Emotion and Compassion

Emotion and compassion

P K Routray

Without grace

with wrinkles on her face,

beauty mutilated by pox marks,

gaits constrained due to hard works,

bent walked she not because of age

but because of misfortune and its rage.

A frightening figure to my child’s eye

because of my elders’ blatant lie,

as the lady was introduce to me by my elders as a witch

sucking the blood from healthy people under the cover of darkness like a leech.

She was a witch to many grownups also who sucks blood at night

the strongest among men has to surrender as her he cannot fight.

With this impression I looked at her out of fear psychosis with disdain

my childhood mischief troubling my family, because of her did wane.

But when I grew up and discovered inquisitively her real story

shocked was I and overwhelmed with compassion for her untold misery.

When she was born, to her ill luck within few days she lost her father

nourished and brought up in wants and poverty by her toiling mother.

As per tradition she was given in an early marriage

leaving her mother she came to husband’s village.

But there also she lost her husband by an epidemic

she was a bad omen to society thus said many an idle gossiping village critic.

Surviving lethal small pox and tolerating all criticisms and tortures of life

She lost her emotion and her tears dried up in her attempt to survive.

She was looked upon down in her in-laws house

given lowly works with scanty food and cloth with day in and day out abuse.

To feed herself she had to do all types low menial works in the village

many people muck at her at their whim to retaliate she had no courage.

At this age I look with sigh at such victims of superstition

those throb my hearts and humanity only generating remorseful compassion.

Here the victim was void of emotion because of her misfortune and social injustice

and a compassion in vain from a conscious man who acted as a tool is a helpless though critical to the practice.

(N . B  A true story. Epidemic like cholera and small pox were rampant. Child marriage was tradition.)