The Ultimate Loss, a Short Story

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The Ultimate Loss In time we are both winners and losers, but who are we to tell when. We, humans are mere insignificant beings in this ruthless and the venomous world where no one but time rules. It was then, when I least expected time to be in one of its destructive moods that I went up to my father pronouncing the most dreaded statement by parents even today. The expression on my father’s face brought back the long gone sense of guilt, but then I asked myself if I should be guilty at all. I had walked on the narrow path a woman has to take in this dreadful patriarchal world, proved myself to the world but then, I was again standing in front of a man, being judged by societal parameters and through the long deafening silence, I could hear myself being accused of being a sinner. Suddenly, the silence was broken, not by word, but rather the thundering voice with which father fell to the ground. I, for a moment was paralyzed, I could see my mother running towards him, shocked and horrified. Lamo got herself to get to the phone and call the hospital and within a moment’s time, I found the whole family together in the car, something that could only happen in this unordinary situation. Isn’t this what families are for, to be there at the moment of crisis? Why then did I find myself completely alienated by my family when I needed them the most? Dad woke up in the hospital bed but not for me because that was the last time I ever saw him. Mother was devastated in her shame of having mothered a child like me. Unable to leave her husband’s bed she too never saw the face, the beauty she might have treasured had she come into the world through wedlock. Lamo never judged me; she was, in fact, the only one present she entered the world crying, which I thought was not normal, but then I sensed that she was devastated at the loss of her grandparents even before she was born.

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