Invisible

The little girl was invisible. She always faded away. No one could see her or hear her because she was so quiet. Her favorite place to hide was under the corner table. The table itself was so small that no one noticed it or thought it big enough to be a likely candidate for a hiding place. She could fit in just right under it. Curled up with her chin touching her knees she would weep silently. Even she did not know why she felt so alone or why she felt the need to hide and test if any one would notice. Her sister and brother were out there somewhere and she was the middle one who lived in a world of her own. She always dreamed and loved living out the stories that she read every day. For her, her life began only after she read her first book. The endless possibilities in a story, the way the words wove together and took you to a place far away, and the way the characters seemed like friends who understood – all of these made reading her favorite means of spending time.

Deep inside she was always a little sad. It was hard for an 8 year old to figure out why she felt that way. What was it in her life that kept her from smiling with all her heart? She had a safe life and she was good at studying. In fact that was her only noticeable trait - the one thing that kept her from being unwanted in her family. She had always felt that her elder sister got a lot of attention because she demanded it and she had a temper to match. Her younger brother was the darling of both the parents because he was the only son. She used to believe that the only thing more unwanted than a middle child was one who also happened to be the second daughter!

So she tried to be invisible. It wasn’t very hard. She was a no-problem child, the kind no one ever notices but simply pats on the head and says “what a good little child” and promptly forgets. She would be remembered at meal times and when it was time to get ready for school. She had no special attachment to her brother whom she thought of as the usurper of whatever rights she had had till that point. She was scared of her sister who could command her to do anything. Her parents were blissfully unaware of her problems. They thought that food was the most important thing in life and therefore if you overfed the kids, you were doing a great job bringing them up. Again her siblings loved to eat whereas she hated it – it was almost like she wanted to distance herself from a family that didn’t understand her. And she continued to be invisible…