ROUGH HANDS(Sudeshna Majumdar) ROUGH HANDS

The middle aged woman, who looked more like she was in her sixties, wiped the sweat from her brow as she entered her little house. She saw her teenaged daughter lying on the only bed they had and noticed that there were tears in the little girl’s eyes.

“How was the college, my child?” she asked.
“Terrible!!” wept the little girl.
“Were the teachers bad or the subjects difficult?”
“Neither” said the little girl.
“So, why the tears on your eyes?”
“I don’t want to go to school ever again, mother.”
“But your teachers were good and the subjects were not difficult...”
“My classmates were horrible!!!”
“Oh,” said the mother.
“Did you have a fight with them?”
“No mother, I didn’t.”
“They laughed at you?”
“No.”
“Then how were they horrible?” asked the mother.
“They ignored me mother. They talked to each other, they cracked jokes with each other but they kept away from me.”
“And you felt bad…?”
“Mother, it was horrible. Not just that they were ignoring me, I also felt different. They were all wearing the latest fashionable tops and skirts; they were all carrying cell phones, chatting and SMS-ing all the time. Oh mother, I felt strange being there.”

The mother looked at her little girl, went close to her and sat by her side. The hands that stroked her daughter’s body were rough and blistered.

“It’s going to be a very tough year for you, my child” she said.
“Yes mother,” murmured the little girl.
“But you can make it easy for yourself,” said the mother.
“How mother, how?” sobbed the girl.
“By doing in college what you entered college for” said the mother. “You didn’t enter to make a fashion statement. You didn’t enter to impress the others. You go to college, my child, to study hard and to be somebody one day.” The mother stroked the little girl’s head. “My hands are rough, aren’t they?”
“Yes mother.”
“Remember then my child, if you can give those five years all you have got, if you can see the goal you have set out to reach and see nothing else, then you need not have hands that do the work I do. Forget those phones, those fancy dresses; they will be yours when it is time. Walk tall in what you wear, shine in the subject you have taken, surely you will get your due.”

The little girl kissed her mother’s hands. “Why did you get such hands mother?” she asked.
A tear dropped from her mother’s eye. “I wasted years with fancy stuffs” she cried. “My hands pay the price now.”


“Rough Hands” symbolise not only rough treatment but the changing perception in this so called modern world - change in the attitude, behaviour, thinking… So dear children, let us all try our best to have a smooth and clear thinking and of course, HANDS, smooth hands!!!

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