ELMA

ELMA

Ziana was a gorgeous girl. When she was born, everyone loved her. People were stunned by her beauty. Even the nurse was shocked.

“Oh my God, she is so beautiful,” she said.

That sounded a bit weird, but she really was beautiful. Everyone adored her—her dad, mom, relatives, and family friends. She was like a celebrity. Every moment was captured: her first walk, first talk, first bath, and first haircut. Everyone in the family wanted to play with her.

She was not just gorgeous but also very smart. She started talking early and reached many milestones before expected.

Days passed, and it was her first day of school.

Her mother packed her delicious lunch—omelette and paratha. Her father dropped her off at the school gate. She was a confident girl. She didn’t cry even a bit. She simply walked inside.

Her father, however, remained standing outside the school gate, emotional and scared to leave her. She was his most precious child, all alone at school. He stood there until the bell rang.

Soon, children started coming out of their classrooms.

Then Ziana appeared.

Her father ran toward her and lifted her into the air.

She smiled, and on the way home she talked nonstop. She told him about the friends she had made, how much her teacher liked her, and everything that had happened during the day.

Years passed.

As she grew older, boys became her admirers. She believed in true love and destiny. She loved romantic novels. She loved dressing up and remained beautiful. Wherever she went, she attracted attention.

She was like a celebrity.

Elma closed her notebook after writing the story.

She was an unemployed fashion designer with many hobbies. The story she had written about Ziana was not fiction.

It was real.

You must be thinking that Elma was the protagonist girl, Ziana.

Sorry to disappoint you, but she wasn’t.

Elma was Ziana’s younger sister, two years younger than her.

Unlike Ziana, Elma was not considered gorgeous. She was definitely not ugly, but standing beside Ziana often made her feel invisible. Over time, Elma began seeing herself the way others seemed to see her.

She grew up shy and quiet. Everyone assumed she wasn’t smart either. She lacked confidence.

Whenever she saw people wanting to spend time with Ziana, she would quietly play by herself, accepting it as her fate.

She was a side character in her own life—a character who existed only to make the lead shine brighter.

Growing up, she didn’t have a single solo picture in the family albums. In almost every photograph, she stood beside her sister, shyly looking away or blending into the background.

School wasn’t much different.

Teachers often compared her to Ziana.

“Your sister is so smart. How come you’re so dumb?”

Elma wasn’t pretty, smart, or confident in her own eyes. She believed everything people said about her.

She grew up feeling alone. Compared at school, compared at home.

It wasn’t that her family hated her. They loved her.

Her father supported her, but sometimes it felt as though he saw her as weak and in need of constant protection. That hurt her, but she never said anything.

She simply thought:

This is how my life is supposed to be.

I cannot change it.

Everyone says so, and they are older than me. They must know better.

By the time she was in ninth grade, Elma made the best friend of her life—someone she never hesitated to talk to about anything.

They had so much fun together during ninth and tenth grade.

That friend was Tara.

Unlike Elma, Tara was outspoken and confident. She wasn’t particularly good at studies, nor was she considered the most beautiful girl, but she carried herself with confidence.

It’s not that Elma had never had friends before. She had friends in third grade and later in seventh and eighth grade. However, she was never anyone’s first priority.

Tara was different.

Ironically, Elma had always thought she could never be friends with Tara. Tara seemed dominant and sometimes even looked like a bully.

Then, in ninth grade, both girls were transferred to a different section.

It was Section B—the section everyone considered to be for students who were not good at studies. Section A was known as the section for smart students.

Both Elma and Tara were separated from their friend groups, and the teacher made them sit together.

Elma thought, How will I survive here?

Interestingly, Tara was thinking the same thing.

At first, they talked only about ordinary things—books, pens, homework, and other boring topics.

Soon, they discovered that they lived near each other.

Elma usually travelled by school van, while Tara walked home. Most days, Elma’s van arrived late, forcing her to wait for a long time after school.

One day, Tara offered to walk home with her.

As they walked, Tara talked nonstop.

She told stories about her sister, her mother, her neighbours, and funny incidents from everyday life.

Elma wasn’t bored for a second.

The two girls laughed the entire way home.

It was the first time Elma saw Tara’s warm and funny side.

At the same time, Tara realized that Elma wasn’t boring at all. She had always assumed Elma was a bitter and quiet person because she rarely smiled.

Slowly and unexpectedly, they became best friends.

Being transferred to Section B initially made Elma feel ashamed.

However, she started studying more seriously and slowly discovered something important.

She wasn’t dumb.

She was simply inconsistent.

She was intelligent in a different way.

For example, she often wondered why river water was fresh while ocean water was salty.

She came up with her own explanation. She thought that as rivers flowed through valleys, they dissolved substances from rocks and soil. Over time, different chemical reactions created salts that eventually accumulated in the oceans.

Whether her explanation was completely correct or not, she loved thinking that way.

Elma struggled with memorization.

But if she truly understood something, she could excel at it.

There was another problem.

She was hesitant and rarely asked questions, even when she didn’t understand something.

She never asked her teachers.

She never asked her tuition teachers.

She was afraid they would make fun of her.

That fear stopped her growth more than anything else.

Elma believed that whatever people thought about her must be true.

If they thought she wasn’t smart, then she wasn’t smart.

If they thought she wasn’t confident, then she wasn’t confident.

She trusted other people’s opinions more than her own.

Around the same time, she experienced her first crush.

Tara had one too.

Elma liked a boy from her class. Sometimes he would bring her notebook back from the submission office and place it directly on her desk. Sometimes she caught him staring at her.

Small things like that made her heart flutter.

Meanwhile, Tara was crushing hard on a boy from her neighbourhood.

The two friends spent countless hours talking about their crushes and enjoying those distant feelings.

Even though Elma studied seriously, her tenth-grade board results were only average.

She was disappointed.

She had hoped for more.

She felt sad and discouraged.

For eleventh grade, Elma had to choose between Science, Arts, and Commerce.

The subject that interested her the most was Science.

When she told her family and relatives, many of them said she was copying Ziana. She wasn’t.

Ever since she was a child, people had accused her of copying her older sister. Because she was shy and lacked confidence, she often stayed close to Ziana. People interpreted that as imitation.

Hearing those comments repeatedly damaged her confidence and self-love.

This time, however, Elma was a little stronger.

She chose Science on her own.

Later, in twelfth grade, she struggled academically. Around that time, she decided that after school she wanted to become a designer and apply to a design college.

Since childhood, Elma had been good at drawing.

She wasn’t born with the skill. She developed it while spending long hours by herself. While the spotlight was on Ziana, Elma created cartoons, characters, dialogues, sceneries, and happy little worlds of her own.

After twelfth grade, she told her family she wanted to pursue design.

Her father opposed the idea.

As a result, she didn’t enroll in any college that year.

Six or seven months passed.

Then one of her uncles noticed her talent. He encouraged her to prepare for one of the best design colleges in the country and even sponsored her coaching.

Elma joined the coaching institute.

She learned a lot there.

She made friends.

Her confidence improved little by little.

However, when the results arrived, she didn’t qualify.

She was heartbroken.

This wasn’t just another exam.

This was the one thing she truly believed she was good at.

Her uncle had believed in her.

He had invested his time, money, and faith in her.

She felt she had disappointed him.

Her father had already distanced himself from her decision for nearly a year.

Fortunately, her coaching teacher never lost faith in her.

He believed in her talent and encouraged her to keep attending classes, keep learning, and appear for the entrance exam again the following year.

He was a wonderful teacher who constantly supported and motivated his students.

That year was difficult.

But Elma was no longer the same girl she had once been.

She worked harder than before.

When she appeared for the entrance exam again, she achieved a good rank.

She was extremely happy.

After seeing her hard work and results, her father finally accepted her decision.

Then tragedy arrived.

The world went into lockdown because of COVID.

Elma had no choice but to attend her design college online.

When it was time to choose a department, she was influenced by the opinions of relatives and friends and selected Fashion Design because everyone felt it suited her.

Although she never disliked Fashion Design, her first love had always been animation.

Back in tenth grade, she had gone shopping with her father and chosen some clothes for herself. Her mother and Ziana didn’t like her choices.

Determined to prove them wrong, Elma sketched her own design and gave it to a tailor.

The finished dress turned out beautiful.

That experience gave her a small boost of confidence.

Looking at Elma, most people wouldn’t have called her stylish. She rarely put effort into her appearance because she believed she wasn’t pretty anyway.

After one and a half years of online classes, she finally moved to college.

It was the first time she had lived so far away from home.

Spending so much time indoors during COVID had weakened her confidence and social skills, so she knew surviving college life would be difficult.

Making friends was hard.

Socializing was hard.

But she managed.

She made amazing friends.

She even had a boyfriend.

Their love story had started a few months before her second entrance attempt, but it ended during her third year of college.

Long distance became too difficult.

They argued constantly, and her boyfriend never fully understood the workload and pressure of fashion school.

Her entire third year was stressful.

In her fourth year, she chose to complete her graduation project through an internship at a company.

She finished it successfully.

What surprised her most was how difficult it was to find a job, even after graduating from one of the best institutes in the country.

After months of applying, she finally secured her first job off-campus.

The company was small.

The salary was small too.

Like many of her classmates, she had not received a placement through campus recruitment.

She started working anyway.

Unfortunately, the workplace became intolerably toxic.

Then, after taking leave to visit home during a festival, she was fired without notice.

After that, she continued applying for jobs.

She received a few offers, but many paid even less than her first job.

Some offer letters did not seem trustworthy or authentic.

Sometimes the companies were located so far away that her father refused to let her go.

Many companies assigned her projects and assignments during the hiring process, only to reject her afterward.

Even today, she continues applying.

At the same time, she writes stories and paints.

The constant uncertainty has often made her feel hopeless.

Yet she has grown tremendously during these years.

Her confidence.

Her maturity.

Her self-worth.

Her ability to stand up for herself.

Her sense of style.

Her personality.

Her communication skills.

Little by little, she has been building herself.

Now, she also believes she is beautiful.

These days, Elma writes, paints, and designs dresses.

She still applies for jobs.

During the early days of unemployment, she was bitter and resentful.

Then she started writing.

Through writing, she realized that having a job is important, but setting yourself on fire while waiting for one does not solve anything.

Even though things were not going the way she wanted, she learned that she had to keep moving forward.

If one path wasn’t working, perhaps another one would.

Maybe that different path would become the biggest breakthrough of her life.

Slowly, she began reading books and taking better care of herself.

She still lives with her parents.

From the outside, her career appears to be on pause.

But inside, she is still growing.

Still learning.

Still building her future while protecting her gentle heart.

One day, Elma reached for her notebook.

She turned the page and wrote a title at the top.

“Elma”

From now on, she would be the main character of her own story.

……The End….