When parents arranged the marriage...
She: Please don’t make me marry him, I am in love with another.
Mother: Please understand my dear. It is a matter of our family’s honour.
When she returned after a few months of marriage…
She: Please don’t send me back. He drinks, beats and rapes me every night.
Mother: No! You must go back…for our family’s honour.
When she eloped with ‘another’…
Mother: I wish she was born dead. She dishonoured our family.
Stirred by the burning sensation, she had come back from her grief-filled fog. She realised her clothes were dripping with oil; and she was burning on her dead husband’s pyre.
She tried to escape but her relatives pushed her back in until she stopped moving, all on the pretext of reuniting her with her husband.
She looked at the sky
With the longing
Of a bird in a cage
Through the small window
In her marital home – her prison.
“Hey Girl!”
(Silence)
“What’s wrong?”
(Silence)
“I hope you did not give in to your mother’s threat. She thinks marrying a man will ‘cure’ you. But if you can’t bear the touch…”
(A gasp and silence)
“Look, I know! The entire group knows and we are okay!”
(A sigh and silence)
“I have a spare room if your mother doesn’t understand.”
(After a long silence) “Can you call an ambulance, fast?”
-Based on a true story
She felt a stab of jealousy as her husband eyed a man with a longing he would never have for her.
If only the world was more resilient to people like him, she would have had a chance at love too.
-Based on true stories
Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective 