Her name was very special to her.

It was given by her father. A father she loved too much. A father she was once immensely proud of.

Her parents got married in the most rebellious way possible. Though she didn't know the exact and full story, she knew it was rather very much scandalous.

They married out of love. Nobody, no member of her father's family ever married out of love, let alone eloped to get married. But her parents did.

And was punished quite a bit as a result. As love marriage was a taboo apparently in 2002's Nancledra, a lot of people didn't treat them properly.

Her father didn't have a stable job then, and nor did he have a room of his own before marriage. He had to shar his room with his siblings before but now that he is married, he needed a room. So her grandparents gave them the room beside the kitchen, which was four hands in width and three hands in length.  It had a bed on one side, and an attached bookcase.

And that's it.

Her grandfather, father's father was a teacher in the nineteen hundreds. It may not sound so, but it was a very big deal at that time. Especially in a village where there is no school.

Her grandfather had to walk for half an hour to work every day and eventually his kids too had to cover the same distance to go to school.

Her father had six siblings and ten cousins. They all lived together and quarreled together. From the stories she has heard, not a single day passed when her grandmothers didn't quarrel among themselves.

Her own grandfather had four siblings. The elder one died before she was born. And two of them were independent and rich enough to leave their house here in the village and go live in the cities.

They do not have that big of a role in her story. To be honest, she can't remember a single time she saw them.

But she remembers her own grandfather. He was a small, paralyzed man since birth and the last brother.

Her house in the village was a big one. Actually, it was one of the three biggest houses in their locality. Everyone shook at the mention of her grandfather's name.

Of course, she wasn't alive then to see all these but she has heard stories. From her uncles, and father and also from outsiders who were her grandfather's age.

She was immensely proud of her lineage. She felt like she was a princess even though they had to leave their home when she was only three.

Why they had to leave you ask? Well, their family was complicated.

It was 2007. She was three years old, as I have already said. By this time, three of his uncles had left home. One after a vigorous disagreement with her grandparents, like the one they would be in very shortly. The one after that was the clever one. He was also a teacher like her dadu'. He had very tactfully, given the excuse of his work and left for the city with his wife and son.

The third uncle, Ananta stayed there. And for now, he is the villain of our story.

Just for information, her sixth uncle went to stay with her second uncle to study.

To avoid any confusion, let me give you a clear idea of the family tree here.

Her grandparents had seven sons. Her father was the fourth one, the middle.

Her elder and second uncle left their home to stay in the city and her sixth uncle followed her second uncle.

Even if their home was quite big and spacious, the space now started feeling short for the new families. Moreover, she was a new baby. They needed space.

So forgetting all their resentment, her grandparents finally called the builder and commissioned two rooms to be built beside their mansion. It was nothing big. Just two rooms for two brothers with a small veranda. Bas!

Workers started coming. Cement, brick, everything started coming too, and soon enough, the rooms were being built.

Now, remember the villain we talked about? Our protagonist's third uncle.

He was a very cunning man and close-fisted too. In their elder age, when her grandfather was basically adrift, which resulted in her grandmother being one too, they depended on their third son Ananta too much to the point that if Ananta brings a watermelon home and says it was potato, her grandparents would believe so.

The two rooms were being made for Ananta and our lead's father Aditya. As Aditya recently joined a good consultant company but was a junior nonetheless and could attribute much money in the rooms, he and his wife Indira stayed up days and nights and tended to every need of the workers.

But they could feel it. Something was wrong in the air. As the day drew closer to the finishing of the rooms, they saw changes in their surrounding.

And BAM!

On the day of the handover, her grandfather announced, that he wasn't building the rooms for Ananta and Aditya. No. Ananta would get a room. Even though he is not married, he would get a room because he is the elder one and was about to get married. The other room was for Advik, the fifth brother, who was neither about to get married nor needed one.

Aditya felt betrayed.

If anybody asks, was Aditya and Indrani at no fault? And if I said no, it would be a lie.

They did a mistake. A very big one at that, which cost them their house, the roof over Sudipta's, our protagonist's head.

They had bought a cupboard, to keep the newborn's clothes, that was not fitting into that small bookcase anymore with their own clothes.

None of Sudipta's uncles felt any guilt in taking her home. Ananta paved the path and Advik followed him. No one cared for the little old soul they celebrated three years ago with sweet, the little baby they cradle every day and whisper sweet nothings in her ear.

This eventually led to a very big fight. She doesn't remember much, but she could guess, the turmoil and pain, everybody went through at that point. Especially her parents.

Her grandmother had asked for the things which she had gifted her granddaughter.

The time, when a kid was supposed to bathe in the love of their grandparents, they had to leave their ancestral house.

Disregarding, his daughter, Indira's disapproval, Dagrun decided that he would follow his daughter and son-in-law and won't return before they rent a room and are settled.

So, packing the very bare minimum things that they had, Sudipta and her family left their ancestral home.

She remembers standing on the big veranda of the old mansion as her father stood below, calling for a moving truck. She remembers her mother crying. She had run that day, from the veranda until she reached their little room and had fell face first into their bed, trying to control the sobs that broke through her tentative heart.

She remembers nothing much that day nor does she wants to. If she could she would have stood before her uncles and demanded why they did what they did. Why did they take away her home? Why did they steal her grandparent's love, which she deserved?

Was it because of the cupboard? Because if it is, she would have sworn, she could do without it. She could have told her mother to keep her clothes in a Saree and keep it under the bed or better, don't buy more than two sets of clothes for her.

She could have done without a cupboard. She didn't need it. What she needed was her family. Her uncles and her grandparents. She needed to not remember any of this cruelty. She needed to be cared for and loved.

She needed love.

That's all that she needed. Ever.

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Word Gallery

'dadu: grandfather in Bengali.