The Poor in the Cursed Age

Описание: The Poor in the Cursed Age

Saran Rai

Life is an amalgam of trifles. Joys and sorrows of life hang on the petty events. However, when we are deprived of even the trifles, we are, and will be, distressed. Life is to, with the feeling of pain, do day-to-day chores, be seemingly engaged in one thing or the other and get the mixed taste of joys and sorrows by hoping for the settled future. In the course of living the life, we are disheartened, and there is a sea of sorrows when our kith and kin fail to understand us. Sometimes, we feel as if our heart bursts out. We feel as though we tear the chest open and chop the liver into thousands of pieces. Nearest and dearest are the ones who hurt our feelings. The closer they are, the more pain they inflict on you. It is the nearest people who cause intolerable pain in you. If all the people toed your line, everything would be in order. However, the time is cursed. We are helpless. What can we do to bring the situation back in track? As I am not a man with supernatural power, I cannot do whatever I want. I am an ordinary man. I am like a leaf that flows down with the current of time. All the more, I can't stand the way my beloved Sushila can't understand this situation.
"You did nothing in your life. You can't do anything either," she took me to task for no apparent reason.
Her attack of words is more severe than the bomb that rips through your heart. Am I dispirited, destitute, meaningless, cowardice and dead? Is my life redundant? What have I done for whom? I worked day in day out like a beast of burden for my wife, children and family in the prime days of my life. I am going to be old as more than half of my age has passed, with hair growing grey. Teeth have started to fall off and I am getting weaker by the day. For whom have I fritter away my beautiful youth? Who did I use my valor, physical strength, wisdom and power for? What made me so miserable now? If I had used all these means for myself, what could not I have been?
I vent on ire when my own Sushila belittles me. I feel as if each of my activities is rendered incomplete by her insulting remarks. It seems as though the rice in a bronze cooking pot remains uncooked because water in the pot boils over and puts out the fire. I recount over three decades of my marital life with her. The pages have turned. I critically examine all the events of my days.
The years have flown so fast. I feel it was yesterday when I got spliced with Sushila. Her physical beauty had prompted me to marry her. I would have to marry any girl in the world. So, I don’t regret tying the knot with her. I cannot count how many times she wounded and got me down by hurling insulting remarks at me and gave a kick in the teeth. On my part, too, like a wounded lion, I hurled abusive words at her countless of times to hurt her and I made her cry. We were mired in a verbal war almost every day and night. In the beginning, her sarcastic taunt would make me toss in the bed like a fish out of water. I thought I would go mad or leave home for good or become a saint. As time went by, I mustered strength to cope with her unpleasant remarks and meanness. I withstood her meanness on my own. I am using the measures until today.
Many a time, I had thought of resorting to divorce so as to get rid of her uncouth manners. One day, I had threatened her 'to divorce and live apart'. "Return to me my youth first; then I will split up with you. You have exploited my beauty and youth, and now you are threatening to give me a divorce," she shouted at me aggressively. I admitted defeat reconciliation as I love reconciliation. Though her win in the row was painful to me, the more intense the exchange of barbs, the happier the feeling of being husband and wife.
Mostly, the reconciliation would be in the dead hour of night. Next morning, our conjugal life would become sweeter. It looked as if a dusty mirror has been rubbed spotlessly clean the next morning. Consequently, I have a family where sons are unruly, daughters-in-law are uncultured and grandchildren are rude. I have not got a chance to unload the burden of the family responsibility and take a back seat. I even cannot see the prospect of the hand-over as long as I am alive.
All the people carrying out the obligations of domestic life are cursed like Sisyphus. The prime days of life flit while clambering up to the top of the mountain of life and sliding down, and up and down again, as they must manage money for salt, oil, loan, interest, land revenue, water revenue, electricity bill, tax, telephone charge, installments etc. We are perplexed when the chances of getting released from the household chores in the old age are nowhere in sight.
"Why could not I do anything? Why have not I been successful like others?"
These questions make my heart heavy. I could never be extraordinary, crafty and canny. Filled with honesty, faiths and principles, I could not trespass certain norms.
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