Let This Be A Dream

Rani was gleefully, blissfully running through the streets. She couldn't wait to get back home and eat sweets. She had bunked her last Mathematics class because she couldn't control her excitement. All her cousins had come from far and wide - to attend her wedding. Her mother had told her she will get to wear the prettiest lehnga and Bangles. And she will have someone to play with, all the time. New school, new dresses, new earrings - it can't get any better. She reached home and literally bashed through the door. For a split second, she stopped dead in her path. Two large, scary looking men were sitting with her father, looking serious. A bag exchanged hands, no words were spoken. Her father looked gloomy, but looked up to see her face and forced a tired smile. Signaling Rani to come near, he asked her to greet them by touching their feet. Rani bent her body and when she looked up, she saw their faces becoming distorted and evil laughs in the background.

The car jolted to a halt and she was jerked back from her dream. She was resting her head on her 38- year old husband's shoulder, who asked her to go inside the house. There were two women who showed her to a room, very different from the celebrations she had just experienced. She felt sleepy but was trying to remember what her mother had told just before leaving. Rani spotted a watercolor set in the corner table of the room and decided to paint a picture of her marriage pandal. She found a paper and sat on the white bed, thinking how much she'd get into trouble and how her mother would scold if the colours fell on the bed. She doesn't have to worry about that anymore, she thought and giggled to herself. She was halfway through with her painting when the door opened with a thud. In came her husband, smelling of liquor, shouting, "Where's my 5 lakh rupees? Your father didn't deliver and now the daughter has to suffer." Rani couldn't understand what he was rambling and was shocked when a slap landed on her face out of nowhere. She fell on the bed hurt, tears streaming, felt her clothes getting torn. The white, crisp bedsheet started turning crimson and slowly started staining her painting. She wanted to shout but wasn't able to form words. All she could think was how her mother would shout for ruining the bed.