ROOTS AND THE PAINTED SCENE

                                ROOTS AND THE PAINTED SCENE

It was a dark stormy night. Windows creaked and dashed against each other violently .Beside me, in that little piece of land mother earth had spared, I laid my little property, my newly born son. He cried. And i cried too. sobbing silently ..as I looked at  the moonlit  night. Pictures of my dark life kept coming to me. Misfortune and ill-luck.. people say is just part and parcel of human life …but  I was born with it. My birth took place in a very poor family. I also happened to lose my parents at a very early age.. My kith and kin always isolated me.I was treated as an untouchable.. I would sit in the lush green meadows and wonder why… until that day when I looked at my face in the mirror…terribly disfigured wrinkled with patches all over..i went from mirror to mirror. washed my face it would nt go!!I was ridiculed and sneered at, everywhere I went..

…I started to hate my own self. what more! My aunts  pushed me into marriage with a crippled man and  thus  started my new life, hoping against hopes that  things will get better.To my surprise  it actually did.. First few months of married life was heaven. It was as if  the rain gods blessed the barren lands with heavy downpour....Arthur was  magical  .he  loved me for what I was and not what I looked like.. very serious and  honest-both in love and work, we found happiness in each other’s company in our little hut by the sea. We spoke less but felt more close to each other by the day..  We worked very very hard in the factory but it all seemed so easy in his company.. then came the big tide which devastated our lives. Some miscreants in the factory where Arthur and me were employed despised Arthur ‘s blunt honesty, innocence and his utmost dedication to work and accused him of murdering a fellow worker who had actually died due to a major fault in the machinery..and we didn’t have enough funds  to find a lawyer and  fight back ..the evil society again picked on us. Our friends too turned against us...alas! who ever liked the ugly-crippled pair…we were subject to cruel ridicules and humiliations. Arthur was sentenced for life and was sent to prison…I still remember that day.. when  he hung his head low and walked innocently; his hands were chained… I could hear voices; the masses  hurling abuses on him... some of them hit me like poisoned arrows. I was pregnant then. He walked meekly towards me. and whispered “take care” and left..
Days later  I delivered a baby boy and the very same day  people said Arthur died in prison due to prolonged illness. The burden on my shoulders now  loomed large and I took the baby in my hands.. kissed him and said..”your father is no more” looked at him with tears flooding my eyes…droplets falling on his tender palms..sadness encompassed my world..i had learnt to live in solitude in melancholy;lamenting..a sense of self sympathy  kept me going..it was a part of my life to cry and feel sorry for myself.. I liked to dwell in my own sad  world with memories only ghory and grave.i looked at him again and  he gave a wide toothless grin.. I was taken aback!why is he smiling??!!it was nt part of my life ..i was quite shocked..

Years rolled by…with the meagre salary I earned I sent him to a nearby town school. much to my surprise he didn’t grow up to be the typical responsible son of a poor lady. His interests were unusual.  He never took a liking to academics which angered me the most..The little boys told me that he was always in the town hall watching hilarious plays. Anything funny appealed to him. He was well behaved no doubt, but it was his attitude that came as a terrible shock  to me. He was absolutely nonchalant happy-go-lucky , joking around  all the time. He would enact to his friends how the frail looking comedian slipped n tripped on an old lady which according to me is  the cruelest thing anyone would do.. “is this even remotely  entertaining?!!” I would shout at him and shoo his little fans away” One day at my  wits end.  I  told him sternly.” life is all about hardships and struggle….and you are born to serious people. learn to take life seriously… feel the pain we went through like our son.. you came from us.. how could you be this?? you have to take the family’s  responsibilities very soon on you so study hard there is nothing to feel excited and delighted about.. I made him sit next to me and started to say for the nth time… “I was hardly four when I lost my mother… recited to him the stories of how the  ugly lady married  a crippled man.. n how the bad  society treated them,,but half way through my painful story he protested. “I don’t want more of this”.. and  when I continued not heeding to his protest he started miming me…”his face went exactly the way my  face and expressions would go.. he said making his voice sound feminine and mature…”your dad  was being tortured in the prison daily I could nt bear to  see all that” and he pretented to sob like how I would in between shrieks. Then he laughed kept laughing and  cared to stop only seeing me cry. I din say anything to him… I suddenly felt he was not mine.

He was living a fictitious life full of outward amusement and artificiality. Trying to conceal the hard facts of life…I loathed it. I took efforts to get him out of the web he was into…I would read sad stories and plays to him. I even told him the story of oliver twist ..but he would find something funny in that too and crack jokes which would upset me even more..it looked to me as though an alien had invaded  my planet; my world of struggle and sorrow!
Being serious about anything was something beyond him…but I found it difficult on most occasions to be harsh with him as, if I was still alive, it was for him .
Years rolled by. One fine day he compelled me into watching a play staged by the then very popular theatre group “ the witty wagon”. He made me sit in the first row and vanished in no time…
When the screens drew apart…I almost swooned.. I saw my son there right in front of me and more than hundreds of them in the audience. The icing on the cake was in the play they were trying to make fun of an ugly lady  who looked almost liked me … an inexplicable feeling crept onto me..Was it anger, irritation?pain ?agony? I could nt say but .. could feel my  moist eyes. and  could ‘nt  stand seeing my son doing that any longer. I immediately left…

After that day  I Never attended any of his other plays despite him pleading and persuading. I still had not recovered from the shock… greatly disappointed I was.
Years later we moved to a bigger house. Very big it was infact..Our mailbox always full  with fan mails. He told me one day that he was going to act in a movie.. but I evinced no interest in his progress as an actor or comedian.. I was mute to everything..

On one particular afternoon a group of people from the press came home and  said they had come to meet me.... One of them  said “your son has said he drew inspiration from you. Can you tell us your exact reactions when you first saw young Philip on the stage.???”.i became speechless…I had always wanted to share my life stories with people .and felt consoled when they understood what I went through and thought I was an iron lady who battled life and  is still surviving against all odds. But I never thought I would live to answer a question as complicated as this…will the world ever celebrate a mother who was unhappy at her son’s debut performance…I thought for a while and lied. “I was happy”
As expected the interview with me didn’t last for long. I didn’t know the name of his first play..his current movie project.. or his costar … they felt odd  “very unlike celebrity mothers you are” they commented and left.

All life has given to me is grief, misery and sorrow. Life is not about living in a mansion with fans all over. Life is a big gamble..It is not A FAIRY TALE like how my son imagines. Living in the false arms of success and fame he forgets to think of the bygone days.. the  struggle story of an ugly lady married to a  crippled man! Thinking aloud I looked out of the window it was a moonless night…