She is very pretty and he is very handsome. She is the best singer at school. He is the school cricket team captain. He is the best athlete; girls love him. It’s teenage love. Magical, as ever.
Folks at home don’t like their relationship. They want to bargain, as usual, to no end. Option-less, they elope. They get married and promise to live together, happily ever after.
A couple of months pass. The World raises its ugly face. Money is in short supply. The odd jobs don’t really help much.
Love evaporates.
He drinks as if there is no tomorrow. She cries all the time.
They have an argument, and then, they have a fight. She tells him, ‘You are no man’. He wants to prove that’s what he is, ‘a man’.
He beats her with his cricket bat, breaks a few of her bones. He wins. She loses.
As always, the relationship remains the biggest loser. Violence.
***
He believes his religion is ‘in danger’. Even his indoctrinator says so.
He leaves home to fight for his religion, and to restore his religion’s lost glory.
His parents are confused, “Where did this son come from? He is just 18. We never brought him up that way!” He doesn’t care, for he has a bigger cause to fight for. The AK-47 and the RDX are friends that will help him achieve his cause.
He fights, and he is dead. No one sings. He is dead fighting a ‘cause’ no one understands.
No one claims him; not even his indoctrinator. His parents refuse to recognize his dead body. Violence.
***
Her mother controls the home and believes, blindly, in tradition.
She wants to fly. Her mother says, “It is not healthy to fly. Good girls don’t fly. They cook.”
She wants to go out and find a job. Her mom says, “Don’t. There are guys all around, all potential rapists.”
She hates home.
Her mom says to the relatives, “she is misguided. She has the galls to be free!” and she adds, “She is influenced.”
Her mom forces her marriage. The guy claims to be an NRI. They don’t really know much about him, but they assume that all NRIs are great. “God’s own children”; as they say.
The marriage happens. She doesn’t really like him. Her mom doesn’t care. Violence.
***
It is her first day to the kindergarten, in a big bad city somewhere in
She goes to the kindergarten. She does her jigsaw and she does her nursery rhymes. The kindergarten loves her, and she loves the kindergarten.
She is very friendly. She looks around. Right in front of the kindergarten building; there is a construction site.
Laborers at the construction site work; and their kids play all the time. She wants to play with the laborer’s kids, they are her age.
She makes advances. She wants to play in the sand, without a care in the world. She wants to build sand castles, together with the laborer’s kids.
Her kindergarten teacher tells her, “Don’t talk to those dirty kids. They are ‘gande bacche’, filthy kids. They will spoil you, and they will teach you abuses.” Violence.
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