WHO WILL LAUGH WHEN YOU ARE ALIVE?

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 The sun was shining bright. The sultry afternoon made Bajender think of his worth on this earth. He was sitting under the tree seeking the cool breeze. But not a single leaf moved, making the place hotter than before. His wife, Sunita, shouted from inside, ‘sunte ho! Pani to bharo.’ The Gram Panchayat had recently arranged for the supply of clean drinking water in the village. As the election approached, they had expedited some delayed works to secure the majority vote by the ruling ‘Sarpanch’. This happens every five years. After the results are out, the Panchayat committee hibernates for nearly 3 years and then resumes the leftover work of the last 3-4 years.

Not a single toe moved from him. He was lost. Worldly visuals found him there, but his mind had been oscillating between the past and the future. He time-traveled with the mission of rectifying some mistakes of the past that would change his present and so would reshape his future. His three children were hopping and jumping in the scorching heat with no signs of uneasiness. Their mother again shouted, ‘E Bittu tere babuji ne pani bhara?’ The child screamed in a harsher frequency than his mother, ‘Na Ma.’

The woman rushed out of the house in a rage, screaming wildly at her husband. ‘Kachu to hota nahi is admi se. Sara din usi pedh k niche hawa khata hai. Ghar to mujhe hi chalana hai.’ Bajender was unmoved. He had shifted his thoughts towards the village girl whom he loved so much. He often wondered how his life would have turned out if she had been his life partner instead of Sunita. He missed her so much who had betrayed him, and opted to elope with his best friend. This boy would serve as the messenger, passing love letters between Bajender and the girl. Tears rolled out of his small eyes. He was a dark-complexioned man, so much similar to his father in appearance.

‘E Babuji ro kyu raha hai?’ The youngest one enquired. It was not a verbal enquiry, but was accompanied by a blow on the father’s arm. Bajender jolted and came back at the moment when his wife was shouting angrily at him for not performing his domestic duties, cursing her fate, and indirectly criticizing the old mother of Bajender for providing a wrong grown-up to her son, as well as camouflaging the real facts about her son’s substandard and lousy behaviour to her family during their wedding.

Bajender was silent, accepted the accusations, and went inside the hut to eat his lunch prepared by his wife. His mother accompanied him, too.

 

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