Chapter 33 Dad's Not The Same

• It was a December night at Kolkata before Christmas. The cold had just started to show it's teeth and nails. A time when people hid themselves inside the trusting sheathe of blankets and quilts.
• However, barely a month more would the residents of the city be lucky enough to get a taste of winter. For the rest of the year the tiresome humidity and untimely rainfall awaited them. Perhaps I should've said a number of people and not all when I said people slept peacefully inside the cosy comforts of blankets and quilts. For many weren't lucky enough to procure them or to even have a roof above their heads for that matter. These hapless people who were generally beggars or ragpickers lighted little fires with twigs and dry leaves of trees. Often stray dogs joined them in their struggle to somehow pass away the night and long for the mercy of sun god when his seven horses would spread radiance and heat into the earth and rescue them from their state of helplessness. And this hope and wait continued the next day and next and next. Till some of these people would become lucky enough to receive shawls, woolen clothes or blankets from the NGOs or politicians on the eve of elections. The dogs found spots to take shelter in - beneath cars or trees, places that are protected from the wind, on old sacks or clothes or anything else which could provide insulation from the cold. They would be pitied only when they got noticed by caretakers and animal lovers, otherwise the municipalities and corporations felt the necessity to remove their dead carcasses or cage the live animals reported to have gone mad and terrorize the citizens.
• In her sleep Tora could hear whimpers coming from a distance, which soon changed into groans and angry snarls just near her ears. She let out a scream and got up on her bed. Her little hands failed to find the light switch. 'Mommy, Mommy where are you?' She cried in the dark, in vain. Her mother must've gone to the toilet she knew but she couldn't wait till she came and took her into her arms - the only place for solace she had known since her birth. And now with her Daddy having gone away for some important work to a faraway place she missed her Mommy more than before. 'I feel so afraid dear'. She wrapped her arms around the doll and cried. Tora treasured the latest gift she received from her Dad on her ninth birthday. It was not just a doll. It was her best friend. She talked to her and they played together. Mommy wouldn't believe her, taking it to be one of her pranks. But Tora's mother had let out a wail when she saw them together. Only when Tora looked into the mirror she could see how stunningly same they looked. Tora draped the doll with the same skirts and tops her mother dressed her with the other day. O God! How perfectly they fitted, Tora wondered.. It seemed the clothes got shrunk into the size of the doll. How could Tora make her mother believe that she was a real girl just her age? But why did Dad have to go away? And that too just on her birthday? Couldn't he have taken a leave? And how bad his office boss was! To have sent him for an assignment on such date! Didn't he know that she hadn't even cut her cake? How could she, without him?