Atrocious or maybe its life

This story is the story of 12 year old girl ‘R’ set with the backdrop of India under the leadership of Indira Gandhi. She lives in a complex kind of building with at least 6 to 8 other families. 

R is quite lively child and she is especially fond of science. She dreams of becoming a doctor one day and help the needy. She lives in a house which has a single room which is used as a bed room attached with a tiny kitchen. They have to share the bathroom facilities with the other families in the complex. 

The ceiling in their house has holes and sometimes she finds a small scorpion or a centipede. There were times when those insects fall into their plates while eating and they don’t even have proper lighting which means they had to use an oil based lamp at nights. Their mother always has a cautious eye and watches over the kids.

R has a family of four which consists of her uneducated sickly mother, highly educated (maths teacher) father and a younger brother. Their income is very little and her dad’s pride wouldn’t let him request hand loan from anyone. R’s grand father’s family has the business of preparing hydrogenated vegetable oils. It’s quite lucrative business but we can’t say the same for the health of the people having these oils. R’s father feels this to be unethical and severed all his ties with his father which rendered R’s father penniless. 

R’s father is a man with values and was quite strict in his ways. As a teacher he garnered the respect of everyone around but the same can’t be said about his own family. Due to his stubborn nature he didn’t acquire any of his father’s property and didn’t cares for any business that’s unethical. This has lead the family to live so poorly and the kids were too young to understand the ways of life. For them the words of a few saying that their ‘dad’s a fool’ for not wanting to be rich - one way or another has a real strong impression.

One day she heard people all around her hustling, talking about something in a hurriedly fashion. R tried to gather as much information by over hearing but she couldn’t make sense of what they were saying. Suddenly she saw the cops rallying down their street with loud horn kind of a sound. They had loud speakers in a rickshaw and started announcing: “it’s an emergency declared by the government. Please remain indoors. Venturing out will lead to serious consequences like imprisonment.”

This kind of thing has never happened before and R was dumb struck with the surroundings around her. She couldn’t make sense of anything and ran home as fast as she can. She was breathless by the time she saw her mother and started to tell her “Em… emer… emergency”. Her mom got her settled and explained that things would not be different. They would have to stop roaming out post 5pm and they shouldn’t go out as much as possible.

This meant that she would be spending more time with her strict father who wouldn’t think twice to discipline both her & her younger brother if they so much as step out of the line. Little did she know that her whole life’s about to take a worse turn. Her mother started feeling sick and her father was not someone you could easily approach. R wanted to take her mother to the hospital but she was way too young and then there was emergency. People were getting arrested or so she thought. 

But then she couldn’t sit waiting for her mother to worsen so she did something that she never dreamt she would do. She stole money from her father’s pocket but to her utter dismay she got caught by her father himself. She started crying and begging him that she didn’t mean to buy candies or anything else. But R’s father is not one to mess with and he wasn’t one to take things lightly.

He started dragging R through the streets and before she realised what’s happening… she saw the police station in front of her. Her own father was giving her to the cops for theft; this realisation broke the young R’s heart. Though her father’s heart was made of stone in her own thoughts; he was just trying to teach the child a lesson. The cops were nice and just warned R to not repeat this ever again.

R and her father returned home to find the R’s young brother crying his eyes out. R thought that this was because her father dragged away but then she realised that her mom was no where to be seen. She ran inside and found her mom unconscious. She tried to wake her mom without no luck. R’s father didn’t waste any time and quickly took her to the hospital while leaving R and her younger brother in the care of neighbours.

It felt like a really long time before her father returned home - alone. She has a zillion questions in her mind. Where’s mommy? How’s she doing? What happened to her? Will she be alright? But she could only ask one thing to her father: “when will mom come home?”. Her father sighed out a big breath and had tears in his eyes. He simply said “you’re mom has gone to god”.

After that R didn’t know what to say and time sort of flew away. People used to come and visit them. Try to give them comfort but really it was just a reminder that her mother was dead. Her father tried his best to cook but the young child wouldn’t eat and start crying for her mother. Their neighbours then suggested the father a possible solution to this situation.

Within a few days R’s father got remarried to a girl who is just 16 years old. Just 4 years elder to her. 4 years only. She was still grieving the loss of her mother and she is now faced with a new step mother. R’s younger brother was not comfortable calling her mom because for him his mother was a different person. 

Within a few months, R got her first period and was horrified when the first thing out of his father’s mouth was “I need to find a good match and get her married”.

She was in utter disbelief when actually she saw that her match got fixed and she was married soon after. 

A part of R wanted to shout “this is atrocious” but pasted a fake smile on her face. It’s now the turn of her younger brother to be distraught because he lost his mother and his sister… 

No matter how nice of a person the step mother can be there’s no replacing a mother. These thoughts haunt both R and her younger brother for the rest of their lives. But kids could never forgive their father as they blame him for their personal loss.