I Am Whom?

I was born 20 years before but I realized today that I should died on the same day either by accident or random disease. God has done wrong by saving me. I am a girl who is burden on everyone at the time of their marriage. Heavy dowry before and after marriage which I call pre and post-murder of self-respect by the hands of the biological and new family. While the dowry is passing to another family, the girl receives blame for taking so much when she never asked. The other family who is modernized enough demanding dowry and showing strange behavior after getting so much than their imagination.

This is same in every typical Indian married life. Well, I have prepared myself to deal with all this and get habitual of it but the strangest thing happened when I came to know my real birth parents were my uncle and aunt from whom I am adopted by my parents, as they (especially my adopted mother) took me to have a fortune of kanya-daan. Sooner or later, I became the angel of my father. He loved me more than his boys. My mother has her heart-failed but I served as her lifeline.

Days passed by. I was educated in a good school but never allowed to work outside which I adjusted. I too don’t want to make my skin darker in the harsh struggle of outside.

But the real day when my skin got darker was the day when my mother got died. I was not in good condition at all but now in the worst situation. I grew up under the love of my brothers and their wives. They loved me a lot but my father was cooking in some conspicuous manner.

I became a girl of 21 years—the age to marry Indian girls, set by oldies with their cliché erudite. I was tied with a man to whom I could believe. He was strange to me but I could trust him as my brothers approved to him. I was happy to start my new life but a speed-braker pushed off me from my thoughts.

My father asked my uncle and aunt to get me back. It astonished me! What!!

My brothers want to withdraw his purpose immediately but the property distribution hold them back. I was all alone. Neither my adopted parents want to have me with sight of heavy dowry nor biological parents.

I decided to stab myself and remove the wrinkled lines from the face of everyone.

One night, when all the family members fallen to slumber, I stepped out but I remembered my mother’s love which gave me power to stand.

I talked to the man to whom I got to marry. Declared my all situation and presented the problem to him. He was an understanding person. He could not change his parents but was against their thinking. He decided to do court marriage. I supported him and felt independent for the first time in life. Everyone who saw me as inferior was surprised.

I am a girl but not a person to ignore. I have my sown self-respect which can not be harnessed by anyone.