freedom-Part I

She was looking at the closed gate with a forlorn look on the face anticipating the arrival of a footfall but the shadow of hope that she longed for , was a distant mirage. 

How she wished she could turn back the ticking needles of time with her finger to freeze the moments . But the needles pricked her and she withdrew her hurt finger and the clock sprang back to life and her life was again a monotonous routine. No love or compliments were showered on her. The mirror on the wall never reflected her smile. The red circular dot that adorned her forehead reminded her how her life was trapped and there was no escape , but every morning bowing to societal norms she had to adorn it on her forehead. The jasmine flowers that she pinned on to her long lustrous hair did not excite her.The black beads around her neck pricked her conscience and she felt each bead mocking at her.

                                                     


The furniture in the sprawling old mansion was  made of solid teak wood and she was one among them. Trapped in a loveless marriage , she felt suffocated.


 Unaware of the crowing of the cock , her internal body clock alarm woke her up . 
 Opening her eyes she dreaded , dreaded of another day. She longed to close her eyes and never have to lift her eyelids to feel the morning sunshine.There was no sunshine in her life. Darkness enveloped her mind and in absence of a ray of hope , her wishes remained stunted.

Radha's rantings found a way in her diary as words. The blank sheets of paper were filled up with her outpourings from her heart in the form of anger , anguish , betrayal but never of any hope. The clean white pages that she filled them up to empty the contents of her heart were a mute testimony of her innermost feelings that she would not share with the world. 

She looked at the garlanded photos of her parents and wished that they hadn't taken the decision to marry her off to Kisna whose father had borrowed heavily from her moneylender father. When Kisna's father expressed his inability to pay  the borrowed amount along with the interest, her father waived off the loan with her hand in marriage to Kisna.

 This was not a marriage of the minds but a marriage of convenience for both the fathers. Radha's father could not find a match for his only daughter who was blessed with a  fair complexion , chiselled looks and loads of inheritance weighing heavily on the marital scale but the other side did not match rather the other side of the scale was crippled with her inability  to talk and hear.

Destiny had cruelly made her deficient in this sphere but had abundantly blessed her with a poetic mind and a vision to see and analyse things. She pleaded with her father to let her travel the path of life without the loving grasp of a partner. But her father being a father could not see what Radha's young and sensitive mind could foresee. Securing her future with a spouse was paramount for her father.

Kisna saw only her disability but could not fathom her feelings as he made no attempts to look beyond her disability.
They lead separate lives under one roof confined as prisoners within the four concrete walls.

She decided to free him from the bondage of an unfair marriage thrust upon him. And by freeing him, she was doing a favour for herself ; liberating herself.


She was looking at the closed gate with a forlorn look on the face anticipating the arrival of a footfall but the shadow of hope that she longed for, was a distant mirage.


to be continued..................................