vacuum

It is a silent afternoon .Life seems to be sitting mute .Far somewhere some bicycle bell rings. It sounds muffled. Manu peers through the window. The sharpness of the sun blazes around and creates a glare to the eye . She feels like lazing around but there is a heaviness of the heart which stops her from experiencing the mood of the moment. Her brain is stuck fixedly on one person who incidently is her mother . As a small child she had a different picture of this person. She was the epitome of good reason and motherly instinct. Manu's father was a despot supposedly who was intent only upon torturing her mother who like an innocent lamb gave in to his brutal ways. Manu and her sisters were given to understand that she was under constant persecution and suffered quietly. Their only wish was to save their mother from the clutches of this brute.Their psyche got affected. This was reflected by their general demeanour. They always received curious looks which made them self – conscious.

Destiny was playing a strange game with them. They were pawns in the hands of a psycho who was suffering from persecution complex. She was the were-wolf who was unconsciously feeding on the sympathy of her gullible children .No body knew that she was sucking the soul out of them. She fattened and luxuriated at the torture of her small children. Their father had already become a silent victim of her mental abberations.But life went on riding on intense and rampant delusions. The children were distraught and felt helpless. They wanted to avenge the wrongs meted to their mother while the situation became intolerable at home. Manu suffered the wastefulness of her efforts to make her mother understand the dangerous repurcussions of her weird behaviour .she told her that her own children were mortified because of her soul wrenching conduct. She did not understand what she was doing. Her only aim was to create an atmosphere of gloom and fear.Manu felt terror creeping all over her when her father and mother entered into a conversation. A simple enquiry would take the form of a volatile outburst on the part of her father .He seemed to be living on edge.this became their destiny. Sadly the youngest sibling got sucked into her machinations. She got deluded and thought that she was her saviour.

It is 3.50 A.M and manu is awake. . It is absolutely quiet at the moment.The wall clock is ticking away at full throat.It is being matched by the regular snoring of her husband. Manu looks at him .His face is twisted .His upper nostril is flared up.It is fuming and frothing which is joined by the quivering movements of his drooping lips.His forehead is intensely knit.Inbetween he is neighing with jerks giving out sounds of varying wavelenghts. Manu gets a strong urge to hoot him and imitate him in order to get rid of his annoying sounds. But then she restrains herself because she does not want to let loose a demon in the house who will further be joined by the similar little jerk in the family her daughter who is a smaller version of her father. She rested her breath ,put off the light and dunked her head into the blanket waiting for the dawn when she will hit her morning cup of tea and the staple newspaper till then adieu.