“It’s a girl”, a woman hollered from inside the room which shattered Mr. Ishan for it was the only thing in the whole world he didn’t want to hear. He was walking back and forth anxiously along the corridor just outside the room where his wife, Mina, was giving birth to a child. He already had two daughters aged 6 and 2, Nisha and preety, now there were three. He expected a son this time, but it seemed like his fate was testing him one more time. He didn’t even enter into the room where Mina was expecting him. After hearing the news that poured water into his expectation he walked towards the front door hastily, stepped outside and shut it close with a loud bang and left the house. He showed up later in the evening, drunk.
In the days that followed, Ishan begin to act as a complete stranger to his own family. He left home early in the morning; returned later at the evening, long past his usual time. Every time when Mina tried to approach him he would put on a sullen face. At evenings when he came early, the two daughters would scamper towards him with a hope to get scooped and lifted up in the air and then fall into his safe arms, like in the old days. But to their dismay, he would turn a blind eye on them and make his own way towards the door. To comfort the broken little hearts Mina standing beside them with her brimming eyes used to say “come here my darlings, I will do it for you; your father is tired today”. The daughters couldn’t comprehend the reason behind the apathy of his father towards them in the recent days. In the course of time, Ishan rarefied his visit to the house. But when he did, he would be inebriated and would beat her wife until he felt a pang in his hand. The children could always sense the violence in the next room, it wouldn’t let them sleep. Nisha used to hold her sister tight until she stopped shivering and wouldn’t let her focus towards the wailing of her mother and her little sister. As Nisha grew older, she reckoned the reason for her mother’s suffering. She knew that it was because her father wanted a son. She used to ask her mother “what is in a boy that our father wants one so much”. She used to assure her mother that someday she would make her father proud more than a son could and prove that she is no less than a son and their bad days would be over.
Mina got inured to the behavior of her husband, so did the children. She made her living after a sewing job and was growing to become an independent woman. She never exposed her anguish to the children never did she foul-mouthed Ishan despite of his gruesome treatment to her. Later in the evening one day, when Nisha was about to climb to her bed after helping her mother with her daily chores, she saw through the window two persons standing outside their gate. Though she couldn’t exactly figure out what was happening, she could clearly reckon her father who was trying to persuade a woman-who was unfamiliar to her. She could hear her father say “wait for me at the station; I will be there at six tomorrow morning”. They hugged each other before biding farewell. After a while when the woman left, her father entered into the house and went to his bed without a fuss with her mother. Baffled by the father’s strange sequence of behavior that night-secret rendezvous with a strange woman and sober inside the house-she too laid on the bed alongside her sister hoping for a better tomorrow.
Early in the morning next day, she could hear her mother’s wailing from inside the kitchen. She went towards the sound in a hurry. Her father was fierce at her mother, he was vehemently scolding her mother “it’s all your fault, you don’t want to see me happy, you never wanted to give me a son, now live by yourself”. Her mother was anguishing at the corner of the kitchen; her father with a suitcase in his hand started towards the door. She ran after her father yelling “father where are you going? When will you return?” but without looking at her he shoved her off and left the house.
Not long after that day, Ishan got married to another woman, whom Nisha had seen the other night. After almost a year of their marriage, Ishan became a father of a son. He was frolicking that very day when he knew it was a baby boy. It was all he wanted after all since his first marriage. Life was not easy though, for the new family. Ishan’s menial job at a shoe store could hardly pay for his spendthrift wife. Besides, they had to think for the future of the baby. He was in desperate need of a job that could provide a fair salary. The only way men of his skill could pay for his wife’s extravagant bill was by flying into some Arab country and put strenuous effort to make some extra bucks. And so he did. His son had just turned 2 when Ishan left for Iraq.
There he found a job at a gas station. He never spared free time for himself. He managed to do overtime at the weekend. After getting his stipend at the end of each month he would call home to speak to his son. Even after sending home a good sum of money each month, his wife used to pester him demanding even more. One day during the telephone conversation she said “I will leave you if it is all that you can offer us”. One early morning, she called him and said “It’s time to send our son to a boarding school, you have to send all your savings for his admission”. Ishan did as demanded; he gladly sent all his savings through remittance. As days passed by, he began to feel more secluded from his wife. After few weeks, much to his shock, he got no reply after ringing the phone several times a day.
Late at midnight one day, he tried to call her. It was only when he started to lose his hope again to get answered that somebody on the other side was in the line. It was a voice of a man on the other side. The man with a coarse voice yelled at him “you’d better not call this phone again” and hung up the phone. Suddenly, it went all dark for Ishan. His senses left him. It was as if the time stood still for a moment. He wished it was a nightmare, but alas, everything was real. He fumbled towards the bathroom less to take a shower than to assure him that it was all happening outside his imaginary world. There he began to recall where he possibly went wrong. He could find no loophole in his effort to satiate her hunger for a profligate life.
He spent his night in there sobbing, cursing himself for his naivety. Waves of memories of his three daughters, her faithful first wife swarmed in. He remembered how indifferent he had been towards those innocent children of his. Surely, they deserved as much love from their father as the other kids did from their father. Had it not for the desire of a son, he wouldn’t have to see this day. He thought about his misdeeds to her wife who was always servile to him. She was always there when he needed her yet he abused her and left her on her own with those tender lives. He realized that it was satisfaction all one needs to become happy. He repented over his deeds the whole night.
Few days after that tormenting night, he managed to get on to the plane for home for he thought it was not worth earning any money now. When he landed at the airport, he couldn’t comprehend his destination. The first person he could think of was his old wife but he dared not call her as he thought she might have settled with another man. But he wanted to acknowledge about his daughters’ whereabouts. He wanted to apologize once and for all to those kids for his apathy towards them. Gathering some courage, he got on a bus towards home. Reaching there he saw his three daughters playing in the yard and his wife busy with her sewing. Nothing had changed ever since he had left. Nisha scampered towards her father when she saw him, he cupped her in his hands lifted her up and held her tight kissing her forehead.
santoshkoirala 