By Riddhiman Dey
She was twenty-seven, high on fever as she sat near the bed tired of a full day’s work. The bed as if looking back at her, gave her justifying reasons to lie her weary head and tired limbs on it. Yet, she refused to give in to her desperation for rest and looked the other side. Just near the sofa where she was sitting slept her one-year old son who had minor cold. The clock struck twelve in the night, her fever began to get worse, yet she never ceased to rush to the kitchen to refill the bottle of hot milk whenever she heard her son’s cries.
She was twelve years old and had a ton of homework for school, yet she put aside at-least a few hours’ time for her younger brother to teach him geometry for he had been sleeping through his class and needed her help.
She was twenty-one years old, working overtime, doing multiple jobs one of which included teaching art to keep her family going. The boy she taught spent less time in paying attention to her teaching and more on making fun of -what he referred to as her strange accent- yet she didn’t mind. She had to do her work, she needed to keep her family going. Besides, she wondered, he is only a kid and just smiled softly at his remarks.
She was nineteen-year-old when she gave her heart to the boy who said he would love her forever. She tried to do everything for that to be true. She let him have his way with her body even when she was not comfortable with it. She was at his side, calming him down of many of his frustration as he bragged about how his life is miserable and how his hard work is never appreciated. All this she did, just to hear him say “You and I are not meant to be, you just…. ask too much of my time…you never understood my pain!”
Little did he know, without her constant support through his tough times he would have fallen into depression within a couple of days.
The boy is now twenty-two years old, a recent graduate with decent grades. He goes to a nearby bar with a few of his friends to celebrate. After taking few shots of vodka, his eyes fall on a girl, or rather on her uncovered legs. He sees that the boy she is with is the topper of his batch. He quickly nudges to his friend next to him and says, that the girl he saw is nothing but a social climber. He feels rather proud as all the eyes of the group are on him now. He proceeds to say, more like a philosopher giving a valuable teaching to his disciples. “Why do girls always date a guy after he is successful or rich!” He calls the girls of his class a bunch of gold diggers. He claims that all the women in his life never supported him on his tough times, instead they only made his life hard for him. Few of his group members clap, others sit quietly and shake their heads. He finally concludes his enlightening speech by shouting “My success is a result of my hard work alone, I am a man who doesn’t need a bitch in my life.”
