#yqbaba#ShortStory
I couldn't hear the joyous clapping.The transgenders were called to bless me. I was blissfully asleep in my dad's arms. He was over the moon. At last he was the father of a baby boy born after three girls who were constantly harassed by him for their birth in a gender he abhorred. He was an abusive father and an even more abusive husband but my arrival changed all that. I was a pampered child with undivided attention from all at home. We lived in a huge crumbling house. Dad's business wasn't doing well, yet thankfully we never slept on an empty stomach. I was all of four years and very close to my three loving sisters who were not permitted to attend school after the third standard and were instead holed up at home, helping mom and probably waiting to be married off to anybody who would pay handsomely to marry them.
Me? Dad decided that after a few months I should be enrolled in a proper school. Mom had, all along, noticed something strange in me. I would enjoy wearing my sister's ill fitting clothes more than my own. I played more with dolls. I hated it when my hair was cut short. I would enjoy it when anyone mentioned that i looked like a girl. So many other physical abnormalities. I mean I was a boy but would pretend I was a girl. I had hardly been to school when dad pulled me out of it and warned me not to leave the house. He knew it, knew that I wasn't normal. My mom was trashed coz I was different. Dad even wanted to kill me. He would come home drunk and bang my head on the wall leaving me bleeding. Despite all this, mom was love incarnate. She and my three sisters kept me outa dad's way, bearing the brunt of his hate. We were not allowed to leave home. I, who was his pride, had now became a blot on the very same pride.
One day a group of transgenders arrived in our lane cheering for a newly born baby girl. I was peeping through the window. I don't know why but I felt one with them. I was eleven years old then. Suddenly I saw dad coming home, heavily drunk. He looked at my happy face, dragged me by the hair and threw me amidst them. My mom was sobbing uncontrollably. She was being brutally hit by dad. My three sisters were around her, and uncaring of dad's trashing directed at them, were screaming their lungs out, asking him to stop. The last I saw before the door closed on me was blood dripping on the floor. I too was crying hysterically, calling out for mom. The hijras pulled me to them. I had to go with them. All I could think of before I collapsed was the plight of my mom and sisters. Nothing else mattered not even the fact that I had perhaps found home and acceptance in a cruel world. Alas, I couldn't hear the joyous clapping.
#yostowrimo#MySameLineStory#chitstory
