It was a quiet, grey afternoon in the rainy season. I was in Class 3 at the time, and once again, I had skipped school. I wasn’t sick, just… uninterested. Studies never fascinated me the way games, cricket, and imaginary stories did. My world was a self-created fairy tale, where I was the center and everything else revolved around the stories I made up to escape reality.
But that day, something changed.
My mother and I were walking through the market, I in my casual clothes with a red umbrella in hand, chatting about vegetables. We turned a corner, and suddenly—there he was.
My schoolmaster.
Tall, stern, and deeply observant. I froze.
My instinct kicked in. Without thinking, I quickly opened my umbrella and covered my face like a movie spy. I assumed if I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see me. A perfect plan—or so I thought.
I peeked from beneath the umbrella, heart racing.
He wasn’t looking at me directly, but he was close, speaking to my mother at a vegetable stall. I was about to escape when I heard it—my name. My ears sharpened.
“She’s smart,” he said casually. “But always absent. That girl dreams more than she lives. She creates lies like poetry—beautiful, imaginative, but not real.”
I froze. That soft remark hit me harder than any punishment.
The umbrella lowered a little. I wanted to hear more.
“She doesn’t know yet, but one day life will demand truth, not stories. I hope she’s ready.”
I walked away slowly, heart full of confusion. Was it praise? Was it criticism? I couldn’t tell. But it stirred something.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I replayed his words again and again. Suddenly, all those made-up tales—of evil stepmothers, lost umbrellas, fake accidents, and ghost-filled ponds—felt less charming.
As a child, my lies were my shield. In our summer water crisis, when I returned home earlier than others, it wasn’t because I was fast, but because I told people I was abused by a cruel stepmother. Strangers believed me. I saw pity in their eyes, and privilege in my hands. Water first. No questions.
I didn’t know then that my real mother was watching me from behind a wall, overhearing everything. When she confronted those people, one lady said sweetly, “She’s so cute… and so sad. Her stepmother beats her.” My mother’s silence shattered. She screamed, “Her mother is alive! And standing here!” That day, I got the worst beating of my life—not for lying, but for turning my life into someone else’s tragedy.
But did I stop? No. I lied again. And again. Because it worked.
Until I heard that whisper behind the umbrella.
Years passed.
I grew up. Life changed. The fairy tale ended the day fire took my elder sister during a puja. No rescue. No ambulance in time. Just ash and silence. Our family shattered like glass, scattered in grief. No story could fix it. No lie could undo it.
I tried building a new life in Ahmedabad, got married in haste—wrong man, wrong timing. Then COVID came like a storm and took both my parents. I started a job in a private organisation, trying to hold myself together, but one night, I sat alone in the balcony and whispered to the wind: "Can someone write me a new story?"
But no one came.
Only silence answered.
And still… somewhere deep inside, the girl with the umbrella remained.
I used to think my life was unimportant. I was just another quiet employee in a giant office, another invisible woman in a noisy world. The kind of person nobody noticed, and maybe nobody cared for. But sometimes, life throws you a moment that forces you to choose to disappear forever… or finally be seen.
That moment came for me on a rainy Wednesday evening.
It was quarter past seven, well beyond regular office hours. The rain had begun to drum on the glass windows, and most employees had rushed home early. I was the last one sitting at my corner desk, finishing up a client report. It wasn’t ambition — it was habit. Staying late had become my comfort zone. Nobody bothered me, and I didn’t have to fake smiles I no longer believed in.
I stood up to get my umbrella from the conference room, but as I passed by the corridor, I heard voices.
I stopped.
“…she’s just wasting space here,” said a sharp, male voice.
I frowned. That was Mr. Iyer, the senior manager.
Another voice joined in, this time softer but equally cutting. “Yes, she doesn’t contribute anything visible. No networking, no leadership, no confidence. She’s been here four years, and I can’t even remember her name properly.”
I felt my heart thudding inside my chest.
Then came the third voice, my own immediate supervisor, saying something that hit like a slap.
“She’s deadwood. Polite, yes, but no spark. We should consider removing her next quarter. Restructuring, you know.”
I stood frozen outside the slightly ajar meeting room door, hearing my sentence being announced without me present.
And just like that… every late night, every extra hour, every report I had triple-checked suddenly felt meaningless.
I turned back slowly, walked to my desk, packed my laptop in silence. My hands were steady, but my mind was spinning like a storm. Maybe they were right. Maybe I was worthless. A silent nobody who never made an impact.
But then… a memory crashed into me. A flash from my childhood.
The young girl who used to write poems on the back of discarded school. The girl who used to dream of writing stories that could make people feel things they never dared to feel. That girl wasn’t deadwood. She was alive, breathing, burning inside me.
I realized then: I hadn’t been invisible. I had been silent.
And silence was no longer an option.
That night, I didn’t cry. I stayed up drafting something else — not a resignation letter, but a new beginning. I started writing down the struggles, the quiet moments that had slowly shaped me into who I was becoming.
The next day, I returned to the office with a different energy. I was polite as always, but my silence was replaced with observation. I began noticing the politics, the manipulation, the subtle bullying that people like me endured every day.
At the office, I stayed quiet, but I started documenting everything. The unfair evaluations, the favoritism, the silencing of quieter employees. I connected with others like me who were suffering silently.
Last month, I overheard something again.
In my office pantry, two colleagues were talking softly. They didn’t know I was inside the storage corner.
“Her?” one of them said. “She’s nice, sweet, quiet. But don’t trust her. I think she makes things up.”
The other one chuckled. “Yeah. She’s a bit… weird. Doesn’t talk much. Always in her own world.”
I walked out; head held high, smiled at them, and went straight to my desk.
I opened my old notebook.
And wrote:
“They called me a liar. I was.
But I was also a creator.
They whispered behind my back.
But I whispered to the world—
through words.
I lied to survive.
But I write now, to live.”
Eventually, I resigned on my terms — not because I was “restructured out” but because I had built something of my own. Within a year, I became a published author. My first book was titled: “Jeevan Ki Laharen”.
Years later, one day I will stand on a stage giving a talk to hundreds of young women, ending with this line:
“Sometimes, you overhear others dismissing you… but the loudest thing you should hear is your own quiet refusal to disappear.”
I never became famous. But I became free. And that’s better.
That whisper behind the umbrella… was the first truth I ever heard.
And the truth set me free.
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