Family Short Story – The Almighty
Photo credit: cohdra from morguefile.com
“Minu stop running” Renu shouted.
It’s not that they were travelling by the plane for the first time but Minu always had a little fixation with the whole airport and plane thing, what more can you expect from a six year old anyway. Her excitement was clearly visible to the whole airport and Renu was feeling embarrassed because of all this. She looked at Rohan hoping he’ll look after Minu and will ask her to keep it down but he was busy on his tablet.
Renu and Rohan met nine years back, it was love at first sight, and they got married six months after that. It was a perfect marriage, both understood each other very well, everyone around them used to get jealous of their chemistry, but as they say there’s nothing like perfect life. Renu’s parents were very conservative and opposed this relationship since the inception but now after all these years they gave in. Now her folks just couldn’t wait to see their grand kid for the first time, so Renu and Rohan decided to visit them immediately. Anxiety of seeing her parents was killing Renu, she was worried. Rohan was an atheist, and her dad was a priest in a local temple, she always knew this won’t go well and she has always been worried of this moment.
Every Sunday she used to take Minu to the local temple and would ask Rohan to come, but he always refused, he never stopped her though. “I don’t believe Gods asked to build the temples, do Pooja-path and pay money to those so called priests. The whole concept is a lie, we are born from a human, we get old and we die one day, it’s all science and there are no miracles.” He used to say.
Eventually she gave up and made peace to leave him be. As they entered the plane Minu just jumped on the window seat. Renu calmed her down and made her close her eyes and asked her to pray before the plane takes off. She made it a ritual of praying before every journey and meals, and she made Minu do it too with her. She looked at Rohan and he shook his head and shrugged and continued his work on his tablet.
Only after fifteen minutes of the takeoff they started feeling jerks, initially mild ones and it just continued getting strong. Suddenly everyone was worried, and they heard “This is captain speaking, there seems to be some technical difficulty and we are turning back.”
The jerks continued getting stronger. Rohan looked at Minu and Renu, both were terrified. Suddenly plane started loosing the altitude. He was holding Renu’s hand, her face got white, she was scared to death. All he could hear was Minu’s cries, Renu took off her seat belts and she jumped into Rohan’s lap now. He hugged her tight, looked her in the eyes and felt so helpless. Renu closed her eyes again and started praying, that was the only saving grace she could think of and Minu followed her. He didn’t realized when but Rohan closed his eyes too, he didn’t know any prayers but he said “I don’t know what to call you, I don’t know where to seek you, but if you’re listening then please save my kid, I know I’ve never prayed in my life but she has, not for me but for Renu, save my kid”.
He kept repeating this in his head not knowing how much time has passed and when he opened his eyes he saw plane was stabilising and Renu was looking at him with a huge smile on her face. “Captain just announced we are safe now” She said.
His brain was telling him it was a small technical glitch, but in his heart he felt the pain of losing his whole family and happiness of getting them back again. And that moment he realized that the almighty who gave him everything can take back everything anytime.
He looked out of window, he saw plain sky and he said “Thank you”.
–END–
