Posts tagged "Father"

Stories

Pressure

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If Ranjeet had learnt one lesson in the last two years, it was that being single was better than being a single father.

What a world of difference it made to have a child to take care of. He had not foreseen it. He had imagined an easy life for himself. He fell in love, got married, they had Sejal and the family felt complete. Then it all fell apart. The arguments began to turn into dirty quarrels and once in a while one or the other had a visible proof of it.

She asked for divorce. He asked for Sejal. They contested and he won on the grounds that she had no job and hence no source of income to take care of their child. She cursed him while signing the divorce papers.

May you rot in hell. Continue reading →

Stories

Motherhood

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The problem was not that she was about to deliver a baby, the problem was that she was unmarried. Though being unmarried and delivering a baby is not a crime in the eyes of law, but it is one of the most heinous crimes in the eyes of society in India. The crime becomes a little more intolerable when the woman who is unmarried and about to deliver a baby comes from a lower caste of the society. In such a case, everyone gets to say something about the vulgarity and unacceptability of the act. I wonder at times, if it is encoded in our genes to reproduce in order to make sure the survival of our species, why does the act of reproduction, be it having sex without marriage or delivering a baby without being married, happen to be such a big taboo if it is not performed by the consent of the family members or the society?

Bindiya’s case was a little different. Even before Bindiya could figure out what was wrong with her, she was three months pregnant. Sulakshana, her mother, took her to a local dispensary when Bindiya complained of missing her periods for the third time in three consecutive months. Continue reading →

Articles

Death Of A Storyteller

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I have always thought of storytelling as an art. An art of depicting emotions beautifully and hypnotically through one’s actions and words that the listener finds himself as a part of the story being told. It is an art of converting a rather boring story into a fairy tale, and sometimes even more. It is an art of picking a story lying in a stinking drain under the footpath and placing it in the center of the temple for readers to worship. It is an art which he boasted about possessing, until he realized the truth. Continue reading →

Stories

Vision

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Many stories begin when we decide to pay attention towards something that is awkward and out of the normal. This one is no different. This is the story of a girl. Or perhaps I should say this is the story of a father. I tend to change my stance because we are, at birth, equal halves of both of our parents. With time, the one parent who inspires us more, takes over the other half part, carves our identity and makes us a certain person for the rest of our lives. The same happened with the girl whose story I am going to tell you now. Her father used to tell her everyday that she is beautiful. Some of the days she believed him. The other days, she was unable to trust the soothing words and wouldn’t react at the love his father poured at her. During those sad days, when nothing could cheer her up, she felt a darkness growing around her. A darkness. Constantly. Growing. Continue reading →

Stories

An Equation

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“How many twos are there in an eight?” Sandhya literally shouted at Divya this time. Poor Divya was trying her best to figure out the answer without using the calculator, as her mother, Sandhya, had ordered. After spending several minutes playing with her hair and eating the back of the pencil, thinking how on Earth will knowing the number of twos in an eight help her in her life, she gave up. She looked at her mother innocently and shrugged in disappointment. Sandhya’s anger levels shot up and she raised her hand to hit Divya. Before it could reach Divya’s cheeks, tears dwelled up in Divya’s eyes and she started to sob.

“Not again Divya! Divide eight by two and tell me the correct answer quickly”, Sandhya said. Although she was losing her composure seeing her daughter cry, she also wanted her daughter to solve the basic mathematical questions without the help of a calculator. Continue reading →

Stories

Adopted

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By Aman Chawla

There isn’t a better moment in a man’s life, than holding a girl in his arms, and if the girl is a 6 years old baby, words fail to confine his feelings. It was the same feeling for him when Navya was in his arms. She was not sleepy, or maybe she was, but was definitely in no mood to go to bed. Which daughter in the world would want to miss the joy of staying in the arms of her father?

“Dad, what does an adopted child mean?” she asked in a husky voice.

He paused for a moment and asked “Where did you hear this?”

“Today grandma was telling mumma that I am just an adopted child. Tell daddy, what does it mean?” Continue reading →