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From The Diary of Little Santu
From The Diary of Little Santu
Some people are just impossible. There is this woman whom I have to tolerate everyday. She lives in my house and lives under a misconception that she owns it. She has complete control over the household and the servants.
Father says she is here to take care of me and Liza. She must have been in the house for a long time, for why would otherwise father not turn her out seeing her atrocities on me and Liza? Liza says, as far as she remembers, this lady has been haunting our house even before I was born.
Had father respected democracy, I could have excommunicated her from the house. I have Liza’s support. That silly girl believes the termagant favours me more than her. I have the cook at my side. He has many a grudges on her budget management system. I think I can rope in Deven as well.
Deven is a slightly doubtful case. He had to work more with less money before he came to our place. This woman, on whom father has bestowed all rights of administration, is too lenient. She gives him breakfast in the morning even before he starts working. She manages to chip in a part of lunch everyday for him to take home at lunch break. She behaved in a most outrageous way this New Year. She took out my old beloved toy cycle from the attic and gave it to Deven, without my permission. How would I have known of this traitorous act if Liza hadn’t told me?
“You are too old for that toy. We must gift something to the servants in New Year. Deven has a small girl in his house”, she said.
“I don’t care who has how many small whatever. I want my cycle back”, I screamed. I wasn’t going to give up to her whims this time. I roared and moaned till the time father came back from office.
“Why is he crying”, he asked her.
“You don’t have to ask her. Just kick her out of the house. She gives away my toys to every Tom Dick and Harry”
“Men don’t play with toys. I used to strike centuries on the cricket field when I was your age”, father retorted.
“You can’t fool me with your silly talk this time. Either my toy or I won’t have any food”.
I knew this threat seldom worked with father but always worked with that sinister woman. She always gets horrified at the prospects of leftover food. She ultimately persuaded father to get me a new toy cycle. I, as the son of a lawyer, know how to bargain on deals. In spite of father’s protests- he himself is a lawyer- I got a video-game set.
I don’t have any personal enmity with her, but had to take some action after what happened the night before history class test. I hadn’t prepared well for the test. After all, I am a kid and as father says, this age is for enjoyment. But she won’t understand this. She dragged me in from the terrace by my ear and started teaching me. Why doesn’t she join the school and leave my family alone if she is that interested in teaching? I am sure she doesn’t have the requisite qualifications. Father says she was taught in an Oriya medium school. How could she know the history taught in English mediums?
I don’t still know the answer to the question. Evidently, she was familiar to all from Akbar to Gandhi and many who came before Akbar or after Gandhi. And I knew only Akbar and Gandhi. She thrashed me black and blue when I couldn’t account for this knowledge gap. Father peeped in for a moment on hearing my cries and left looking completely helpless. The least I had expected was that he would come to my help and slap the virago. Liza seemed happy and comforted that the partiality she had imagined after all doesn’t exist.
I have made up my mind. I can’t live with her around. It’s either she or me. I approach father as soon as he came home in the evening and told him, “Father, can we have a new mother?”
Father gazed at me for sometime, perhaps unable to comprehend and then said, “What about the one in here”
I wasn’t going to be stirred by the counter-questions of my lawyer father. “Let the devil take her”
“Your proposition can be accepted, there being a provision in the constitution for step-mothers. Have you made up your mind?”
“Step-mother? Well, will she interfere in my studies?”
“No. In fact, she won’t let you have the pains of going to school. You see, she won’t like to waste money on your tuition. And she won’t even force you to bathe early in the morning”
“But then, I will become illiterate and my friends will tease me”, I retorted.
“Come on. You will be getting many better things to do. You can do Deven’s chores. That will save me some money and you will have plenty of time to play. Liza is old enough to substitute the cook. Even I am fed up with your mother. A substitute will bring in freshness to this house”
“No one will play with me if they know I have been doing Deven’s work”, I said somewhat frightened.
“Even Deven has friends”
“Won’t the new mother appease me if I go on a hunger strike?”
“That’s tough to say. I don’t think any other will interfere between you and your food as the present mother does”
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Santu was evidently horrified at the prospects of having a woman worse than the present as mother. He pleaded his father to drop the idea. Since then, father has stopped threatening him about the ghost that visits the backyard at nighttime. ‘I will feed you to that ghost’. Instead, he has found a more horrible threat, ‘I will get a step-mother for you’
Santu still has to bear that impossible woman.
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Life is a piece of shit
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A couple of suggestions to make it flow easier. Introduce Devon like, "I have the cook Devon on my side", otherwise we have to go back to find out who Devon is. Readers are lazy 
