THE UNWANTED

CHAPTER 1

"It's a girl", sighed Lachmi's husband Gangu when he heard the child cry. He and his friend sat on the verandah of his semi-built house in the rustic village of Shamli in Himachal Pradesh. Inside, the midwife was attending to his wife by assisting her in giving birth to a child. Gangu took a long puff of his bidi and threw it away in disgust. After sometime the midwife came out from the room and placed the child who had recovered a bit from the birth in the arms of Gangu. He uncovered the tiny form to find a beautiful, strong, but quite plain, a girl's body.

Gangu turned away his face, the tears came, tears of weakness and disappointment. And then came the shrieking voice of the little girl's grandma......"Give me the shovel and I will go and bury her in the jungle nearby." She was a witness to her son's face which was heavy with fallen hope.

"Wrap her in an old cloth and lay her face down on the floor. What does she bring to the family except a dowry debt?"

The fact is, the man who had begotten her didn't want her. In his eyes she should never have been born, and perhaps that would have been the best. As it was, the little child's existence had proven to be nothing more than a nuisance for everyone. She had angered her father, brought strife upon her mother and that too....all by simply being.

She was named Tara.

Gradually Tara started growing up with the years that floated by and deep down behind those hostile eyes was a little girl who had learnt that life really isn't much fun for anybody; and the best way to avoid further rejection was to make herself as objectionable as possible. She was a very lonely child who was starved of affection and love and for her it wasn't okay to ask for it because her childlike thoughts told her that there must be something which she had done which meant that she didn't deserve it.

In time she reached the threshold of youth, but couldn't cross the despair of adolescence. Oblivious of the possibilities of life a girl goes through, her journey of disarray, in the itinerary of the past chasing the mirages of melody even amidst the sands of hope...and that despaired her forever.

After a year her brother was born and there was jubilation all night. People, especially her father danced to the beats of the drums, fully intoxicated. With the passage of time it was becoming hard for Tara (who was going to be in the start of the teens) to live in an environment where she was reminded constantly that her existence just happened to be there.....that she wasn't meant to be there. But she never accepted the stereotype that boys are more important than girls as this thought often led to certain discomfort. She always had this in her confused brain that she was no less than anyone around her, but there was always an uncomfortable feeling that she wasn't seen as she wanted herself to be seen as. She always mumbled herself, "We girls feel as human as a boy, and we are no different. I too have the same flesh and blood and my challenges are also the same." And these thoughts sometimes made her feel a sense of anger and deep pain rippling through her. How could her folks treat her so brutally? The wounds of "not worth it" ran within her and slowly the awareness of how the feeling "unwanted" started manifesting itself physically, emotionally, psychologically and even spiritually. This big gaping hole invaded her life.

The teenage years were very unstable. She was often severely depressed, had mood swings, was extremely withdrawn and barely said a word to anyone. She got involved in various reckless, impulsive and self destructive things.

When one goes through a lot in life on builds a wall and tries to avoid emotions and reality of a real life. Every moment she felt lost and unloved. Sometimes she just hated herself and felt worthless. Folks at home or the people around her judged her of so much anger in her and when they judged her, her soul used to cry because she couldn't tell them what was killing her inside.