Small Acts of Freedom

by Gurmehar Kaur

Her elder daughter had completed her education and was now getting married into a lovely family from Mumbai. And then there was Harry, whom, since she had first met him, she had grown to be very fond of and now deeply loved.

Harry’s mother was a highly educated, incredible woman who was the principal of a local school.

They had both lived their lives on their own terms and had raised wonderful children. Harry had two younger brothers, Anu and Manu, whom Pammi...

Harry was there, looking at her expectantly, his heart full of love, eyes soft and kind. He was smiling, he couldn’t wait to tell her the news.

The words he had waited to say for the longest time poured out when he saw that she was awake: ‘I’m the proud father of a baby girl,’ he said, grinning ear to ear.

Harry, who was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, smiled at her and nodded his head. A smile spread across Raji’s face and her heart filled with love she had never felt before. How long had she been waiting to meet this miracle! They had prayed at every shrine in the country, every mandir, dargah and gurdwara, for their wish to come true.

She hadn’t even seen her and yet she knew that she would do anything in the world to keep her safe and protected, to provide for her and to turn her into a strong, independent, loving woman like her own mother.

In the corner of the crib, wrapped in a white blanket, was the tiniest baby in the whole world, so tiny that if one didn’t look closely, they would assume that it was just a pile of blankets. The baby’s face was blue, red and green, all at the same time.

‘Can I hold the baby?’ Raji asked, unable to take it all in, her heart full of love, her eyes moist with tears and a sense of protectiveness in her mind she had never felt before.

She was so fragile. Her hand was wrapped tightly around her mother’s finger. ‘She will be the most loved child in this whole world. We will give her everything she wants. We will shower her with love and care. I will protect her with all my heart,’ she kept thinking, over and over again. ‘She is God’s special child, his blessing, Gurmehar.’

‘Isn’t she the most beautiful girl in the world?’ asked Harry from over her shoulder as he walked in to meet the two of them—his own family.

The baby was the different colours of the rainbow. She was also extremely weak, unlike the chubby, pink-cheeked babies she had seen earlier. But yes. She...

I will kill myself—I will slit my wrists or I will jump off the building. There is nothing left to live for.

‘I’m so bad at it. I want to die. I hate this life.

‘I don’t want to live!’

She lived—lives—life on her own terms.

You are not a diamond, you are not the most precious stone in the world, and I don’t want you to believe that you are. You are a slab of iron ore. You will go through the furnace and you will come out strong, like iron. Life will throw rocks at you and beat you with hammers but you will take those beatings in your stride and come out like a sword, a weapon.

Fall down seven, get up eight.

Harry was overjoyed. He couldn’t believe that his baby’s name was in the headline of a newspaper.

‘We will show it to her when she grows up. We will tell her that her parents taught her the value of freedom from an early age.’

He asks me if he can take my singing doll. It’s the doll I love the most. If I kiss the doll’s cheek, it starts singing. I laugh because the sight is so funny. And yet, here he is, my papa in his camouflage, holding my doll and asking if he can take it.

‘Something’ was the code for death. They never used the word, it was always ‘something’.

She knew how she felt, never wishing her own life upon a pair of girls.

‘Do not worry, whether it is a girl or a boy, we will love the babies. We will raise them like champions and they will never have to struggle.

He opened the tap and there was water; he turned on the switch and there was light; he walked four steps and there was food.

Many of them are the only earning members of their families. They have small children, they have wives as young as sixteen, some have parents on their deathbeds. These men are out there fighting, risking their lives, and you want me to stay here in this magic castle where you open the tap and there is water to feed an entire village?’

This is my picture-perfect happy family and I want it to stay this way.

By the time he put the phone down, there were two officers in full uniform at the gate.

When I couldn’t move, they told me his last words to the solider who held him were, ‘Take care of my Gulgul and Bani.’

Our happiness were in the small things: in a plate, a new mug, curtains.

‘Arre, why not? My daughters will grow up to be the smartest, most beautiful women in the whole world. Who will not want to look at them in awe?’ He loved us. In one second, everything had been shattered.

How could the TV work like nothing had happened? I hated it.

He was smiling. I looked at his face and cried and smiled and then cried again. I did not want to leave.

hands. For the first time, his hands were cold. He was the warmest, most loving person in the world.

All his warmth had left him; that day he was cold.

‘I’m giving you a date—17 August. Pack all your things. I will be getting my next posting when I’m back. If you don’t have all your things then, I will leave you.’

The commanding officer of the area at that time was a kind human being, a dashing officer. My father would have been just like him had he been here.

I really, really do not like maths. I know you loved it. I tried liking it, I even took private tuitions, but it is not something I can really enjoy. I’m sorry.

Sometimes I hear your voice when I’m down in an important match. I keep believing it’s you, cheering me on.

One of our greatest sportsmen, Sachin Tendulkar, also lost his father in 1999. His century in the World Cup that year was dedicated to the man watching over him from on high.

for being patient, loving and kind to a very lost nine-year-old. With your guidance I found my love for reading books and a dream for writing one.