Peace

When I was very young my mother taught me to read. Reading was a great
experience. Letters combined to form words and words created stories.
And these stories opened new worlds. Worlds that consisted of many
animals, many people and many buildings. Each book brought forth the
story of new animals, each story contained the picture of new people.
Seeing the photograph of a strange, towering building made me feel new
each time. But there was another thing too. Nearly all books contained
something about mothers. Mothers dressed daintily. Mothers sang songs.
Mothers kept the house neat and clean. I had a mother who was so
different. She was very average-looking and her sense of dressing was
poor. Indeed, people were forever reprimanding her for being untidy. My
mother could not sing. In fact her voice was always broken. To add to
this, my parents were always quarrelling. My brother and I often woke
up when the first fight of the day started and went to sleep when the
last one ended. There were no reasons for these fights. My parents just
hated being with each other. They found fault with everything in the
other person. My brother was an extrovert always playing cricket
outside. I was and still am an indoors person who likes to spend time
with a good book when free. But one could hardly concentrate with my
parents bringing down the roof with their screaming. Though I sought
solace in books my world could never match the world contained in them.
The books had ideal families where the father was broad-shouldered and
controlled the world with the force of his personality. Well, my father
was a little like that too. At the same time he was married to a woman
whom he hated from the depths of his heart. Circumstances prevented him
from breaking his marriage. I did not hate my mother. However imperfect
your mother is, you cannot bring yourself to hate her. Just by being
your mother, she is the most important person in your life. She is your
idol. But I always felt that my mother could never be the person I see
before my eyes. I seek peace while this person spent her time
quarrelling over the pettiest of issues. I felt that something was
wrong somewhere. Indeed, I was right. When I was fifteen years old an
aunt told me what I had always wanted to know. She told me that I was
an adopted child. My legal father was actually my maternal uncle. I was
overjoyed. I now knew that my mother was dead. But now I had the
freedom to look for her in the people around me-good, bad and average.
When I was twenty-five years old I got married. I was well-off now and
my wife too was from a rich family. But she was different from me. She
liked to wear good clothes, wear lots of jewellery and socialize with
other like-minded people. She wanted to go out dancing several times a
week. She wanted to update her wardrobe every month. She liked to go on
jaunts abroad. I had the ability to finance whatever she wanted to do.
But the truth was she was not the wife I had always wanted. I would
have liked to be with a person who read books, admired paintings and
listened to good classical music. I preferred to spend most evenings at
home. I liked to meet people but only on special occasions. To feel
better, I started painting. I drew the woman I sought, in the form that
I was looking for. I painted only for myself. I painted the woman of my
dreams in the colours that I imagined her to be in. In one years' time
I divorced my wife. I am sixty-five years old now. I have been able to
earn enough money for myself. But till now I have lacked peace. Peace
of body and mind. Peace that comes from having someone agreeable of
your opposite sex near you. I believe I have found the right person. A
month ago I was moving around aimlessly in the City Art Gallery. As I
was admiring a certain painting, a lady, about five years my junior,
quietly came and stood next to me. She had painted the work I was
looking at and she was kind enough to explain its significance. I asked
her out to coffee and she agreed. Well, I found out that she is just
the right person for a man like me. She is an accomplished painter and
also a good cook. She likes to stay at home and enjoy the peace when
she is not on some assignment outside the house. She likes reading
books and she likes birds. She was not married before. There have been
women in my life before-mother and wife. These people have merely
stepped into their roles as dictated by society. My present wife whom I
married last week is the first woman who has brought me peace-albeit a
little late in life.