The Twins
The Shepherd of Readersburg | 04 July 2021 | Fiction: The food did not taste the same. The dinner table was not the same. There never was a table. The family - Nimmi, Vimmi, their mother and father - would sit in a circle, a square rather, with the food spread out in pans and plates before them in a corner of their small bedroom.
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Next to this dining corner was a sofa with two seats flanked by one-seat sofas. This part of the bedroom was the drawing room.
The kitchen had an exclusive room to itself.
'When will mummy and papa come home?'
'Where is mummy? Where is papa?'
The twins asked their uncle all the time every day.
'They are in the hospital, beta. They will be home as soon as they get better,' their uncle would tell them all the time every day.
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The sisters are just five years old. Too small to understand that it's been two months since they haven't seen their parents. And that, in so many days, the same excuse does not hold good.
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In another two months, they will turn six. Their uncle has enquired about a good school to send them to.
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It's the best school he could afford with his meagre income from driving an autorickshaw.
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He wants to give the girls a good life, educate them so that they grow up to be self-dependent with decent respectful lives and careers.
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But, first, he has to break the news about their parents to them. He has to decide when it would be the right time to tell the children that their parents are never coming home, that their parents are dead.
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It's tough. He is not sure how the little girls will react to the news.
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The couple had contracted Covid and succumbed to the illness.
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He talks to a close friend at work. The friend suggests that he should tell them immediately. 'The more you delay, the more difficult it would get for the girls. They may grow up believing something you didn't intend! It could affect them psychologically,' the friend says.
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That evening, the uncle breaks the news to the girls. He tells them that their parents are with their grandmother and grandfather up in the skies somewhere.
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The girls say, both at once, 'That's the place from where no one comes back!'
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New lead: Thousands of children have lost their parents to Covid during the latest second wave. The girls in our story were lucky to have a relative who meant good for them. Most children have no one and they are at the mercy of callous relatives, or strangers and NGOs etc.
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There is a fear that they may fall prey to trafficking. Some people have come forward to adopt the children. But more children are out there staring at a dark future.
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