Pritam's Blog
Jealousy
I see the girl helping her mother cover the cart with a large sheet of plastic. The mother, our fruit-waali aunty, is having trouble with the plastic sheet, because of the Bangalore wind that has gone bonkers over the past couple of weeks.
The daughter, I think, almost looks like a young woman now. She resembles her mother. Being a resident of this locality for the past six years, I have literally seen her growing up. She used to help her father, who sold vegetables in another part of the locality, after her school got over.
She has two younger brother. I do not see them anywhere near. Busy studying at home, I guess, while she, being the oldest, is helping her mother. Also, why should she study, especially when there are two males in the family? They can’t afford the education of all three anyway.
I wonder if she was close to her father who died last year. Or was it the year before? I don’t remember. I just remember that he stopped showing up one day. I had noticed his absence but by the time I discovered he had passed away, six months had already passed.
I try to imagine how their lives have changed after her father’s death. The family’s income has become half now. Do they live in the same place as before? Or did they have to move to a smaller house, probably in a slum nearby?
The girl, I see from my balcony, finds it amusing that the wind is not letting the plastic sheet set over the cart. Her mother, probably irritated, throws the plastic sheet over the daughter. But next moment both of them starts laughing together.
They are happy. The girl looks happy and content with her life. She will go back home now and, I imagine, wake her brothers up who have fallen asleep while studying. They will have their dinner together, her brothers half asleep. Then all four of them will probably sleep together on the floor, over a mattress which do not have enough space for all of them, and which has holes at multiple places. Her legs will probably be on the cold surface of the floor. But she will sleep a peaceful sleep.
I come inside and I look at my digital devices, and tons of books, and sketching materials, scattered on my bed, all over the thick and comfortable mattress. I look at them and remember the times from not even a year ago when I couldn’t afford any of these things.
Yet I do not feel happy. I feel jealous of the girl whom I have seen growing up and who has known my existence.
“Another sleepless night to go,” the insomniac me thinks.
And I wish I could have exchanged at least one night of my life with her.