Undesired Memories

She woke up to the shrill ringing of the phone in the living room. She pulled the pillow over her head. The ringing stopped and she could hear the muffled voice of her father speaking into the phone. She peered at the clock kept on the bedside table, it declared 6:45. She heard her mother’s voice coming from the living room too. The commotion in the living room didn’t let her go back to sleep.

Reluctantly she pulled herself out of the bed and walked dragging her sleepy legs into the living room. Her father held the newspaper in his hand as he turned to look at her. She saw that her mother was wiping her wet cheeks with the end of her saree. Her mother turned around and hugged her warmly. She was surprised at the sudden show of emotions by her.

“What’s the matter?” She asked rubbing her eyes, not returning her hug.
 
Her father showed her the newspaper.
“Jaipur Girl Tops CA Exams”

The front page of the newspaper declared. She looked at her passport sized photo in the news item, the black eyes and hair slick with oil and tied tightly at the back confirmed it was her. She read the name at the bottom of the photograph again. It did read Neeta Sharma. The phone rang again as she read the news item. Her father picked it up.

“Yes, we saw the news.” He spoke into the phone, “Yes, yes we are very proud of her.”

Neeta looked at him, she could see genuine happiness in his eyes. The pride showed in his face. The wrinkles of his old age seemed to have disappeared. Her mother still sobbing hadn’t said anything yet. The small family hardly spoke with each other. It was a rare show of emotions that Neeta was witnessing from her parents. Somewhere in her heart of hearts she didn’t like it. There was a void inside her which told her everything was a farce. Her father turned around and gave her a rare bright smile. She threw the newspaper on the sofa and went to her room without saying a word.

She closed the door, fell on her bed, buried her head in the white pillow and wept softly.

“You know that I never wanted a girl.”

Her father’s voice played inside her head like an old record stuck in the player. Even though it had been two years since she had overheard him saying this to her mother in the middle of the night in their bedroom, she could still feel the cold sting in her ears. Upon hearing these words in an instant she had felt like an orphan. All she had done was ask him for money, so that she could take up tutorials for her CA exams. He had coldly refused it.

“It is enough that you have completed your graduation”, he had said.

Her father had always been cold to her. Even when she was a child he would never pick her up in his arms, even if he did, he did it like a duty which had to be performed. He was always warm to her cousin Ashish, showering him with goodies and affection whenever he came to their house. He never showed the same affection to Neeta, not even when she came first in the whole school, or when she won the district badminton championship and not even when she was sick of typhoid.

She felt a hand touch her softly on her head. She lifted her head and saw him sitting beside her. The pillow had dark marks of her tears and her cheeks were wet. She wiped her cheeks and sat up, moving away from him.

The first time Neeta had confronted him with the question of why she was an unwanted child, he was shocked. He didn’t get angry, he was shocked. He didn’t say anything. Neeta kept pushing him with questions like, why didn’t he want a girl and why didn’t they just aborted her, but he didn’t utter a single word. He had taken it all on his heart and remained silent.

“You know when I was sixteen or seventeen years old I had a huge crush on one of my distant cousins. Her name was Aditi.” Her father spoke looking away from Neeta. She was still sobbing softly. She couldn’t understand why he was suddenly talking to her like that.

“Aditi was seven or eight years older to me and a cousin so anything between us was simply out of question.” He continued speaking with a sigh as if he was trying to heave off something heavy from his chest.

“Well, Aditi got married into a rich family in Delhi and the same year I got admission in engineering in Delhi University. Her parents wanted me to visit her at least once a month so that she wouldn’t feel lonely or miss home.” He paused and looked at his hands as if trying to read the lines. Neeta looked at him intently.

“Then one day, I received a call from her mother at around eight in the night, her voice was panic stricken. She wanted me to immediately go to Aditi’s house. Her neighbors had called her and she thought something was wrong.” He stopped speaking and pulled off his spectacles. With his thumb and index finger he massaged his eyes as if they were tired of staring for long at something.

“I went there and saw that some fire fighters were leaving the house which was semi burned. There was a group of people standing near the house and who were now dispersing. The neighbors told me that the family had gone to the hospital. I found Aditi’s husband waiting in the hospital lobby. He took me to a room, where I saw Aditi’s charred body lying naked on the steel stretcher. Her clothes were stuck to her blackened body like her skin. The almond shaped eyes were reduced to hollow sockets. Her once beautiful face was now only a burnt skeleton skull. Aditi’s husband told me that the gas cylinder in the kitchen blew up while she was alone in the house. Her whole family had gone out of town in the morning.” He stopped talking again and looked at the floor. Neeta could see that his eyes were filled with water at the corners.

“It was later on I learned that her in-laws had been continuously torturing her for dowry. Her parents had already sold their house and their farm lands to marry her off. Still after the marriage the in-laws continued to harass her for more. Nobody spoke about it openly but we all knew how Aditi had died.

“I was broken from inside to see the ugly burnt body of the girl who had once been so beautiful, who had almost been my first love. It was then that I had made up my mind not to have a girl child. I didn’t have the courage to support a girl against this cruel world.” The father wiped his forehead with his palm. Neeta looked at him. He seemed tired, as if within moments he had grown ten years older. Neeta went over to where her father sat on the bed. She kneeled beside him with her hands on her knees.

Her mother stood at the door with the end of her saree on her mouth, sobbing occasionally. Her father looked at Neeta’s eyes as tears blurred his vision. Her lips were curved into a smile, as her eyes became moist too. The morning sun rose through the bedroom window behind her.