Social Malady

Her name is Moyna, the talkative bird. She flutters her colourful wings in a polka-dotted frock soaring high in smiles and swooping down in imagination. I often think of her. Her mother sent her for washing dishes. She brings sunflowers and I struggle to teach her a few Bengali alphabets. She should know the art of signature at least, I ponder. M O Y N A, the letters gradually unfold like a rally of ants as she follows the curved lines diligently on a black slate. Her sister Tuki eloped with a boy who threatened her mother that he would sell her in exchange of five thousand rupees. The rescued girl was married to a rickshaw puller who demanded a cycle and a gold chain in dowry. Soon she was beaten and bundled back with two infant daughters in subsequent years. Now Tuki is thinking of resuming her old profession as a domestic help to feed her little birds. Their mother Khanto is saving money for Moyna’s marriage, even though I advised her to make a fixed deposit in the bank for her future. She fumes ‘marriage is not possible without financial transaction’. Moyna now wears a salwar kameez with a dupatta pinned cautiously, hiding her modesty. She has become a good girl to be married off. She does not talk much.