She looked decent.
Socially, she had good prospects. A dead father did not matter much in society
these days. A western schooling and an Indian living meant an ideal character.
Then she shook everything.
She eloped with a seemingly illiterate guy who worked as a domestic help.
People started talking. People did not really care about her future more than
they cared talking about it. A dead father was suddenly significant.
People talk for a few days
or months at the most. Until they talked, her marriage fared well. She had a
beautiful boy. Fair, from his father. Then one day the father left. The swarthy
young mother and her fair boy were on their own. People talking seems to be a
bad omen. They curse the lives of those that are unimportant, even insignificant
to them. It is the only way people have authority.
A few years now, everything
seems normal again. She lives as a tenant in a cheap but decent looking chawl
which is queerly built behind
a restaurant & bar. People say it is cheap, living there. They cannot
justify it really, but they will continue to talk nonetheless.
I hear people say that she now sells her body
for her stomach. Maybe, maybe not. People won't cross check it anyway. This
city has become sadist.
Years down the line, the
college going boy of this illicit mother convinces himself every night, "A
prostitute's son is not a bastard. A prostitute's son is not a bastard."
He does not even know whether his mother is really one.
