The Dark Age

She had never been a very religious or a spiritual person but had always been a firm believer of fate or destiny. She always thought that no matter how hard one tries, one cannot outrun what fate had already written as one’s destiny. Whether that was true or not, some higher power was certainly at play, deciding this next chapter of her life.

He came into her life gradually and unexpectedly. They were completely different in all respects. They came from different backgrounds both socially and financially, had completely different personalities and if it not were for fate, they would have probably just brushed past each other as two strangers passing through life.

They met for the first time on the first day of undergraduate studies. They were classmates. While she barely noticed him the first couple of days, he was hardly unaware of her presence. He was smitten right from the start. Within those first couple of days, he had made up his mind that he had to get to know her, make her a part of his life as he never wanted to spend a minute of his life away from her. Through his friends and friends of friends he started to find out details about her. To his delight, he found out that they lived near each other and took the same local train to travel to and from school. He started to find ways to be near her so she would start getting acclimatized to his presence. Within a few months, they became friends. Slowly, they became best of friends. They realized that even though they were very different personalities, they understood each other at a deep level. Neither of them had had a friendship like this before. They began to trust each other and slowly, became inseparable.

With all the time they spent with each other, her intuition told her that he may want something more than friendship but she was not ready for that. She had been in an on again and off again relationship with her best friend since the 9th grade and that had taken an emotional toll on her and she had learnt that close friends and romantic relationships were best kept separate. With that, she would ignore any advances that he ever made to the point of complete indifference. But he never lost hope. This continued for the next three and a half years. In those three and a half years, he treated her like she was the only thing that mattered in the world. Their closeness was visible to not just their classmates but also to professors. Throughout, he would try to win her over through romantic gestures and she would ignore them, firmly keeping him in the “friend zone”. In some ways, knowing the power she held over him gave her a whole different level of confidence. In fact, during that period, she also briefly dated another classmate which caused some strain on their friendship but they shared too strong of a bond to not overcome those challenges.

Then, around 6 months before graduation, things changed. He could no longer watch her in someone else’s arms. He needed to be with her and he knew time was running out. Soon, they would all graduate and go their separate ways. There was a slight chance that they may still be together since campus placements were about to start and they could possible be recruited by the same company. But if not, he was afraid he would lose her. So, he came out with it. During one of their regular hang outs by the beach, he took her hand and told her that if she didn’t acknowledge his feelings and give them a shot as a couple, he would walk away and never come back. This got to her. She could no longer just ignore it. He had officially said it now. There was no going back. Having lost her previous best friend to a relationship, she did not want to jump into a relationship with her best friend once again but here he was, saying that she would lose him if she didn’t say yes. With her insecurities playing up, she said yes.

It was a whirlwind of romance the next few months. Knowing how she appreciated romantic gestures, he would go all out and she was completely swept by the wave. There were flowers, chocolates and random gifts. As teenagers, it was just like in the movies! She was after all, in love with being in love! She never stopped to think whether she was actually “in love” with him. She never stopped to think about the impact this might have on her life long term. It didn’t matter that he was completely wrong for her. It didn’t matter that everyone close to her (including her parents) was against the relationship. She knew almost all his flaws but she didn’t care. Who does at that age, right? She was just swept by his romantic gestures. It was the beginning of the darkest period of her life.

It was almost like in the fairy tales the next few months. As luck would have it, both of them got placed in the same company. After graduation, they were going to go off to work at the same place, in a different city, together. They had a whole world in front of them and each other to keep them company. They parted after final exams with excitement of meeting up again in a new city ready to start work. Everything was going exactly as he had hoped it would. But, there was one thing he could not have anticipated.

During summer break, as the two of them were preparing to move to a new city to start their careers, they found out that she would have to delay her start due to a technical issue with her work authorization paper work. She was an American citizen and would need work authorization from the Indian government to be able to work in India, similar to the concept of Green Card in America. Her employers gave her an extension of 3 months to furnish the work authorization. It was a bit of a hiccup but this hiccup completely changed the course of this relationship.

He started at the expected date while she stayed behind at home, sorting out the paperwork needed. While he missed her during that time, the rigors of work meant that he would have to turn his focus completely towards work. He decided to do just that. There was nothing he could do to make her come to him so he would just switch that side of his emotions off and focus entirely on his work. He was like that. He could very easily turn his focus and emotions towards what mattered most at that moment. Once he turned that side of himself off, he never turned it back on and while he turned his focus towards work, she went down a different path, right down a spiral of emotions.

The three months after graduation were rough. The hiccup with the paperwork meant she would have to postpone her date of joining by 3 months. In those three months, she would need to work towards getting her paperwork in order. These papers would need to come from the Indian government and she had only 3 months to get these done or else her job offer would be rescinded. It was not easy. Anyone who has had to deal with government officials in India, knows that it is no walk in the park. There will be challenges and unprecedented delays. The nervous anticipation was visible throughout her household too. It was during times like these that she had come to rely on him to provide comfort and reassurance over the last four years. But he was absent. They spoke over the phone but barely as he was busy. She was left to her own devices to deal with the stress. Somehow, she managed to wait it out and after three months, she had the necessary paperwork for her to start her career.

Her parents came to drop her off at her new accommodations in the new city. He came to receive her. On that first night, he even took her out to dinner but he didn’t have the time to drop her off. She found her own way back, surprised and disappointed at the change in his attitude. Over the next few months, as she grappled with homesickness (it was the first time she was away from her parents) and loneliness, his emotional absence began to eat at her. While he was excited that she was near him, he had already turned his focus towards his new life and had become accustomed to a new routine without her. He didn’t need her in the same way as before whereas she, now needed him in a way she had never needed him before. This new development slowly started to eat away at her confidence. She fell into an unhealthy dependence on him.

Over the next two and a half years, this continued. The more dependent she became on him, the more distant he became from her. She looked to him to comfort her and he started looking to her for conveniences, whether it was for money or showing off to others that he had a girlfriend or to kill some free time. When they were alone, most of the time they fought over small things. He had his own insecurities and temper. Earlier when he was courting her, he would have let her get away with murder. Not now, he didn’t feel the same way about her. All those years in college, she had a power over him but today, tables had turned and now, he had a power over her. He began to boss her around. He would expect her to spend on their outings, he would borrow money from her and yet he would put her down any chance he got. When she would try to stand up for herself, they fought. If she tried to argue her case, his pride would get in the way and he would turn the argument back around on her to beat her down. Neither of them were happy anymore. But neither of them were able to let go of the other. She couldn’t let go as she felt that if she did, she had no one left to depend on. He couldn’t let go as she was a convenience that he knew he could fall back on, a back-up plan so to say.

For her, it was a difficult time. She was miserable at her job, just living each day in monotony. She was trying to study for the hoards of Indian entrance tests for higher studies but wasn’t making too much progress. With her personal life also in tatters, she had just resigned herself to being miserable for the foreseeable future with no way out. Even the few times she went home to her parents and her parents blew new life and hope into her, as soon as she returned to the normal rut of life, she regressed into a deep state of depression. With no friends to speak of, she had no outlet. The only outlet she had was unpredictable. He was nice when he wanted to be but most of the time, one could not say what would provoke him and he would start on a rant and completely eviscerate what little bit of hope she had left. She began to realize just how powerless she was and she saw no way out. The one thing she clung to was hope that things would improve when he would settle down and finally be satisfied . She didn’t stop to think that he may never be completely satisfied. He may never be completely happy and settled enough to actually give her some respect. It was during this time that she disobeyed her parents, for the first time in her life, to join him for a wedding in his family. Such was the power he held over her. She fought with her parents but didn’t have the strength to fight with him and push back even though she was deeply uncomfortable with this outing. This strained her relationship with her mother for quite a while, something she deeply regrets today given the events a few months down the line.

This unhealthy attachment had one merit. His ambitions led the two of them to study for GMAT, the entrance test to pursue higher education in America. They studied together, took the test together and decided to apply for MBA together. In India, there are institutions that help students prepare for the GMAT exams, help prepare applications for BSchools and prepare admissions packages including writing college essays and letters of recommendations. These two joined one such institution together. While he had scored top marks in GMAT, she had not scored high enough. He took this as an opportunity to undercut the competition. While he applied for some top MBA schools, he took over the decision making at the institution and made her apply for Masters schools with the reasoning that MBA schools required higher GMAT scores. With her confidence completely shattered, she didn’t even protest. It was on the insistence of her parents that she “secretly” applied to MBA schools as well. While the institution was building her MS school packages, she was building her own MBA packages. She wrote her own essays and letters of recommendations for both sets of packages. The institution, impressed with her writing skills, gave her a temporary job to write letters of recommendations for other students as well. She did well enough that she recovered the fees she had paid the institution for her own application packages in wages from this temporary engagement.

The cherry on the cake came when she was the first to get an acceptance from her MBA applications. She hid the news from him until he got his first acceptance. She knew that if he found out, he would be livid and the fight would turn ugly. Once his first acceptance arrived and she told him about hers, as expected, there was a blow up. He couldn’t accept the fact that she had applied on her own and received an admit before he had. He could never accept the fact that she could ever be his equal. So far, he was accustomed to being the star – the star student in school, the gold medallist in undergraduate studies, the higher scorer in GMAT, the more ambitious one. How could she get an admit from one of the schools he had applied to, before him? Moreover, he was waitlisted at that school. She beat him. Unable to take this, he did everything in his power to crush her excitement. He used her insecurities against her and claimed that she could only get an admission because she was an American citizen. She didn’t deserve the seat. This was an argument he would come to use many more times over the course of the next few years. In the next few months, both received a few more acceptances and eventually both made their choices. This time round, there was one situation where they both could have ended up at the same university, he for MBA and she for MS but having received an acceptance for MBA at a different university, she chose to take the MBA offer. So, it was decided that both of them were going to America!

Since they had their acceptances, she decided that she would leave her job and move back home to spend the last couple of months with family. He was not happy with her decision as he needed to stay longer so he could save up more for grad school. His family was not financially well off. He was going to have to take a loan to even submit the deposit to secure his seat. He couldn’t afford to quit his job early to go back home. But with a new found confidence, she didn’t care that he disapproved. She quit and moved back home. They were going to join the fall term. That meant, she had all summer to spend with family, relaxing and saying their good byes. It was going to be fun. She was finally out of that miserable hole.

He quit a month before they were to fly out. During that month, he was planning a trip with some of his friends and he wanted her to join this trip. Her parents disapproved but for the second time in the same year, she fought with them and decided to go for the trip against their wishes. The trip itself had its moments. While there were moments of fun, there were also moments of loneliness. Once again, she realized just how miserable she really is. She was stuck in a situation where she was with his friends and at his mercy for attention. She spent most of the trip texting with her mother.

Two days after the trip, just when he was getting off the train at home, her mother was hospitalized. He took a flight that same night to come be with her. He stayed with her as she performed the last rites. He stayed with her as she watched her father drop her mother’s ashes in the river. He comforted her as the hoards of visitors dropped in to pay their respects. And then he left.

Over the next couple of weeks, he would check back in with her over texts. But the time was approaching when they had to pay their deposits to reserve their seats in their respective universities. He was struggling to secure funding. In a moment of desperation, he asked her if she could loan him the money. She refused as she didn’t have that much. He then asked if her father could loan him the money. Dealing with a mountain of emotions that were going through her mind at the time, she told him that her father was already taking care of her fees, he didn’t have enough to pay his too. He then stooped to a level that couldn’t have been imagined. He asked her about the money that her father would get from her mother’s life insurance. She was numb at the time but later she would come to realize the sheer disgust she felt at that request. There was no exchange of money this time.

Finally, the day came for the two of them to fly from their respective cities to their respective cities. She had her father to accompany her. He flew alone. They both settled into the rigors of school life, once again. With the added pressure of job search, it was tough. She was grappling with a personal loss and wanted to avoid any negative interactions so she started to spend more time closed off in her room, sticking to her normal routines of school and home. They talked but only kept it to civil exchanges. Soon, the pressures of the job search started to get to him. Here too, she landed an internship offer before he did. This completely threw him off. Once again, he started going off on a rampage, throwing fits and insulating her. His claim – she only got it because she had citizenship. While she was able to apply to more jobs because of her citizenship, it didn’t matter that she too was fighting for limited openings against so many qualified candidates. His desperation started to turn into threats and blackmail. He started to threaten her that he would commit suicide and blame it on her. His demand – she should marry him so he could get a green card and be eligible to apply for the same jobs as her. Throughout this mental torture, she continued to also provide him financial aid from time to time by ordering food for him across states.

Alone in a new country, reeling from the loss of her mother, afraid of worrying her father, under tremendous pressure to perform at school, it was all too much for her. She had no one to talk to, get advice from. While her first reaction would have been to go to her father, she just didn’t have the heart to worry him. She felt that this was her mess and she needed to clear it on her own. She just didn’t know how. She would try to ignore him for days. Then, his family would call her and add to the emotional blackmail. She endured this torture for a few months. Luckily, shortly thereafter, he received his internship offer. Matters subsided for a bit. At the end of first term, both of them headed to their respective internships. Things went well. They both did well enough. At the end of the internship, they returned to their respective schools for a second year. Now there was pressure to secure the prize, the final job offer. As soon as the job hunt started, so did his emotional blackmail. She was lucky enough to convert her internship into a full time offer. He was not. This did not go down well.

As soon as the 2nd year started, the emotional blackmail started to intensify. Not confident in herself as to how long she would be able to fend off his attacks this time, in a major moment of weakness, she caved. She agreed to marry him. Her reasoning – they were a couple, they would eventually marry anyway. She would eventually get her father to agree to the union but right now, she would not tell him anything. She naively thought that after they both graduated and started their jobs, she would get her father to agree and they would get married properly with Hindu traditions. Right now, they could get a court registration done and it would at least make matters settle down. Even now, all she was hoping for is that everything would be alright once he settled down. It never occurred to her that this could go any other way. And so, that fall, they went to a local courthouse near his university and signed the papers.

After all the formalities, he applied for his green card and all became quiet for a few months as he started his job search. As was expected, getting a green card did not automatically get him a job. He still struggled to get interviews. He finally realized that just having a passport / green card didn’t mean that a job would magically land at your feet. But the thought never even occurred to him to apologize to his now wife! The blackmailing stopped but the tense situation between them remained. Now that she had given him everything she could, he could not demand anything more. But that didn’t stop him from general negativity. It wasn’t until close to graduation that he would finally get a full time job offer. It was significantly low pay compared to her offer but he was in no position to refuse. He accepted it but continued to resent her for landing a better job.

At graduation, her father came to visit – a proud moment for the family. He too had come to her graduation and helped her move. He missed his own graduation because he was not going to get his degree as he had not paid the fees of his last semester. He needed to earn before he could pay that off. After graduation, both of them started their respective careers. She began to settle in nicely at her new home and new job. She had a wonderful and supportive team. She was working at a company she loved and admired and was finally living an independent life with her own income. She was finally, proud of herself. She was finally starting to feel a sense of accomplishment and confidence grow within her. She was beginning to see a future, a career and an ambition to get somewhere. This was very new to her. Within a span of months, she was a new version of herself.

But as luck would have it, within a few months of starting, he was fired from his job due to his attitude. With no source of income, he landed at her doorstep while he went back on the job market. During the next few months, once again, there was pure mental anguish. She preferred to spend her time at the office because if she went home, there would be shouting and screaming. While he was on the hunt for another job, his insecurities were at its peak and it did not help that she was comfortably settled in her job. To help him out, she helped him find a temporary job with her employer through contractual work. He thought it was beneath him but he accepted nonetheless because it meant he would earn something. Once again, there was some peace as he began to work. They worked out of the same office building so often they would carpool.

It was during this peaceful time that he gave her the one good thing to come out of this entire miserable association – the courage to bring home her very first dog. She had been a dog lover ever since she could remember. Her parents had never allowed her to bring one home (even though they themselves were ardent dog lovers) because of her mother’s health. They had always said that taking care of a dog is a lot of work and they didn’t have the time to commit to the care of a dog and that would be an injustice to the dog. She had dreamt of the time when she had her own home and she would bring a dog home. Now was the time but she just couldn’t muster the courage. He pushed her to take the plunge. With his help, she did. It was the best gift he ever gave her. That little bundle of fur changed her life. The pup took over her every free minute. She no longer had time to worry about him and his outbursts. She could channel all her energy to the care of this new fragile little thing. This pup was the runt of the litter and would fall sick very often so she would worry and run to the vet at the drop of a hat. The pup was her only priority and taking care of her gave her new purpose and even confidence because she really did it all alone. He helped a little but she ended up doing most of the heavy lifting. She didn’t mind. She was just so happy to have this bundle of joy in her arms. When they would fight, the puppy would cower down nervously and start chewing on furniture and that would be a visible cue for her to back off and rush to care for the puppy. The puppy was now saving her from spiraling. The puppy was now giving her the strength to walk away because there were more important things in life.

In a few months, he had earned enough to be able to pay back his school to finally get his degree. As soon as he paid the school off, he quit. He had set lofty goals for himself and he was determined to achieve them. He not set his sights on another masters degree, this time from a higher ranked university. Lucky for both of them, he got in. Finally, he moved out. With a new level of confidence in herself, both from her successful job and the sense of fulfillment with the puppy in her life, she finally saw an opportunity to end things. She finally saw an opportunity to be truly on her own and happy. She took this opportunity to officially end things between themselves. She couldn’t file for the official divorce yet as he had just received his official green card. She decided to give him one more year and then file. But now they were separated. He didn’t object.

They stayed in touch through his degree. They were civil to each other now that the pressure of the relationship was over. They were now “just friends”. The pressure had lifted. They were still tied by a piece of paper but now things were different. Slowly, their daily talks reduced to a couple of times during the week. After his studies, he finally got placed at his dream job. His salary was still lower than hers but at least now, he was on the right track or at least the track he wanted for himself. His confidence was up. She wanted to take this opportunity to finally file for the divorce she was looking forward to. However, the political situation in America was difficult and he requested her to give him some more time until the scrutiny on green cards subsided. She reluctantly agreed as it was just a matter of paperwork. At least she was free from him and he no longer controlled her life.

Another couple of years passed by and finally, the time came to file for the divorce. This time, he had run out of excuses. He had to agree. The full process took a couple of months. It was during the divorce proceedings that her father, finally, found out about their marital arrangement. He had accidentally come across an email in her inbox from the court services requesting more information and he couldn’t understand the context. He asked her about it and she couldn’t hide it any longer. It was a shock beyond logical comprehension. It would not be an over statement if one said that this news completely shook the father-daughter bond that they shared. He was hurt beyond measure that she could take such a decision without talking to him and it would take time to heal such a deep wound. But there it was.

But finally, after thirteen long years, she was free from him, emotionally, physically and now even on paper. This dark chapter of her life was now officially, closed.