Dawn

a story of hope... read for a smile.

Nethra opened her eyes to see her amma standing with a grave face, tears strolling down her cheeks. On the wall, there was a poster saying “GET WELL SOON!” Around her, there was a pungent smell of medicines. Some tubes were inserted in her hands and a mask covered her mouth. She remembered losing her balance on stairs. Everything went blank after a sharp pang of pain. A drop of saline made its way out of the corner of her eyes.

Amma noticed her ‘mynah’ waking up after a long week of fear, anxiety, doubts and prayers. Kissing on her head, she thanked God and called out for duty-doctors.

Nethra and amma were relieved to have each other. As amma sat besides Nethra, holding her hand, she kept on telling her an account of past week until she noticed her struggling to speak something. Amma advised her not to stress herself. She needed rest to recover. She had a dislodged ankle and hip bone, a fracture in forearm, scraped knees and bruised skin on her right. But there was more trouble in the store for mother daughter duo.

A week and several tests later, it was confirmed that Nethra won’t be able to speak now. Period. Due to a jerk in neck, her vocal chords suffered an injury and her sweet chirpy voice was gone. Though it was possible to heal the injury, but the doctors could not tell if and when it will happen for sure.

In the three months that followed, her physical wounds healed. But the pain, the silence remained. The conversations with amma were restricted to innumerable hand-written notes. With Nethra, amma too lost her voice.

She secretly observed amma crying silently while offering prasad to deities everyday. The only words that amma spoke throughout the day were the ones that she’d whisper in her ears before waking her up. Every morning, she’d say, “I love you, beta. You will always be my mynah.”

Nethra knew she had to find her voice to make amma speak again. Taking help of her ex-colleagues, friends, music teachers and speech-therapists she started working on herself. A strict regime and rigorous exercises followed.

One morning, Nethra woke up earlier than usual and prepared coffee for herself and amma. Placing the tray near bedpost, she held her neck in both her hands and a low, cracked, hoarse voice whispered, “Love you amma. Look your mynah is chirping again.”

Eons of darkness led way to a bright dawn.

Author's Note

go all out critiques.. let me work even harder.

Reviews

[maxin james]

Hmm.. something sound little dramatic!! But it is good! One can find a little overusage of Hindi in it, but you managed it well. But it appears like common Hindi short stories!!! Ofcourse I'll support simplicity, but it appears you can work little hard to have good touch of originality and your own nice way of great story telling!! Cheers oh story teller of common Indian folk! Keep working!

[Corninie]

That was really good.