“No, no, NO! I will not do it!” wailed Sumitra, wringing her hands in sheer despair. Her tears had all been expended, leaving a trail of dried salt along her leathery, shrunk cheeks.
“See, there is no point in railing and ranting. It has been decided by Amma and in this household, we all do what she wants. Why are you creating such a fuss?” Ravi asked nonchalantly, least concerned about his wife’s apparent trauma and agony. He could not understand what the fuss was all about. The foetus was just four weeks old. Not formed into even a semblance of a being. They could always have another one but hopefully, this time, a boy to appease Amma. Then everything would go back to being ‘calm and placid’, just as things had been before all this ruckus that Sumi started after the visit to the clinic. The visit had been harrowing in itself. The last technician had been transferred and the present one had proved to be a hard nut to crack. She drove a hard bargain. Pretended to be squeamish about the last three abortions, said the next one could prove fatal for the mother. Whoever heard of women dying from ‘bachha girana!’ It has happened since times immemorial. Huh! Trying to pull wool over his eyes! Ravi had upped the money and meekly she had acquiesced to the deal. He knew that Sumi too would capitulate, she had no other options.
Sumitra looked stonily at her husband of eight years, the reluctant father of her only living child, her daughter Raji, an unwanted appendage in their lives. It seemed she was seeing him for the first time. The swaggering, moustache -twirling hunk of a man over whom her friends had swooned, during her marriage. Her elderly relatives had not lost a chance to rub it into her skin that she was lucky to have him as her husband, it must have been a result of her good karma in her previous birth! She, too, had basked in smug glory at the propitious turn of events. Now, she saw him for what he was. A weak, spineless man unable to stand up for his family or for what was right. An unknown man who had given her four children but only the first survived.
A strange resolve crossed her mind like a whiff of breeze in the stagnant desert. She was rather surprised by her own thoughts. Having never been called to tap into her resolve for self-determination, she felt unprepared for the task at hand. Her family, which now comprised of Raji and the Unborn, would live life with the freedom they deserved. When the house slumbered in the afternoon siesta, she bundled up her sparse belongings, subduing her surprised daughter into silence and stepped out of the house (had it ever been a home?). The world seemed to beckon her welcomingly. The train journey took her far, far away from the killing fields – of her children and her dreams…
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