"Problems are same but attitude is different!" thought Harish. Fumbled on the stony red bricked road, though the copious night rain has made the road muddy and made everything mean to impossible for the eyes penetrate.

"Harish, 'Problems are same but attitude is different!' always remember" the last words of his saintly mother.

It's not the end of the world. Thought Harish to him. He  must mend the gully plug before the river water breaks into the field and damage the already rain soaked crops. Crops. The only source of their meager income. A family of seven feels like of fifty. His abusive drug addicted father represents the forty five out of fifty. Harish’s father abused his mother to death.

Harish. A teenage at twelve. Responsibilities like a thirty. He had to take up what his father denied. His father with no sense, no family planning, no income as such, banged his mother every night after getting drunk, high on weed. His mother didn't complain for she knew what would happen if she did. Her place would be occupied by her then nine year old son.

Thoughts of his mother made him feel forsaken. But she was the only strength he had amidst this chaos and imbalance. Every night since his mother passed away were night mare, only difference they actually happens to him every night. His mother was right; her place would be occupied; only exception was that it was not occupied by Harish but his nine year old younger sister.

Harish tried stopping their father from 'having sex' with Suhas. But Harish couldn't defend the first couple of nights. He was terrified. And then an idea came into existence. Harish starting working day and night, selling crops, goat milk and more. His daily earning was very little but it managed to buy his father two bottles of country liquor, amount of cannabis and sleeping pills of meager dose. His earning defended his sisters from the tyranny of their father.

Food. What about food? How can seven people survive on the food of one that too for one half of the day. Harish used to beg for food at doorstep of every single people slightly better condition than them. Many gave and many gave away. He struggled to manage food for one, how can he bring for six. Gradually the youngest of all died due to malnutrition. Harish ran to the nearest health center 5 kilometers from there, on his bare foot, his sister on his back. But in vain. She was already dead.

He still didn't stop from defending his sister. He knew what would happen if not for the sleeping pills. And one day he thought the money is needed and he gave up. No. Not as brother but himself. He sacrificed his 'virginity' to his father. Every night, three hundred sixty five days.

Every time his father penis penetrated his anus causing immense pain, he thought. The portrait of his mother came waving in front of his eyes. He thought how she endured such pain. How? Every Shivratri, his mother used to fast for whom? For the malicious pain infecting monster! Gradually the pain vanished. Numbness.

And the final 'act of god'. That night the penis couldn't penetrate. It stopped. His father died. Harish's sister poured a vial of rat killer into his father's drink, which she borrowed from the neighbor’s house rather stole it.

The fire that went up to the sky made him think where they would go now.

Is there any place where this' never ending; darkness ends. Is there any place where we can find light. Where north winds will come bringing the messages from the sky. Where there will be no epistle between two about stopping. Where we won't have a place just a path, a never ending path towards fulfillment of dreams. No sorrows, where finding happiness is not a mammoth task. Nobody has to sit alone and brood over the reasons to live. Does such place exist?

He saw his mother walking up to pyre of his father, he yelled, shouted. Tried to stop. But siblings drew him back, “MA!!! MA! MAAAAAA!!". 'Harish problems are all same……..but attitude are different! The place which is known for the foot of Goddess of Kali, lowland named after her, literally meaning the land beneath her feet. KALIKATA.

Harish Go! Go away from this mouth of abyss! Don't slip into it!'

Harish and his siblings. To kalikata.

Do not cry my friend, sing the song of breaking rules. At the end the song, you will find dawn of a newly attained freedom and ecstasy. One swarm of freedom flies that were abandoned from flying will touch the sky and attain life.

Will kalikata welcome her sons and daughter and allow them at metropolitan Kolkata and intercede their dream?

 

Irabati.