Ma

By Sonal Rashid

Watching Ramya play with her nanny is always a sight to the sore eyes but today I was gazing at my mother more than my baby. She has aged, her skin has wrinkled but the happiness on her face and the smile on her lips mesmerised me. Seeing something so beautiful and remembering something dreadful is a cruel game that our mind plays. My mother always made us sleep early but that day me and my sister stayed awake as our favourite movie was gonna play.

We creeped into the hall with finger on our lips and excitement in our hearts. The loud noise made us halt midway but what shocked us more was the sight of you sitting on the floor and the blood on the wall. Before our mind could decipher the situation pappa started to hit you, scared and shivering we hid behind the showcase holding our hands as hard as we could. We don't remember how long we stayed there but after a while pappa left with blood on his knuckles and ma crawled her way back to the room and the lights were out. We stayed there dumbstruck for some more time and then we too found our way back to our room and cried ourselves to sleep. The next morning ma woke us up with the usual smile on her face but that day we knew that the smile on the lips could never hide the truth behind her eyes. I closed my eyes, walked out of the bad memory and looked at her again. I ran to hug her as her eyes too were smiling. I asked her 'Ma, how can you be so happy. She just smiled and patted my face. I hugged her and closed my eyes.

By Sonal Rashid