Dark Love

The night is dark, as dark as the girl watching it grow darker. She gives a customary parting glance to the God’s acre replete with poppies of every color-red, green, yellow, black and white as she walks back to the church. She had traced and retraced these paths one Sunday after another. She morosely walks towards the cross to confess a sin she hasn’t committed but which no degree of absolution can take away. it is a sin the humankind has committed against her. The choices that the peccancy had culminated in had been against her will but so was the way she was made by the almighty God. The ecclesiastical architecture gave her a sense of reassurance about herself and of the choices she has made in her life. Closing her eyes, she elegantly knelt beside the pew in tacit contemplation.

Katherine mariammal Athyal was born in the small town of Kattathurai in Tamil Nadu as the only daughter of a couple that had not borne an offspring for 5 years of their matrimony. The Athyal household had rejoiced on the fateful day with balloons, crackers, cakes and had given out huge sums of money on charity. The mother had had a hard time in labor as the doctors confirmed the relative’s agony.” The mother and the daughter both are in danger, I am afraid” the doctor mechanically said. But the child agreed to disagree and made its way out.
“You look exactly like your grandfather”, said the grandmother, lovingly reminiscent, as she oiled Kathy’s hair. “The way you read with a clicking of the tongue, the way you smile with a lip slightly stretched on one end, just like your apupan. Even, your math skills, you know your apupan had been the most famous kanakupillai. If only the man was alive to see my little princess. Also, dark just like him.But he was a man;didn't matter.Lucky your father is rich otherwise these days even ugly fellows want fair kuttys for themselves. njaan parenyjanthu cheriyille?”
After the hair was oiled and braided she ran into her room to observe herself in front of the mirror. She opened the intricate powder holder with a handle having a figurine of a fairy, and gently picked the puff and smothered her face with the Yardley powder her uncle Jacob had got from the gulf. He had promised it would make her look as pretty as the moon on a full moon night. After the little exercise, she did look like the moon, she thought. But without the powdered talc she looked like those dark clouds through which the moon played peek-a-boo sometimes. Her moist eyes pierced through the glasses at the dark girl that was looking back at her.
She wanted to hate herself for being this color. She hadn’t been picked up in her school plays for which she had rehearsed the lines a million times over for her favorite part of the red riding hood. Instead, she had been under the hood for the part of the fox. Why does beauty have to be associated with white? Hadn't the fair-skinned medusa become the monster of lore because of her vanity? What use was such external appearance? In such times her only solace had been her God

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. John 13:34

Who were we to differentiate one from another?

Having so many questions but answers to none she put all her efforts on being fair at what she could. She was a fair human being-loving, caring and gentle and studied as hard as she could to forget it.Soon,it was time for her to move her base to madras. Her small town had been happy to send a daughter of the land to a pattinum for higher studies. The importance of external beauty for the city-folks had made her appearance more obvious than they ever were. She eventually made friends of all kinds-ones who accepted her for what she was and others who didn’t. One such relationship that had creeped in as an acquaintance was a man named Roshan.On their first meet , he eyed her enquiringly as though wanting to know more of her while she coyly hid behind her friend. The acquaintance gradually turned to a dream as she held hands with him in the beach and they kissed passionately under the moonlit night. She asked him innocently "You don't have a problem with me being dark, do you? Why do you still love.....", as he kept his finger on her lips motioning her to stop and kissed her again.” Look at the sky, my love. Don’t we see the beautiful stars only when it grows dark? Beauty is found in places you least expect it”. As these days turned to years, they promised to be there for each other through thick and thin. He promised "We will get married in a month as soon as I attend my sister's marriage"
She remembered the day, it happened. She had been missing her periods for a week now and when she opened her message inbox

Parents have found me a bride. Engagement’s done. Our picture is attached. Please forget me.

Her world came crashing down on her.

The picture attached showed a beautiful young "fair" lady hugging the man who had been the cause of her state now. Her suspicions were later in the day confirmed. She was going to be a mother. A million thoughts rushed through her head. Should she cross the proverbial Rubicon and be an unwed single mother to the kid that was hers? What would the world make of her and treat "them”? Her household would treat her as an outcast.” If only i had been fair, perhaps the world would have been fair to me” she cried.
A hand touched her head which nudged her out of meditation. She opened her tear-filled eyes only to realize it was nobody she could see. She walked across the Holy Cross and lachrymosely uttered

"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I killed my child......"