Khushi: Just another kid

To this five year old, it must have seemed like any other day. His middle class sikh family must have been up at daybreak…His mother in the kitchen, preparing breakfast…her son’s little uniform kept aside to be ironed. His father must have been sipping tea and his grandfather defying arthritic bones to take a cold shower for the morning prayer. Like any other child, Khushi would have hated this part of the day. Was it morning already? The noises must have woken him up, but, like any other child, he would have tried to pull the bed cover over his head, trying to snatch a few more winks. But then, his mother would have called out….No answer…she must have come and picked him out of the warm bed…That was then. Today, she must be wishing she hadn’t. Because for Khushi, the lessons in school that day would turn out to be the last of those he learnt like any other child.
In the split second that passed between Khushi entering his home after class and him being whisked away by desperate strangers…little Khushi learnt different lessons, those which are not meant for any other kid. For one, he learnt that school is not so bad…because he now learnt what Bad really meant. He also learnt that his father was not superman but just an ordinary man who could not hear him every time he called out loud. He learnt that his cries could not always make people fuss over him, feeding him whatever it was he fancied, or swathing him in more warm sweaters…He learnt that the demons he imagined lurked under his bed at night had come out in the day. Finally, Khushi learnt that he could be murdered….
Strangled with his own patka, his face smashed, blood clots under his eyes…His mother would throw a fit at the odd bruise he got after a fall. But this? So is that what it comes down to? Nine months of pregnancy, all those moments when she felt the little one moving in her belly, the countless sleepless nights after he was born, the joy when he turned over for the first time, then walked….the tears, the smiles, the little fights over food not eaten, the dreams….all strangled with a blue patka? For what? Four lakh rs? Is that what her little one was worth?