more before saying yes. This made Prerna like him a bit more. She too agreed to the proposition and met him at a café the following evening. They talked about many things and the conversation was not at all boring. She enjoyed his company and the fact that he was very well read. He liked to talk about all the things under the sun and had specific opinions about almost everything. He encouraged Prerna to talk about her likes and dislikes as well; which she did.

They met for several days after that and one fine day Piyush asked her about what she thought about their relationship. She said that she liked him but was not very sure about where it was going. She told him that she had to go back to Sawanpur as the winter vacation would be over soon.

“Are you willing to leave the school once we get married, if we get married, that is?” He asked her.
“You work here, so I guess I will have to leave Sawanpur; but I don’t intend to leave teaching. I would join some orphanage here or any other school where I can teach underprivileged kids and continue what I love doing.”
“Hmm… see, I appreciate what you think about this and how you feel about these things; but will you get the time to do so much social service after getting married?”
“I do it right now, why won’t I be able to it after getting married?” Now she was offended.
“See, I’ll say this directly. I have no problem if you work after getting married, but giving so much time to social service is something that I won’t be comfortable with. I know a guy who does social service and I have seen him work from morning till midnight. I see the same kind of passion in your eyes when you talk about teaching these kids and I don’t think I would be able to accommodate that with my already-hectic life. I want a partner who would put me first.”

The evening and the relationship ended there. Prerna went home, informed her father about the whole thing and went to her room. She closed the door and sat at the window looking at the late evening turn into night. She had started liking the idea of a life partner and had started liking Piyush and this made her sad.

The effect on her father was something she had never imagined. The very next day he had a list of potential grooms collected from various sources. It was as if he was ready for something like this. He mechanically informed her that one of them would be coming the next evening and her aunt would be coming and living with them for few weeks.

What happened in the coming few weeks was devastating not just for Prerna but for her father and their relationship. Families came and went by, but nothing fruitful happened. There were boys to whom Prerna rejected and there were many boys who rejected Prerna. Prerna was getting crushed day by day. She had never imagined that there would be such a trauma that she would ever have to go through. There came a time when she couldn’t even look at her father because all she could see was apprehension, tension and sadness mixed with a little hope that one day everything will be ok.

They both were like a ticking time bomb with all the emotions buried inside their heart ready to burst at any given trigger. And the trigger came one morning out of the blue. Prerna’s father came to her and said that there would be another family visiting them the evening. The man was a widower with 2 kids and was 55. He was well settled and was searching for a wife who would take care of his kids. This was too much for Prerna to digest. She wanted to shout and cry but she calmly stated what she wanted to, in plain simple words.

“He is far too older than me. I have no problem that he has kids, but he is clearly looking for someone to take care of them and not a life partner. Please ask them not to come as that would be wasting everybody’s time.” She got up and started leaving the room.
“Then you won’t get married EVER! Not with THAT attitude” Shouted her father.
“Then so be it dad!”

She turned and started running towards the gate. At that moment she heard a big thud followed by her aunt’s cry for help. When she hurled back, she saw her father lying on the floor and her aunt trying to wake him up.

The next minutes were a blur for Prerna and now after an hour, she was sitting outside the ICU looking at nothing, tears in her eyes. Her father had suffered a severe stroke and was in coma, but was alive.