Pain On The Inside

A child who wears a dirty shirt, the only one he has, to school is made fun of by his rich classmates. He avoids social gatherings, parties and any such function where he is supposed to wear apparels other than his school dress. His mother died when he was eleven. His father barely manages to make both ends meet. He has taught himself to never dream. He has curbed his wants.

A mother who can’t allow her daughter, who she loves more than life itself, to take part in a singing competition. Her husband had beaten her when she had once allowed her daughter to attend a birthday party of a male friend. The friend was generous enough to drop her back home in his car safely. The father didn't seem to like it. He obtruded his rage on the mother. She now has learned to live with her husband's little idiosyncrasies.

A father who returns home after having worked monotonously for long hours, only to find his son being taken into custody by the cops for having molested a girl. He had raised his son with tenderness and had left no stone unturned to provide him with sumptuous living. He had only one child. He sees his wife crying. He turns cold and stays deaf as a post.

A teacher who overhears her student passing morally contaminated remarks about the bra strap that showed on her shoulder. He had touched her feet with reverence on Teachers’ day. She had admired him. She stays static and silent.

We don’t know how it originates or where it dwells in our body or what enkindles it to an extent that it eats up our spirits. But the one who has it knows that it stays forever. Once implanted in our hearts, even if set ablaze by elf-like actions or mere words, it twinges like a needle pricked in the skin that leaves an unfading scar, and so pain stays. Pain never dies. It resurges. The pain that one feels in the chest, it consumes one’s soul. It’s concealed within us. Some swallow it without resistance. They choose to endure the pangs of suffering. They don’t let it transpire. They don’t complain. They observe. They let it grow. They hide it in their smiles. They hide it in their texts.

Others can never know, they never will, what it takes to bear the pain on the inside.