RAABTA

The first time I saw her face, Alakananda was eight years old. Her collyrium-drawn dark eyes were peeping scared from behind the betel leaves shaped like the spade of cards. She held the aces that day though, I am sure of it. The reluctant twenty-something Rathindra Nath Majumder, inspired by the Swadeshi Movement to make a difference but too scared to oppose his authoritarian father on the topic of marriage, had suddenly felt a knot in his stomach at her haunting stare. My only condition was that the girl had to be poor, someone we could save from a miserable life, without a dowry; something my father flaunted to his last breath. The conch shells echoed and the Ululation of the ladies through the silent winter night, as the priest handed me the red powder, supposed to be used to mark my territories. Man and his primitive needs to mark what is his. My eyes couldn't help but travel to her face, even when the priest forbade me to do so. As a little bit of vermillion dropped on her