Isolation

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Isolation

Bhargavi

May 31 |00:52

Last Updated on Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:28

Nobody listens to me. I feel lonely, alienated, isolated. I weep in pain, it’s flooding around me, and because of my own tears. I am sucked by a force greater than gravity.My head is squeezed...........

I have a few more hours to go. To enter this world, I meant. I feel the anxiety and excitement in my body. The warmth of the amniotic fluid around is comforting. My mother touches her tummy time and again, as if to check if am still there. I kick her in acknowledgement, she yelps and smiles. A man puts his cheeks on my mom’s tummy, my father! I reckon, and kick him too, he smiles, and mother repeats her mixed reaction.

Father thinks I’m a guy, and mother argues I’m a girl, well, what am I? Mother wants me to be called Jasmine/Fredrick, Father has a longer list, Chandini, Prabhavathi, Karunya, Rahul, Anirdesh, Ananth…Mother frowns. I feel the temperature of the fluid around me rise mildly. ‘My child is a Hindu by blood’, says my dad flatly. My father is possessive about me, he says ‘my child’! Wow. But what is it to be a Hindu? And more importantly what is this Hindu blood? I keep my ears pressed to the walls of the uterus. Mother speaks on... ‘It is a Christian.’ It? ‘It’ is neither a guy nor a gal, right?? Father now, ‘It’s a Brahmin, don’t bring your filth in’ Who is a Brahmin, Ma? Mother replies ‘The kid would be baptized.’ What are you both talking about, huh??

My father does something strange; he inches closer to my Mother and pushes her down. She loses her balance. So do I. I scream, ‘Pa, I would be a Brahmin, don’t hurt her, it’s hurting me!’ My voice is echoed within the uterine walls. The vibrations have their side effects now. My mother throws the nearest object she could find on him. He is hurt. Her violent effort make my insides squirm. I yell at her, ‘Ma, am scared, I’d be a Christian, can you both stop this?’

I realize nobody listens to me. There’s none in the world for me. I feel lonely, alienated, isolated. I weep in inexplicable pain, it’s flooding around me, and because of my own tears I think. I am sucked in by a force greater than gravity. My head is squeezed.

I am happy I’m going to die in a few moments from now. A gentle slide and a soft thud. I am still in tears, I am not able to get over what happened a while back, am a just born, young, you see. It dawns on me, am born. People dressed in whites bend over me, they say to each other, ‘The kid has lost it’s parents, should we inform the police?’ ‘No, he killed his mom and dad,let us put him at the Dargah’s entrance.’ I don’t feel like asking what this Dargah means, no point, I understand it already. I stop crying. I am prepared for a life full of isolation.