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A Mother's Plight

A mother was lying in her dingy damp room and sweating profusely. Her mouth was parched and her eyes dilating. She was writhing with pain on her bed as her labour had extended now for twenty four hours. Even dai maa's hands had started to shake now. Oddly, she noticed dai maa's shaking hands and realized that all was not going well and with a clarity of mind she later marveled at, she collected the last resource of strength and heard a bailing child. That was the last voice she heard before she lost consciousness.

When she came to she saw her mother sitting next to her holding the baby. Her mother noticed her wakefulness and thrust the baby in her arms and told her it was a girl. A girl! Another girl, that's what her mother wanted, didn't she? At least when she would leave this dark room where her secrets, fears and desires were revealed, she would tell the world she was happy to have another girl. A girl to carry the legacy forward, a legacy of selling dreams- their own dreams!

She lay there feeding her baby and thought yet again, this time with urgency. Is God like the women sitting in purdah in their homes who mention women like her in hushed whispers. Women who never know what it is like to lie awake at night like her and think these thoughts. Is God really like them? Would He give her, a prostitute, a daughter and curse her and her daughter to eternal hellfire? Would He call her a sinner? Where could she go? How could she have escaped her destiny? He closed the door of death for her, her only possible route. Without a name, money, all she was given at birth was ill-fame. That was the dowry she would take to grave and yet, she paused as her tears soaked into her pillow, would she die a sinner?

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