“I was the eldest and I knew what being a girl was like in my family, so I felt it was my sole responsibility to protect both my sisters from everyone around, sometimes even from my own parents.
She was sent to my Nani’s home for five years where we would meet her once in a year during the summer vacations when we would visit Vadodra to collect our share of love, from Nani (Maternal Grand Mother). For my Uncles and Aunts it meant financial help.
She couldn’t connect with us instantly almost confused with the fact that who her real parents and sister were. She had a bed wetting problem till she grew up to adult age even after she was back with us. She would have recurrent head-aches, stomach pain and all sorts of illness. I thought at times she liked the colored pills that the doctor gave as she happily gulped them down her throat. Rajul was more mentally sick then physically.
All those years of separation can play havoc on a child’s mind; I learnt it in psychology, later.
Living with your parents can be equally disastrous; I learnt it, by experience.
The youngest of us was born not out of love but out of an attempt at having a boy. I would overhear most of my parent's verbatim, how could I not, the room we lived in was so tiny. If I would turn in the night I would dash into the utensils. I could even hear the sounds of their love games and initially I didn’t make sense or simply ignored it out of childlike innocence.
Her birth was the final attempt in being blessed by a male child, after which Mom cursed God for it and my Dad, though not with words, cursed Mom for it. By the time Seema was born, Rajul was back with us and I was old enough to assist Mom with the household chores and take care of both my kid sisters.
I had known lack and I had known the humiliation attached to it. I started earning money by way of tuition while still at college. Our monetary condition never seemed to be improving and the tiffs between our parents seem to never be ceasing. The bitterness so evident between the two, it made me wonder how they could make love practically every day. I believed Mom took it like any other chore and Dad, like any other man.
I lived a childhood, behaving like an adult, trying to make sense why the adults around me behaved like children; constantly on a vigil, cocooning myself and three other women simply because the man of our house couldn’t do so. I developed parental feelings at a very early age, maybe, due to that.”
*Do catch up, next Friday, with your late afternoon cup of tea or maybe coffee, the story of hE continues.
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