Ghastly act gone awry

Once, after a flaming fight, she decided to set herself on fire, dousing some fuel.

This alms-seeker is an unintentional attention-grabber. She, with her skewed limbs, shrunken body-frame, smile-bereft, spook-inducing face, always has several passersby, stare at her skeptically, in a sort of stunned silence. She everyday squats at the foot of Lalbagh hill. I, a diehard habitué to this botanical garden, with my daily jog along its inner periphery, often keep sighting her.  

Creating a poignant picture, she persistently indulges in panhandling, rather in phlegmatic manner, till her money-pouch gets plumped up with adequate pelf. Recently, owing to heavy drizzles, I happened to halt under a humongous tree, under which she too was seeking shelter. As I smiled at her, she threw back a tentative smile. After the initial dithering, slowly she started divulging the deadly details of her dreadful life, drowned in deep miseries.

It seems her spouse, a severe alcohol-addict, ever in his sloshed state, used to subject her to surplus traumas by scathing abuses and stinging slaps on her face. Once, after a flaming fight, she flounced out of her house, to set herself on fire, dousing some fuel. Under the influence of ire and indignation, she hadn’t then realized the ramifications of her reckless act. Ironically, she survived the self-induced mishap, and later felt penitent, too, about her impulsive act. But by then, she was left with a distorted body, looking like a badly morphed picture.  

Call it a quirky fate. Her spouse, after some days, succumbing to a strange ailment, bid his final adieu, leaving behind three of his small kiddies, under her solo care. Now, due to her physical disability, willy-nilly she is hurled into panhandling profession, so as to protect her progeny, who are the raison-d’être of her life, and she, the true sheet-anchor to them.    

With rain-lashing reduced, as I rambled back home, I started ruminating. Indeed, when we don’t exercise control over our emotions, we eventually get controlled by them. During such times, the indiscriminate decisions that we take do start dictating, determining and designing our future years.

This apart, it is also strange that many times, we try thinking of some sudden solution to surmount a problem, without being aware that this ‘solution’ itself could be the ‘origin’ to bigger problems! It is a ripple effect or cascading effect, wherein the ‘supposed solution’ would set off a salvo of several other problems, or may make the ‘present problem’ to resurface in its exacerbated version!

In her case, she had thought, her committing-suicide act would be the panacea to all her problems, without perceiving that particular act itself was the potent source to plethora of her other problems. No wonder, it is said, “A solution to some present problem, at times, could turn out to be a chief ‘source’ to some other future problem”!