"You walked into the lion's den, sweetheart," he whispered, stepping closer. "And lions don't let go so easily."
He looked down at her leg, at her trembling hands, and the fear in her eyes.
"A beautiful young girl like you," he chuckled, "shouldn't...
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I sat still like a broken doll-stiff back, lowered head, hands laid out as two women bent over them, swirling mehendi cones in intricate loops. The smell should've comforted me.
But today, it was cloying. Almost nauseating.
The more they darkened the colour, the more it felt like I was being branded.
I was getting married.
To a man older than my father.
A man with a paunch, stained teeth, and a voice that crackled like old radio static. He had looked at me like I was a trophy shelf. Like he'd already imagined me giving birth to sons he could raise to be exactly like him-controlling, leering, loud.
Baba hadn’t touched his food.
I watched him from the corner of the room as he sat slumped on the edge of the bed, a shawl wrapped around his thin shoulders even though it was warm. His face looked smaller these days—sunken and bruised with shadows. His eyes, once sharp even in gentleness, had gone dull, like a man whose soul had been wrung dry.
“Mishti…” His voice was a crack in the stillness.
I turned. “Hmm, Baba?”
He didn’t look at me. Just kept staring at the wall, the same water-stained patch above the old calendar we never flipped past April. “Do you hate me?”
The question gutted me. “What?”
His chest shuddered, and then he buried his face in his hands. “I am your father. I was supposed to protect you. Feed you. Keep wolves from your door.” He exhaled a dry, ragged breath. “But look at me. I can't even buy you a pair of sandals without asking someone else for money.”
I knelt in front of him, grabbing his hands, thin and dry like crumpled paper. “Stop it. You don’t get to say things like that.”
“I’m not a man anymore, Mishti,” he whispered. “I’m a dependent. A weight. Your stepmother’s brother feeds this house. Pays the electricity bill. Took loans in his name just so we could survive. He raised you people.And me?” He let out a bitter laugh. “I sit here, jobless, useless, unfeared. A shadow of a husband who can’t command even the smallest respect.”
His lips trembled.
“They didn’t even ask me, Mishti. No one asked me if my daughter should be married off to a man nearly twice her age. They just told me. Told me it was happening.” His eyes finally met mine—wet, bloodshot, broken. “And I let it happen.”
The room blurred for a second. My vision swam. I blinked back the tears because if I cried, he’d crumble.
“I’m sorry,” he choked. “I have failed you.”
“No,” I said fiercely. “Don’t you dare say that. You didn’t fail me. The world failed us. This cruel, greedy, spine-breaking world.”
“I should’ve died before seeing this,” he murmured, turning his face away. “At least then I wouldn’t have had to watch my daughter sacrifice her life to repay debts I never had the pride to refuse.”
