The Hesitant Steps

Yes! He heard right, the jingling of her anklets is so familiar to his fatherly instincts. He has ever so embraced her loving passions and tenacities. Gradually the  jingling timbre were coming to his close proximity. A very timid, hesitant and composed steps, so very unlikely of that impetuous girl, who habitually raised alarm when entering her father’s room, with open arms, trying to grab him with all might and puke in a breath all stories coagulated in her.  

Standing at the threshold this moment, a matured disclosure, decked in a glossy silk sari and precious ornaments, scarlet vermilion adorning the partition of her hair. When the anxious father felt impatient to summon her in the enclosure of his cosy arms, she uttered in a suppressed voice “ Baba, your Shumi has come”. To his dismay, this was a  transformed Shumi, who forwarded towards him with intermittent steps. His most lovable, adorable Shumi, who was wearing an unfamiliar demeanour shading all her virginal frivolity and wantonness. 

Shumi stood envisaging her father and bowed to touch his feet in calm disposition. “Baba are you keeping well? Do you obey to Ma’s instructions and Doctor’s advice regarding your health”, all she could manage, looking into her father’s eyes. Suddenly the confounded father leaped to the harsh percipience, that he has lost his daughter to the chemistry of another relation with a man, a fundamental practice of patriarchal sovereignty. 

Being the compositor of this communal write up to I take the initiative to question the general to give me a good reason, as to why a woman is being subjected to shed her authentic identity to be a man’s wife and her children’s mother? Why she has to forlorn her innate traits and patterns and melt to be casted into some other form? Give me a good reason, why it’s always a girl’s father who has to survive the harsh reality that his daughter belongs to somewhere else, to someone else? This is not a quaint tale, it’s a rueful predicament, imposed in relationship of a daughter and her parents. In a patriarchal domain, when she is already living the identity of a male, then why she is being oppressed to envisage the same a second time? She is being brought to the realisation that she has to remain subjugated to an indomitable male power. 

Shumi tried to adjust beside his father trying to pacify his despondent expression with her nearness, “I am here with you Baba”. Shumi’s visibility got blurred to his moistened eyes, “Shumi will you hum that popular tune of mine that we both cherished together”. Their mellifluous exchanges declined when her husband’s potential voice jerked her back to reality, “We have to leave now”. She obliged silently to his will. One last glance of adieu and she moved apart raising her retreating jingles. The hapless father affixed his eyes on his daughter whose misty disposition gradually faded from his sight. 


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