Love is Blind
Aunt wanted to listen to this popular song from the movie Piyasa, her favorite song. Sitting at her feet and singing the song, Vandana's mind went back to the time when she and her aunt lived in the same quarters of Assam Oil. Thinking about those days still fills my heart to the brim, and then I feel nostalgic. My mother had a small singing school there, and all the children from the neighborhood used to come to learn singing. Most of them were the children of the staff, and Vandana first started playing the harmonium on the lap of those sisters. My mother, a Sylhet woman from Silchar, had singing in her blood, and she sang folk songs very well. There was a lot of singing in my mother's family, but my mother's youngest sister, her younger aunt, had to hear a lot of things said about her for knowing how to sing at her in-laws' house! Her mother-in-law also gave her the nickname "Baiji's daughter from the house of Baiji". She had seen the little aunt crying while hugging her mother, and had heard that the railway officer in Lamding had not even let her go to her husband. The girl who knew Somatta's songs would be left alone in the quarters, what would happen...what would happen to her? Finally, her mother-in-law was happy that the little aunt's forehead was not a 'girl' but a 'boy', and with the efforts of some family members, the man got permission to stay with her husband. That incident when Vandana was a teenager had made her mind so sensitive about so many relationships that it is impossible to tell! She would have to carry the poisonous consequences of it for the rest of her life!
