He was walking back and forth anxiously along the corridor just outside the room where his wife, Mina, was giving birth to a child. He already had two daughters, ages six and two, Nisha and Preety; now he had three. He was expecting a son this time; but it seemed like fate was testing him, again. After hearing the woman holler, Ishaan walked towards the front door hastily, stepped outside and shut it close with a loud bang and left the house. He didn’t even look at his daughter. He showed up later in the evening, drunk.

In the days that followed, Ishan began acting as a complete stranger to his own family. He left home early in the morning and returned later in the evening, long past his usual time. Every time Mina tried to approach him, he would put on a sullen face. At evenings when he came early, his daughters would scamper towards him with the hope that their father would scoop them up from the floor and throw them into the air, only to fall back into his safe arms—like in the old days. But to their dismay, he would turn a blind eye and walk away towards the door. To comfort their broken hearts, Mina, standing beside them, her eyes brimming with tears, would say, “Come here my darlings, I will do it for you; your father is tired today.” The daughters could not comprehend their apathetic father. In time, Ishan rarefied his house. But when he did, he would be inebriated and would beat his wife until his own hands hurt. The children could always feel the violence in the next room; it wouldn’t let them sleep. Nisha used to hold her sister tight until she stopped shivering. As Nisha grew older, she understood the reason behind her mother’s suffering. She knew that it was because her father had wanted a son. “What is it in a boy that our father wants one so much?” she used to ask her mother. “I will make my father prouder than a son ever will,” she assured her mother. “These days will be over, mother.”

Ishaan’s apathy injured his wife and children. Mina started earning her own money from a sewing job and was growing to become an independent woman. She never revealed her sufferings to her children; never once did she foul-mouth Ishan.

One evening, as Nisha climbed into her bed after helping her mother with her daily chores, she saw through the window two people standing outside their gate. Though she didn’t exactly know what was happening, she could clearly figure out the silhouette of her father, talking to a woman she had never seen before. She slowly opened the window as her father said, “Wait for me at the station; I will be there at six tomorrow morning.” They hugged each other and the woman left. After a while, her father entered the house and went to bed without a word. Baffled by her father’s strange, sober rendezvous with a strange woman, Nisha lay on her bed alongside her sister, hoping for a better tomorrow.

Early next day, she could hear her mother wailing from inside the kitchen. She hastily walked towards the sound. Her father was screaming vehemently: “All of this is your fault: you don’t want to see me happy, you never wanted to give me a son. I am leaving you now.” Her mother lay crying in one corner; her father, with a suitcase in his hand, started towards the door. She ran after her father, yelling: “Where are you going? When will you return?” Her father shoved her away and walked out of the house.

Not long after that day, Ishan married the strange woman from the strange rendezvous. Ishan soon became the happy father of a son: all that he had ever wanted. Life was not easy, though, for the new family—Ishan’s menial job at a shoe store could hardly pay for his spendthrift wife. Besides, they had to think about the future: how could they afford to send the baby boy to a good school? He was in desperate need of a job that could provide a fair salary. The only way he could pay for his wife’s extravagant spending was by flying into some Arab country and putting strenuous effort into a couple of extra bucks. And so he did. His son had just turned 2 when Ishan left for Iraq.

There he found a job at a gas station. He never spared free time for himself. He managed to do overtime during the weekend. After receiving the stipend at the end of each month, he would call home to speak to his son.His new wife never sympathised with him: each month, she would ask him for more and more money. After a few months, one telephone conversation led to her saying “I will leave you if this is all you can offer us.”One early morning, she called him and said “It’s time we send our son to a boarding school; you have to send in all your savings for his admission.” Ishan did as demanded; he gladly sent all his savings through remittance. As days passed by, he began to feel more and more distanced from his wife. After a few weeks, his wife wouldn’t respond to his calls. Ishan was scared.

Late one night, he tried to call her. It was only when he had already started losing hope that someone picked up. The voice of a man came through the receiver. “You’d better not call this number again,” yelled a coarse voice. Ishan’s senses left him; everything turned dark. It was as if time stood still for a moment. He wished it was a nightmare; but alas, everything was real. He fumbled towards the bathroom to take a shower and to return to reality. He began contemplating his life; where had he gone wrong?

He spent his night in the shower sobbing, cursing himself for his naiveté. Waves of memories of his three daughters, his faithful first wife swarmed in. He remembered how indifferent he had been towards those innocent children. Surely, they deserved love from their father. His obsession for a son had led him here today. He thought about his wife who had always been there when he needed her; yet he abused her and left her to suffer alone. He realised that it was satisfaction all one needs to become happy. He lay crying his laments in the shower all night.

Few days after that tortured night, he managed to put himself on a plane back home. When he landed at the airport, he couldn’t figure where he ought to head…the first person he could think of was his old wife but he couldn’t dare to call her—maybe she had already settled with another man. But he wanted to see his daughters one more time; he wanted to apologise to those innocent kids. Gathering some courage, he got on a bus and headed home. There he saw his three daughters playing in the yard. His wife was busy with her sewing.

Nothing had changed since he had left. Nisha saw her father and scampered towards him. He held her in his hands and lifted her up. In the air, in his arms, he kissed her forehead.

The writer is a student of agriculture in Chitwan.