innovate-issue-005

But there wasone thing that he never could do. He never called me papa or Urshula mom. He was borndumb. He could hear everything but then he couldn’t speak a single word. I mean he could makesounds but those sounds were just air coming out of his vocal chords. Those were meaningless.Urshula was very sad about it. We tried doctors and everything but he couldn’t talk. Gradually we hadto accept the fact that our Rizu would never speak a word in his entire life.Things changed a lot after my marriage and after having Rizu. There were more responsibilities overmy shoulders. I had to run a family with my job as a typist; I was barely making ends meet. At the endof each month, we were left with no savings. I was worried about it. For a family, savings arenecessary.One night, I was typing out a novel in my home. I was working over time then, just trying to save ussomething each month. It was not going well.Then I drifted off. I was bored, typing a geography book. Random facts about rocks and soils werecompiled into the manuscript. The handwriting was very bad and the content equally boring.So I put a new sheet of paper in the spool and began typing something that I don’t remember. All Iremember was that, it was poem about a person who was telling a girl how much he loved her, but thenhe couldn’t speak so he was saying all that in hand gestures that made no sense to the girl. The boywas very similar to Rizu and I hate to admit that fact.Then I showed it to Urshula. It was the first time I ever showed her my writing.“Wow, you write beautiful. Is it your first time?” she asked. Her sari tucked in the waist and her hairtied into a bun.“Before we met, I wanted to be a writer. It is just that I couldn’t make it to the top.”“Really? This stuff is beautiful, I don’t know what the publishers were thinking when they read yourwork. I am afraid that they didn’t read it at all.”I smiled. Our marriage was arranged, but then I really loved her.“Do you want to read more?” I said and there was a child like curiosity in her eyes.“Yes yes. I would love to.”I crawled under my bed and brought out the old big tin box.“Oho, that is why you never allowed me to open this?” She said with a smile playing on her lips.“I was shy!” I replied.I took out the old key from the drawer and opened the lid to reveal its contents. There were lots andlots of paper inside it. The papers were decaying to yellow and some of them were decayed further mymoisture and bacteria. I had mixed feelings of sadness and happiness when I opened the lid.I gave her a typed poem that I wrote long back.She read it twice, and then she looked at me and smiled. I can't forget that smile, I had left herspellbound.