Tale of a Manipuri Boy - Episode 2

Ambica

“What happened?”

“Did your father beat your mother again?”

A nodding gesture was enough to tell her the whole story. I wondered how she knew all these things before I tell her, perhaps the dusty cracked floor and the wet mark made by my mother's peeing on it summarized everything. A woman in her early 40s, tall and hardworking, a renowned teacher throughout the town, what's she doing at such age at home unmarried? This will always be the only question that hits everyone's mind when they see her. What's behind, nobody cares. It's only when I graduated and started to earn a little, I felt what a person feels when he is not backed up by anyone, not even his family. Ambica is her name and she has had a hard life as long as I remember and was told.

Ambica is the second sister to my father, a teacher, a mentor to all, well-known for her abilities and bold attitude. My childhood, my primary and middle schooling all happened under her watchful eyes which made sure that I stood on top of others and never did I let her down until that incident happened. The incident for which I get the better of being a pervert and this happened during my high school days. Yes, I was expelled from the boarding school in which I studied since the sixth standard and I was in my tenth class then.

After knowing what I have done, she took me in her room, dark and I stood behind the wooden cupboard which my grandpa left in which she store things left by grandma and grandpa and made my ears bleed. She, with tears in her eyes started,

“Do you know what you have done to yourself?”

I whispered not a word for I know I was wrong. I looked down on the damp floor of her room wanting to get over the conversation in which she was the only speaker and I the listener.

“The way you are brought up and the way we did has a sky-earth difference”

I looked up at her this time only to notice that she was staring in blank space with her thin hair falling over her left shoulder and I recalled her narrating me a part of her life wherein she was a whisker close to death.