Forty Years

A Story by Ranbir Singh

I rang the bell and a girl answered the door.

I looked at her. Tiny lumps on her chest showed that she was metamorphosing into a young woman.

Alas! Soon she would discover how a man’s stare can make her feel naked. Soon she would be asked to cover herself from head to toe with a black cloth, because apparently, we must not teach our sons to behave themselves, but it is absolutely fine if we shove our girls under the heavy burden of our society’s rules.

Ours is a world where a boy ascends to puberty, with all pompous and show, while a girl is thrown into hers.

I absentmindedly caressed the girl’s head.

She looked at me oddly. “Yes aunty ji, who do you want to meet?”

I quickly pulled my hand away and smiled a bit awkwardly. “I want to meet your grandmother”

She went inside and came back a while later, and invited me in.

I looked around and noticed the curtains, the sofas and the other furniture. A typical middle class house, so much better than mine was. I too could have lived in a home like this. But apparently my parents had different plans for me…

I pushed those thoughts away. This was not the reason I was here. I had come here to see someone. Someone I had found after so much effort.

The girl’s grandmother was a woman in her sixties. The old in India wear simple clothes, yet this woman’s clothes were better than mine. Two women, about my age and apparently her daughters-in-law, stood beside her. They too wore finer clothes than me. And ornaments too. While my ear lobes lay barren, they wore nice gold earrings.

I too could have owned all of this, the home, the beautiful clothes, the gold and many other things the affluent can afford, if not for a single act of a heinous crime that was committed a long, long time ago.

Forty years ago.

“Yes daughter, how we maybe of help you?” the oldest of the four women said.

‘Don’t call me your daughter!’ I wanted to scream.

I smiled. “I’m your new neighbour. Just came here to get acquainted with you all”

“Oh! Welcome to the neighbourhood!”

Then the conversation rolled on. She asked me what my husband does for a living, about myself, my parents and my children.

I lied and lied and lied.

Then suddenly in the middle of our conversation, something happened that surprised even me, when I too am a mother.

The old woman got up from her seat. Tears rolled down her face. She looked at me affectionately and extended her arms.

“My daughter, you have finally returned. After so many years, you have finally returned. My sweet child… my sweet child…”

What made her say such a thing? What made her call me daughter?

That’s a story that started a long, long time ago.

Forty years ago, to be precise.

My parents abandoned me outside an orphanage. I was only a month old. Don’t get shocked. Isn’t it common in our country?

Daughters are expensive.

First you have to pay for her studies when you know it very well that it would be of no use to you. As soon as she gets a job she would have to be married and all her income would belong to her husband. Inspite of this you would have to pay for her dowry.

A small girl child, who should have been lying inside her mother’s lap, was left to face the world herself.

My belongings? A simple cloth wrapped around me and a slip that bore my name, Razia Khan. Can you believe it? Those parents who did not care even a bit about me were so much concerned about my upbringing. I bet this would have been my father’s idea, to let the orphanage know that I was born a Muslim, so I could be raised in the ‘proper Muslim way’.

Twelve years later, when my breasts began to grow, my warden handed me that black cloth. “Its time you started wearing a burqa”

I was gripped with such a fit of rage that I would have killed her. “Take it away”, I screamed. “Don’t ever show me that black cloth again”

Why can’t a man control his eyes? Why should a woman be held responsible for something that isn’t even her fault?

The world is strange. And so are its laws, until we remember that both have been made by men.

Why is there no one to help us? Why is even Allah deaf to all our prayers?

But then, I remember something.

Allah too is a man.

I wish I could have told her that my husband was doing a well paid white collar job and that my son was going to a reputed college. I wish I could have said that I had put my daughter in the best school in town. I wish I could have said that even though she tried to destroy my life, I still had achieved everything I would have otherwise.

But how could that be true? I was an orphan who was lucky even to have a formal education. What were the odds of me being a doctor, engineer or lawyer?

My husband worked as a tailor. So did me. Day and night we worked, tirelessly. Still, we found it hard to make the two ends meet. My son was being trained at home to become a tailor. The same would happen to my daughter. What else could you expect?

I got up to leave.

“Daughter, please stay”, the old woman called behind me. Yes, I would not call her my mother. Because she never was.

It was true that I hated her beyond imagination. But still her words stopped me.

I turned around. “Give me one reason for staying here a moment longer”

She just licked her lips, unable to form a reply. But when I began to walk again, she said, “At least meet your father before leaving”

The anger I felt on his mention I cannot describe. “I don’t want to see the face of that-”, I was about to swear but stopped short. Foul language is a way of expressing your emotions immoral for women.

Yes, I am an orphan. But I was not raised on streets.

I came out and walked to the bus stop. I would leave this city for my home and never come back.

Tears flowed freely. You would ask why I had come to see her when I would not even talk to her. But you cannot understand an orphan’s feelings. The urge we feel to see the face of our parents. How we struggle our whole lives to find them, no matter if it is all worth it.

I knew I could have hugged her. Mother and daughter would have cried their hearts out. When the tears would have stopped, everything would have been normal.

But that is exactly I would have hated to do. I would not let her cry her guilt out. Because I want her to remember her crime every time she sees a small girl. She just does not have the right to be called my mother.

I boarded the bus back home.