A portrait of an evergreen father : A Short Story

My father has not spoken with us for a very long time. I thought he were angry with everybody. Perhaps, I have done some mistakes in summation. Perhaps, my mother has yet again wriggled her loss of hair in the comb. Perhaps my sister has planned to make arrangements for a picnic just before her final examination. Perhaps many more known reasons and many more unknown ones have stuck him to silence. Still, if father seems to be unlike father, or if father is disposed of fatherhood – no child will let herself or himself put up with it, and out of intolerance, she or he will cry in slow pain. A tinge in the heart, a very slow influx of brine waters over eyes, a change in the mood, a stolen glance at his stolid physique.

Whatever it was, I thought to remain unmindful till he himself breaks the ice. I would carry on with my everyday deeds and help others except my father run along the beach of life. He will, I bet, learn a lesson then!

My mother has become appallingly submissive. She tries to smile away days as before. She goes to market, enjoys plucking flowers, disappears into her tea-stall and serves me a hot cup of coffee. Oh! What a piece of mother is my mother! She loves me, and fires at me at times. She often weeps at my father, I better say, her husband, to showcase a problem. She begins to wipe a day's mischief with her scrubber. She remains active with her motionless eyes, remains passive with her hands in motion.

My sis, my gentle ma-ma-maniac sister, often wins a seat of honour in my mother's lap and attains undue advantages. She fondles, mollycoddles, and puts all blame on me for her newly lost tooth. My mother also pampers her, “Then, curse heavily so that your brother can't find his toothbrush from tomorrow morning!” A relentless cursing accrues to her.

Still my father remains unmoved. A piston inside me lifts my emotions. When my heart loses breaths of hope, I spin my impulsive magic wand around my mind and begins to think something like...

the world has no magic... the world itself is a magic... it's the beach of life... sands of which I'm involved to drive... so that life becomes roughnessless... as smooth as a conch's skin... as smooth as my father's portrait...

I get rid of my stupor and turn up more close to the soil of hopeful realization that my father has died. I have to accept death as a magic potion of life. It's my father, who died and look! perfected one last job even after death. The good old father has left for all of us the uncapped bottle of hair oil, his scoldings over our going wrong, and... and of course, one last thing, one last major thing,

– a silent combustion.