The girl might’ve lost a father, or his father might’ve lost his job, now that his factory has closed. Her mother might’ve taken up to sewing, if she is skilled enough, in addition to working as house-maid; commuting daily to a far off city in order to feed the family, like the thousand others who commute to the city for a living. She might have a brother who is too young to go to work and too old to be carried with her mother to work. So what does he do? He plays with her sister the whole day; pestering her for something to eat, the pangs of hunger overcoming at such an age; she tries to trick him into forgetting by telling him stories .. stories she had heard from her mother, about kings and fairies, about the demons of the dark, swooping down on children who remain awake in the night .. trying to ward off the demons in the bellies with the fictitious ones; till the time her mother returns.. and then pouncing on the morsels passed away from the households where she works.
Leftovers of the last night’s meals, that rotten fried rice, those charred rotis, the stiffened meat, the pieces of cake cooked over weeks ago; all goes through the mouths. Her father comes home drunk, late at night sometimes out of grief, sometimes out of habit after having pulled the van, kicked at by the lala for dropping a bag of cement and taking it out on his wife habituated with her husband’s abusings and beatings. She watches the scene, every night, from under her blanket, wondering why it had to happen with them. The next day she wakes up with more resolution and smiles brightly to the camera of a journalist doing a story of the slum ..
© 2017. All rights reserved.
コメント