Deceit

Never had the moon shone so bright in my entire lifetime. Bigger and brighter it was indeed, down pouring its lusty glow to entice innocent dreamers to swim into their hopes and majestically drown in them. Making them believe the impossible was possible and in the process, relieve them of their unnatural belief of changing the system.

I had long decided that the way of the elders was not necessarily the right way. In the city, I had learned to nurture a conscience of my own. Therefore in a streak of hope to change my life I decided to tell father everything.

"Father" I went out to the garden and whispered to him.

“Yes.”

“I want to tell you something.”

“Yes.”

The silence of the moment seemed infinitely long, but I knew I had to break it.

“I do not want to marry Vinay.”

“What? Why?”

“I wish to continue my studies in the city.”

“You can do that after marriage”, Father was a good man, he understood me more than anyone else I thought, but it wasn't enough sometimes. He was the head of the village panchayat and surely knew the difference between wrong and right.

“I don't love Vinay.”

“What does that mean?”

All my life I had tried to find the meaning of love, and yet I stood empty handed. Knowing not the answer, I replied, “I love Siddarth. I met him in the city.” I knew I shouldn't have said that to a man built on traditions putting forth illogical doctrines for women. “I love you father. Can you please understand me today?”

The damage was done. The entire village looked up to him in desperate times and he always beamed the right way. There was no way he would agree to this. What example would it set for the village? Villagers would never accept my father if he took such a decision. There was no hope.

“I want to meet him”, he said in his low grunt, but did not look at me.

I wish I could see his eyes, he kept them elusive. Nevertheless, what mattered to me were his words. And all of a sudden, the meaning of love dawned onto me. I smiled and hugged him with all the love that I could summon. A source of comfort from the least imaginable swell. Magic happens. It happened now! Who had thought, what little moonlight and sheer courage could muster. I could not control my smile. I did not sleep that night.

The next morning police reported a dead young woman hung on the village oak tree. The post mortem report claimed that she was brutally beaten and finally poisoned to death before being hung. Some anonymous local descried how she had begged for mercy and how her cries echoed all across the village like a siren in dead silence. She only cried about wanting to study further in the city.

I woke up in a place I had never seen and only wished that I hadn't sat under the moon that night.