He came running after me. I slumped in the dark cowshed, sobbing! I don't know why I cried...was it tears of joy? tears of relief? or simply tears of ominous ugly twist waiting for me?
"I know you suffered a lot," his voice shivered. I didn't recognize the voice for I had never heard him talk to me. We parted ways when I was a toddler, for my maternal uncle had decided to take him with him to give him education.
My mom would tell me about my elder brothers whom I had never remembered. She would tell me that her boys would become 'dashos' after their studies and take me with them and give me a life in the town. I never tried imagining a life in town for I didn't know what a town even looked like. For me, home meant being in our shanty bamboo hut which leaked during monsoons and sent cold winds right into our blood during winters.
"Ata, are you a 'dasho' now?" I asked drawing close to him now that I knew my life was going to change. He laughed. "I am not a dasho but I earn enough to have my family with me," he assured me.
Riding in the rickety old truck with 'my family' which consisted of my father( I don't know if I even felt like addressing him with that after he played dead in my life after my mom's demise), his new partner(whose stern eyes pierced holes in my whole body merely by sitting near me); my lil brother who was a toddler now and my eldest brother who drove that truck.
He turned some weird looking knobs in his truck and soothing music lulled me to sleep. I heard my mom singing to me. Just when mom was about to pat my head with her gentle fingers,suddenly I was awakened by an uncomfortable rumble in my tummy that forced my lunch out of my body. I shook as the last of the tasty morsel left me with its bitter taste in my mouth.
First the tears and now soaked in my own bitter saliva,Was I gearing up for something more torturous? Only time had the answer and in the meanwhile I had to fight another urge of sour vomit pushing its way out!Eew!
One month in my brother's house(it was no better than our village hut.Well! what can you expect from a truck driver's income!sigh!) and I knew my sins were still grinding itself in the laundry machine. With my stepmom as the incharge in the house, the chores at Am Lhamo's house seemed like a child's play.
She was a typical stepmom of the fairytale period(I guess the readers would have understood how she treated me and my li'l brother).My father's role had not changed much, he went missing from the time he opened his eyes and came home dead drunk to notice any thing in the house except his shambles of a bed that took his foul stinking body in it.
What about my elder brother? He was out for most part of the day in the name of his work and when he wasn't working I guess he simply went out of the house so that his family could have the space to themselves in his house.That was his moral responsibility.
Each day my stepmom taunted me with her ugly tantrums and unholy thrashings. I never cried when she did that to me but there were times she pulled my li'l one away from me while in the process of beating me and started hitting him. Maybe she didn't have a heart or maybe she wasn't even a woman underneath that mathra kira, for no woman with her heart would do that to a lil one who did nothing but ask for his food.
But the worst came to the worst,my heart shrieked as I heard them talk...my father was acting sober for the first time and sitting beside him, my stepmom had a huge plaster of smile on her face. My brother sat across them as if caught unguarded and I heard him say," apa and azim would never mean any harm to me so it's a YES from me."
Sitting in the 40watt lighted kitchen, I repeated the YES!YES!YES! of my brother as if I knew that meant YES to another calamity in my life.
(.....to be continued)
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