Golden Bangle

This is all about a family life where golden bangle plays a major part in their distress

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Proficiently my subsistence drew closer both rundown and lavish clientele. I dole out for all to meet the requirements of the human race. From the golden hands of the artists to the much caretaking merchant’s shelf and from the shelf to the wrist, my journey ends in the furnace to be re-shaped for future use. I bear within me the entire world. From parental home to in-laws, the ride leaves behind footprints of reminiscences. The destitution of its donor on one hand and imperceptible impasse was drawn on the thin sheets of fate on the other had something in the abysses. The hollow of me knows the world I am being pushed into. My luster had under its precious frame a solution. 

The future necessities behind those muslin curtains promising new dawn seemed silent but had had their eye on me nailed. Curtains are pleasant and painful. At times behind their bosom, they put out of sight what simply irritates a human eye and at times exposes human needs to the inconsiderate certainties. 

Lower the weird and wonderful calm of curtains; a murmur attracted my attention. The communication was muddled with mysteriously jam-packed and bamboozled voice. In the garb of my glee, many things, however failed to exert a pull on me and I kept myself occupying those wrists that could hardly read the lines beneath the skin they were hiding. 

The curve was enough massive to create a safe globe for the generation that was still wrapped in the gown of clouds, unknown to mundanity. Need is deadly. The relation between the man and metal is enigmatic; one holds it as property and the other as responsibility. Both the man and metal live and die, leaving behind tales together; some are narrated while some remained safe and sound for the want of narration. 

Behind those curtains, the earlier murmur had somehow draped itself up in the attire of resonance. The music was rich like my unruffled frame. In that silent room, where I was detached from the wrist under duress and placed safely in the jewelry box as an upcoming asset, the script of marital life recited its opening lines in the sweetest of the tunes which with the prerequisites of a plot suffer and fall. 

With the passage of time, the battery of the wall clock was worn out and the world in my room came to a standstill mode like my boxed identity. Both the limbs of the clock and my locks were overlooked. 

Once a craze on the wrist was now a forgotten property like a dead body buried under the soil with a name plate. 

The bell behind the curtain was now occasionally tolling. Now that a newcomer was due on the date. Jollity and jubilation took over my stillness. I too stirred in the box, sensing my presence, but the couple was unaware of my significance. 

The night passed and the dawn broke the silence with a cry of newborn. It became a routine, for two more kids kidnapped the silence of the room within five years. 

The last one, a son, came silently. His cry was feeble unlike two daughters who tortured the operation theatre with their shrieks, registering their demands. 

I was after a gap of seven years exposed to the sunlight when on a marriage ceremony my design was discussed so was the artist who decked me up. 

I was now only a piece of ornament carved out of uphill struggle of my donor with his sweat and skin pasted on my curves. A memorable gift to rely on. The hall ticket into the world of assessments and assignments. 

The silent cry of the newborn came with a silent disease. It drained whatever was saved. Piggybanks and tin boxes were the first to be ravished, followed by few golden rings and earrings. Nothing came handily to usher in relief. Meningitis followed by recurrent shunts and dear prescriptions had already compacted the little wardrobe of two daughters. Now that neurosurgery, the last resort had its eyes on the me. 

She opened the chest. Her rough hands reached where she had her last hope shelved. 

“Come out, today you have an uphill task ahead,” she muttered.

Willingly she opened the box but unwillingly she closed her eyes. The box seemed heavy enough to shoulder the burden. 

For the last time she slipped me into her feeble wrists. 

“Ah! How ugly is the Gold, how poorly the Bangle has been crafted,” she claimed.

The agonized folds of her skin certainly appeared insignificant. I moved freely in that much strained wrist. 

“Now that I rely on your weight, mine is too little, I beg of you to feel my load,” she sighed. 

The amount sufficed the requirements. Unaware of the consequences, a mother surrendered her wrist like her bones and back. 

Gold is certainly precious when it discharges a son from hospital to home and undoubtedly worthless when it sends a man down to the ditches. I was sold for a purpose. I was melted for a cause. I lost my face and race for human race.

By Mushtaque B Barq

From: India

Instagram: mbarq