RiKara OS Gallery: A Beauty Undefined

Dare To Love

Hi Guys! I wrote this OS some time back and am posting it now because I think its important to share. This is a true story and it may not be liked by some of you. I respect everybody's opinion and welcome constructive criticism, but please also keep in mind that this is a reality for many women. 

Dare to Love

Dear Diary,

I was seventeen when they first presented me as a wrapped up paper gift for marriage to a man who had quite a reputation for being nasty. I was young and illiterate given the dire situation of my family and he...he was anything but. Sitting on a pot hold of goods and wealth stolen from the farm villagers' debt, his belly showed the amount he had eaten. It protruded like a bucket of waste from his midriff and made me gag mentally inside.

When he came to see me, he was twenty-nine and tugging on with his mother's pallu in his hand. He picked at the samosas my father borrowed money to buy and he swatted flies as my mother passed the chai. He spelled ignorance and foolishness as he dropped the chai in his lap before snidely asking if I could show him the bathroom to clean the mess up. Of course it was staged.

And as soon as we got away from my younger brother's watchful gaze, he ever so naively placed his hands on my waist and tried to get his way.

I was young then and hardly half his size, but I screamed.

Now you must know that screaming for young poor girls like me is unseen of, unheard of and unthought of. Moreover, screaming against a man that the village is forced to worship and revere is criminal. And above all that, screaming against a sickly man who is decided to be your future husband is the mark of a vile vile woman.

In the moment of outrage, I was outrageous. Slapping him for his indignity and scurrying away was all I did, but the villagers were made to believe that I threw myself on him and that he pushed me away.

Of course we were thrown out of our house and of course I was shunned from the rest of society. I was a young girl then, but in the few moments of the world turning upside down, I had grown years together.

I did not get any marriage proposals after that. My father withered away with the large debt still looming on our heads and my brother ran away to the city and never looked back. I know he loved our family, but the shame and debt was too huge for his young dreamy shoulders.

So, it was just me and my mother-tending to the barren farm land and taking up stitching as a way of earning some money when the droughts occurred. Soon, it became our only way of earning money when the land was usurped by goons and we were forced yet again out of our house.

We moved to another city and I started anew. We never looked back thereafter.

I was twenty-seven when my second marriage proposal came to me. And to say I was shocked would be an understatement. Bansi Kaka, our neighbhor, and my mother had been plotting behind my back much to my chagrin. So, when I returned home after a long tiring day at the tailor's shop, I was immediately pulled into the inner room where my mother lay on her permanent bed.

"Gauri bitiya, there is a proposal....for you, my dear."

Her eyes were gleaming with a tint that I hadn't seen since my brother left.

"He is rich man from Mumbai and he has offered to take mine and your responsibility after marriage. Just imagine." she cried. "No more struggles for meals, no more hospital bills. You won't have to worry anymore, bitiya."