Painful Existence !

This is a story of a mother and two children. The mother, when she was a young woman of twenty-two or twenty three wed a man of around twenty-eight who was earning his livelihood as a purohit (priest). Her father too was in the business of purohitya, and in modern times when people's interest in things religious has been on a steady decline especially in cities like Bangalore, he could barely provide for the family and they lived a somewhat lower-middle class life. The father was anxious to get his daughter married off, and despite the fact that she was quite attractive, she could manage to get only another impoverished purohit as an alliance.

Some months into marriage, the young woman found the economic circumstances too straitened and, in addition, she found her husband to be too miserly. The food was scanty and to compound things the husband used to physically abuse his wife and would clobber her black and blue. But Indian women being what they are, tolerated all the physical violence and in a matter of four years she bore him two children.

As time progressed the abuse became more and more intolerable and the husband would strike the children too. Things deteriorated economically and when the woman found that she could no more tolerate the physical violence being rained on her, she quietly abandoned the husband and left her two children too to be looked after by the husband.

She ran away alone as she was not even sure where she would be going. She found a kindly family that sheltered her, and over a period of time, found a job that did not pay too well but was adequate for supporting herself.

One day as she was traversing through the city and had halted at a traffic light, she was suddenly accosted by her two children aged five and seven who had jumped out of an autorickshaw they were travelling in with their father and came to her expectantly and called out "Amma!! ...  Amma!!"

The woman saw her husband in the autorickshaw and due to the terrible fear that the children would receive a walloping from the father, ignored her two children and vanished in the traffic.

I only wish life doesn't give such deals to people and children!