3
‘Yes, I do. Don’t tell lie….Now, do you have a penny in your pocket? How were you going to buy that surprise thing for me?’
‘You don’t understand…on hire purchase…I…I’ll repay’.
‘Wonderful! A marriage gift for your wife on hire purchase? Funny it is, isn’t it? And then how many people will you repay? Have you left anything to sell yet?….Better you buy some poison for us on hire purchase that we will repay with our lives for sure. Can you?’
He squatted on the sandy ground and began to hit the pebbly ground ruthlessly without caring for his hands. He remembered the beautiful gifts he would buy her on this special day.
‘No..no I can’t…No….I…I….can’t…..I can’t….can’t…..can’t….’, he broke down and sat on the floor. Then he spoke again, ‘I am felon. Still, you don’t know how much I love you two. I can do anything for you…can do nothing without you…nothing’.
He was wheezing through his nose violently.
Then, suddenly, he attacked the boat. Now he began to hit the boat in bare hands. His hands bled, he could break his hands. But he was out of his mind. He was getting too cruel of himself. He went hitting the hard wooden body of the boat forcefully.
‘Either you or I. Today, only one has to pay’, he shouted, ‘or both have to die’.
This time we heard him.
Hands were going to be smashed for sure, then ‘water nymph’ stained in the blood of his hands.
He stopped altogether. Despair to blame. He forgot he had been hitting the lovely name he had so caressingly given to his lovely little daughter.
He called her ‘water nymph’. And, the little girl ran swiftly to her father. He drew her up, high up in the sky. The mirth and joy were there, and the lovely little smiling face gave him all the bliss a father always dreamed only to be his.
The father stopped hitting the boat and sat down crying. His uncouth, bloody palms tried to hide his teary face between them.
He was pitiable among the fathers.
He tried to gain control over himself, stood up. ‘What am I doing? My little baby? My ‘water nymph’?
Then he got his senses back, yet to shake off the madness about the sea. He unmindfully began to wrap a long, thin piece of cloth round his injured hands while speaking gibberish.
‘I must do it…..I must do it…..I have to…..I must…’ he said to himself.
