Another Day(Atul Sharma) ANOTHER DAY


When the monsoon fails, it is then that the parched land of my village, Kashipur, clamours for rain to quench its thirst, to keep the bareness at bay and produce some wheat so that I am able to feed my family.

I am sitting on the veranda steps of my small hut gazing incessantly towards the sky for some sign of cloud formation. My hut can collapse anytime, as I was not able to carry out urgent mending exercises last year due to a monsoon failure which left me with no money to carry out this task. My eyes are constantly winking due to the brutal sunshine beating against them as I am gazing towards the sky and praying in my heart to Indra Dev to show mercy upon me.

I know if Indra Dev had any mercy for me then I could have not be in such deplorable circumstances. My wife is trying to light the mud Chula blowing through the fukhani. But her ailing health has left her lungs too weak to produce any strong blowing to lit the woods.

The cauldron placed adjacent to it is waiting to be placed upon the mud Chula. My two sons and a daughter are sitting cross-legged on the floor in a circle waiting desperately for their mother to light the Chula.

“Baba (father) come here and help mother,” called my five-year-old daughter.

My eyes filled with mercy on my helplessness. I restrained the tears, which had filled by then in my eyes to trickle down on my cheeks.

I was feeling like a culprit.

“I have no right of being called a father if I can not even fill my children’s stomachs,” I said to myself.

These thoughts often reverberate in my mind, pushing me to the brink of suicide. But the thought of my widowed wife and orphaned children who would become an easy prey for our local lala (moneylender) save me to live this wretched life.

My daughter called me again.

“Baba are you coming or not?” This time her voice had anger in it.

I again fell a victim to my reverie.

Last year my sixty-year-old mother died. She was hail and hearty until a clot found a habitat in her brain. Then numerous rounds to the government hospital were enough to break her back, and ultimately she died.

My daughter called again. And this time I found her sitting with me on the veranda steps.

“Baba, at least come now, food is ready.”

I stood with her, her hand rolled onto my finger providing me the strength to live, as both of us squatted on the mud floor, finishing another day in our lives.


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