Unfortunate Us

By Paridhi 

Bichchhal

My father has two wives
One, the mother of my steps’,
The other one gave me and my siblings a life.

His first wife had two children-
A daughter and a son,
Unfortunately, their son died.
For a heir of his wealth,
He made my mother his second wife.

In the beginning, everything was quiet and calm,
For my father’s behaviour towards my mother was warm.
She didn’t know her husband has another better-half,
People who knew about this would pity my mother, some would laugh.

When she came to know the truth,
She wanted to escape,
But my father’s love was now like a bait.
By that time, she was in his love’s grip,
She had to accept her destiny as it is.

My father’s loving and caring nature,
In my mother’s eyes created him a nice creature.
She worshipped him like a God,
And doing so, she never noticed anything odd.

In agony, my mother spent years,
Her life was in full gear.
She gave birth to three children,
Two elder daughters, and a younger son,
Not girls’, but a son’s birth gave my father a smile,
He got a heir and started treating him like a prince,
He did not dare to miss a chance to be delighted since.

As we grew up,
For my father, we all became a hiccup.
My mother got aware of his real feelings,
She became victim of all of his inhumane dealings.

He lost interest in my mother,
Tried finding happiness in others.
My mother defended herself,
Cried a lot and protested,
But my father got her arrested.

All our needs and wants
Were fulfilled by my mother,
As my father was busy in fulfilling others’.

Our childhood went by in violence,
We sometimes found ourselves out of tolerance.
We three are grown-ups now,
Don’t know to erase our miserable feelings how?

He had everything he ever wanted,
Then why he started to take all that for granted?
He never gave us a father’s love,
But our mother build us up as a dove.

My father never left his first wife,
He didn’t even let my mother thrive!
But no doubt my mother gave us a nice upbringing,
Taught us about simple living and high thinking.

Though no matter where we go,
What we do, what our lives have turned out to be,
We have this fear, pain, and hollowness,
We are lost, scared, broken and have lost our glee.

In the end, I just want to say-
One should not have two wives,
Except for one, should not devote his life.