I watched as the spoken words were written down to become like caged birds, caught forever by my clever baap. When I was a small girl, he would sometimes let me stand beside him. Often from the goodness of his heart Baap would write the letter for only a rupee or two. He sat all day in his marketplace stall hoping to make a few rupees by writing letters for those who did not know how to write their own. It will be no easy task, he said with a sigh. My baap, like all fathers with a daughter to marry off, had to find a dowry for me. I had known the day was coming, but the regret I saw in Maa’s eyes made me tremble. The day I left home, there would be a little more for everyone else. It’s one of my days to fast, she would say, as if it were a holy thing, but I knew it was because there was not enough food to go around. There were days when my maa took only a bit of rice for herself so that the rest of us-my baap, my brothers, and I-might have more. Koly, you are thirteen and growing every day, Maa said to me.
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May 2023
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