Best Unsaid

The lack of resemblance with his parents would puzzle others but not him. There was a sense of peace within, stemming from the fact that he had unique looks. He was not one to yearn for attention, though he remembered getting plenty of it from them. Good manners, respect for elders and women, and politeness were just a few among the many values that he had inculcated in growing up. The environment was always full of love and the few unreasonable demands that any child makes were granted to him. He was never allowed to feel alone and if something bothered him, they were there. The feeling of resentment towards his parents' words and actions was incomprehensible even while peers around him cursed theirs with no shame.

A woman sat in a corner of the slum in a city far from where the boy lived. Life had not been kind to her as was evident from her tattered saree, the hole in her blouse, the unkempt hair, the scars. One man after another had used her body to find momentary peace in and left her with small packets of money. It helped her survive but that survival was one of disgust and remorse. Hurling abuses at passersby, she cried. Was it on that day or the next that her son had been born into this world? The father, a past lover, had showed her dreams of a home, of security, of love.

But those dreams had been baseless and were soon shattered because of his lust for alcohol. The beatings were especially unbearable on those nights that he had had a bad day at the farm. On the day she told him about the life that she was bearing inside her, the demon in him came out. His bloodshot eyes told her that the life in her and hers may not see the next day. She ran to the kitchen as he came after her and found the knife its target. Bemused by her move, she ran out of his little hut and fled. A temple in a village far from hers took her in without questioning why this pregnant woman had no other home.

He was born in a tiny village hospital without proper medical aids. She held the life that she had just given birth to in her arms. The tiny hands needed a hand to guide him and she knew that she did not have the strength or financial capacity to do that. She had to be fair to him. She had to give him the future that she could not have. She had to let him live his own dreams and face his own nightmares. She let him go...