To My Unborn Child

It was the first few days of our happily married life. Poesy mornings and intoxicating nights kept us hopeful throughout twenty four hours.These are the most awaited days that lurk in every adolescent's mind. We had been confirming and reaffirming the relationship between us. New look with new ways. A different charisma worked within us. One day I said with abashment, mingled with sensitivity, that I was probably carrying his child.

He embraced me with all his masculine good and I felt that nothing on earth could incise us. He said he would take me to a doctor the very next day. I could sense a growing responsibility in him. In no time, the young handsome lover grew up matured and grey in manhood.

Early next morning I thought he would not be able to meet the doctor on time as he despised rising early, but to my surprise, it was he who woke me up

At the doctor's clinic he heard the letters of each word uttered by the doctor with roused keenness. The result of the preg-card was positive.

While returning he kept quiet. I was trying to keep pace with him but in vain. His manly strides were too broad for me. He looked at me and said " you wait here,I'll bring the car from the parking zone". While driving he asked me, " who will u go and tell this first?" After a reflective pause I replied "Maa". On reaching home I got engaged in various chores, and each time I kept reminding myself to make a call to my Maa.

A call came from my mother. My brother-in-law cried hard and called me downstairs to receive the call. I came down hurriedly, quivering I placed the receiver to my ear and spoke very softly " Maa?" No, it was my brother on the other end. I enquired whether everything was abright there. He said with no rehearsal,"Baba is no more".

It was a choking feeling for me. I neither could cry nor tell the person beside me what I heard. Dawn spoke so sweet but daylight was so queer. I lost my father but surely planted the seedlings of fatherhood in my husband. Crashing thoughts darted in me. I felt placid.

I squeezed closed eyes and screamed. He hastened into the room. My red eyes and quivering lips left him awestruck. He stood baffled. He could not discern what might have chanced. He held me tight in his arms , stroke my head and asked me disconcerting ,"what...has happened?" His doleful words were almost unheard by me. I kept on repeating that Baba was no more and I need to go there just then.

He was unwanted at my house as he was not the choice of my parents. Thus my father's ailment was kept pallid to me. I never knew about his fatal sickness.

My husband asked me to go there alone. He handed me a sum of money which would be necessary at that point of time. This behaviour of his muffled me. It wasn't certainly a kind gesture. I pleaded him hard to accompany me but he turned down all my pleas I was driven to my father's home by someone whom I sparsely noticed then. It was so difficult for me to accept this insolent behaviour of the person whom I hero worshipped.

We had been in love since adolescence- when it was difficult to cipher feelings. Was it love or more than that ? Let me confess that the playmates missed eachother if they did not meet even for a day. Love consequently followed. Few letters of love during prime was discovered at my house. They were rigidly negated. I pleaded my parents. Nothing would stop us only if the evil of cast system did not grow at large. Though magnanimous for the world but too puny for lovers to overcome. We throttled the system hard and decided to elope. Our elopement made him a miscreant and unwanted. He was never a welcome in my family. My parents could not accept him only for a meager fault in which he was not fallacious. I was captivated in a no man's land- whichever territory I stepped into displeased the other. I could not make too ends meet.

I kept assuring myself that the task which I could not complete, my child would accomplish. Cruel divinity left my life checkered .

The thoughts mazing in me disallowed me to calculate distance. Someone opened the door for me and I stepped out. Everything was happening so involuntarily. Someone took me to Baba's room. My Baba was lying on his bed without any pillow beneath his head. It was difficult to imagine him lifeless. I touched his stiffened body. I thought that a pillow would add to his comfort. Maa wasn't crying. She was hardened perhaps by the deep thoughts on how to pull on life. I bent low brought my lips closer to my Baba's ear and whispered, "I wanted to tell Maa first, but Baba, I want to tell the secret to you first now...you are going to be a Grandpa soon".