Sudatta Mukherjee: Daughter

Dear Dad, Yours loving Step-daughter

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Dear Dad,

I was 9 when I first met you. Mom married again. And your ex-wife passed away. I didn’t know what it meant to be a step-daughter. Whenever I heard anyone say, “She is the step-daughter,” I felt it meant the child who learns to live on the steps of her father. I wanted to and I tried to live my life on your foot-steps. I hope I was able to.

When I was 15, you taught what high-school meant. While mom was teaching me about menopause and sex, I was learning you and your life. I differentiated each and every guy I met with you. Like Miranda, for me you were the only man I knew, even though there were lots of them around me then.

When I turned 18, we started moving far away. I used to hear you and mom discuss about your new daughter. I felt cheated, I felt jealous. I felt murderous. I knew I was growing up, I was going through a phase but I needed you, to help me tackle the inner evil that was drifting me away from you. I couldn’t bear the pain of slow separation.

As I entered my 21^st birthday, you were there, smiling at me, with me, happy, cheering me up. But yet you were not there. I could feel myself separated from you. Like a just born child, cut off from the umbilical cord of the mother, I felt so, cutting away from you.

And then things started falling apart. I learnt what step-daughter meant. I did everything you asked me not to. I felt broken, shattered, and even guilty while doing everything that I promised I wouldn’t but hoping that my mistakes will make you rescue me.

A year later, we were in the same house. I lived my own life. You your own. Your nice little world. You, my mom and you and my mom’s daughter.

That night, I came late. Something happened. I don’t even remember. I just knocked on your door. I saw your eyes. You were hurt but it wasn’t I who did it. You were hurt for other reasons. I wanted you to tell me. You didn’t.

It’s now going to be a year. I miss you. I can’t remember your face, I can’t remember what were the things that we promised to do. I can’t even remember your birthday.

All I remember is the last words. It’s 1:50 AM. You were never my father. I was never your daughter. But we shared a bond. Unspoken. Beyond heart, soul, mind and blood.

I didn’t lose you, a year back. We lost ourselves. I miss you but things would have remained the same, had you been alive today. And I wish you were alive today to see that even in mistakes you are the only one I think about. And I will still follow your steps. Coz I am your step-daughter and you are my step-father.

Lovingly,

Your step-daughter.

I still follow your foot-steps.

The above letter is fictional and doesn't relate anyone in particular.

Women Are Complicated Coz' Society Made Them So

By Sudatta

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“A world clouded by conflict, hypocrisies of philandering men, impassioned strains of domestic life and the seething silences of women. The only solace in a woman's life is her children. The constant support of the children remains a touchstone in life until their own revelations sends her beliefs into a spin. Most stories are about broken household followed and accompanied by chasing happiness and restoring beauty to one’s life.”

This is an extract, edited and constructed in my own to present the story of most houses where violence is just a passing phenomenon. A woman’s life is about being born into a patriarchal society dominated by culture and ethics, growing up pleasing her parents and then getting married and bringing up her children to please her husband and her in-laws. Where growing up means compromising one’s own dreams to that of her parents’ and societies’ so-called manners, marriage is about adjusting. However not every women face such a life but most of them do.

A lot has been said, written, discussed and argued about the way women are treated. A lot of organizations have come up trying to help and aware not only women about their rights but the people too. But violence or the way women has been living cannot be eradicated unless women themselves want it to. It is this area where no one, one outer force can help. A person unwilling to be helped cannot be helped.

Let us put forward a small story of a woman who is respected in the society and been brought up in the most liberal way yet her married life is one secret and the daily emotional turmoil she faces.

She came from a well to do family and has been brought up in the most liberal way compared to other girls who grew up with her. She trusted her parents and their decisions to marry the man of their choice. Soon after she settled in her job, she was married off. Everything seem fine, two children were born until she discovered that her husband is one abuser and drunkard. He abused her emotionally for every failure be it about a small water leak in the kitchen or unable to pay the electricity bill. She was bashed up from first to last. Her children saw this. One grew up to leave the mother alone with the abusive father and the later stayed on trying to save the mother. However she refused to be helped. She said it is for what society will say she stayed on, it is for the betterment of the children and their future and lastly she chased happiness in small things and hoped of a better life like once it used to be before the children were born

The effect of such a house had its mark on the children too. The one child who left turned out to be like the father, adapting the ways of the abuser and for the younger one, it was like the mother, silence was the best weapon and adjusting and compromising to abuses, hoping that later the younger one will have a better life, away from this place.

However such has its effects on the future that can’t be changed. Such are women who give in to this abuses and violence in the name of ‘what society will say and for the better of the children. ’

That is not the end. Then there are women who treat women badly and inflict the same amount of pain which they had gone through once. It is the theory of “I have gone through it and now you will to, it is a ritual.”

I strongly believe women have no respect for women more than men. However not all; generalizing would not be right. There are women who treat their fellow sex in such a rowdy way those men who witness such feels disgusted and sick. And what about these children, daughters who are brought up in dysfunctional houses and grow up to treat both the parents in abusive way and daughters who hold the mother responsible for all the faults and blames that she hasn’t been able to bring them well and she failed to adjust.

Be it domestic or foreign, violence and abuses against women should be put end to. Even society treats women in a stereotyped way as if women were born to face such atrocities and if any women have any problem in their life it is because of her fault. Sometimes it is but not always.

Having written all this I would like to conclude, women who face such situations still and succumb to it have their own reasons. However this shouldn’t be the case. The future should learn from the mistakes and wrong doings of today to make sure they don’t the same life like their past. Some are affected while growing up in such unfit environment which takes a long time to disappear. But it is these from which they should learn and make sure they don’t provide such unhealthy future to their future.

P.S. This post is not only for Violence Against Women but for the young who should learn to make sure their future isn’t as regretting as they have witnessed. The future entirely depends on their own actions and decisions they make.

Sudatta Mukherjee

Dear Dad, Yours loving Step-daughter

Women Are Complicated Coz' Society Made Them So

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