Hope

Birth

Child birth is the greatest gift given by humanity to any loving parents. The day I was born, was also one of those days. My parents were very happy, everyone celebrated a new life. While some thought it would've been better if I were a boy but they sucked it up and accepted the reality.

Allow me to walk you through a detailed version of my family's situation, complexity and flaws.

My grandfather is a very proud man. He takes honour in the way of his life and never tires himself from boasting about it. He went to the USA on a scholarship in the 60s where even sitting in a plane was a dream for many and pursued his higher studies from a well renowned Ivy League school. He got married at the age of 18, or that's what he claims, and by the time he left for USA, he already had four kids. My grandmother on the other hand only knew how to produce kids and cook food in the kitchen and be a good wife by staying silent and abiding by whatever her man pleased in the world of male dominance and misogyny. She passed away while her husband was off on his own adventure, building a life for himself and I doubt that he felt sad about it because he remarried very soon after that.

Now the woman that he married, was none other than his first cousin, that is, his maternal uncle's daughter. Naturally, everyone was against this but he never really cared about what the world had to say about his lifestyle and started living a blissful life with his new wife, a woman of his choice, and not like the previous one who was forced upon him by his father.

Everything was going smoothly in their new home until one day he received a letter from his dad, reminding him that he had forgotten about his other four children and that if he fails to take care of them, then he'll send them to an orphanage because he wasn't financially or physically capable of taking care of those four poor children anymore. Before he could resist or his beautiful, young wife could throw a fit, the children were already on their way to his house, a new city, a new mother, a new family. They might have hoped for a better life as they were moving from a small village to a big metropolitan city. They might have hoped for all the luxuries, education and services that a city life had to offer but little did they know that only terror, hardship and a life of sheer insults and failure was waiting for them.

Among these four children was the eldest sister, a brother and then two younger sisters. Being the only brother, he had to take up the role of a father, a leader and a mentor for his other sisters because his own father has clearly failed him.

The new mother was terrified as she had not signed up for this. She thought that she had married a widowed man who was somewhat well to do and never cared about his children, so they can lead a happy merry life ahead, but to her horror, she'd now become a mother of 5, yes you read that right, as she herself was expecting a baby. And in this complex scenario, the eldest daughter was only 10 years younger than her, so how could she have been a motherly figure to such kids who were almost her sibling's age in the first place?

Only time would tell...

I am Amaira Khanna, and this is my story.