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Everyone called him my father, my only surviving relative and guardian. But to me, he is just a pair of piercing eyes. I never saw him in front of me. It was always a feeling - a feeling of piercing and burning intensity passing through me from behind - a feeling of someone, some ghost-like being trying to clutch me within its tentacles and me always trying to run away from it. This was from the day I started recognising the world around me. My attempt, my aim, my ambition was to run, run and run if necessary into absolute void itself. Every cell in my body, my consciousness cried out - “ESCAPE from those hunting and haunting eyes�.

I never could imagine that a look from behind could destroy a person so completely. There was a time when I longed that I too had had a father like the other kids. Shouting if I had done anything wrong, even beating me black and blue if that wrong was grave enough. I would have jumped with joy if only I were beaten thoroughly for such a misdeed instead of getting this nerve-shattering silent look. But it was not to be. It was always these eyes from behind, frightening in the beginning, puzzling later and devastatingly irritating in the end.

It was not that I had not tried to resist it. I tried all sorts of tricks to stop it and a good solid punishment like any other healthy kid.

I tried breaking my slate too often or loosing my books. I tried solving my clothes, pinching my neighbour’s little ones, beating my class­mates, having a good fight with them for the least provocation and finally playing truant to school. The look became more intense. That was all. No punishment. No advice. No cajoling. No extraction of a promise for good behaviour with a dangling of a tempting present. Nothing. It was a void. It was not even a void. It was HELL. It was always HIM. Not like a father but like an extracting SATAN just waiting to engulf you at the earliest unguarded movement of yours.

I do wish that other fathers would take a lesson from the tragedy of my life and be just fathers to their kids, sharing their joys, little agonies and small triumphs.

I became bad and then worse like any other unsocial character. First I stole pencils and erasers. Then hens and cocks from neighbours. I graduated to a pick-pocket and finally to a burglar. I attained the status of ‘local goonda�. Then promoted myself to district level. Layers of decency and social fineness were gradually peeled away from me in my attempt to coax him to be a father to me. I mean not a father who provides for me, but a father who would share my troubles, and tribulations in an affectionate and exhibitive way and not in a suppressed fashion. Rich ones took my help, politicians gave me protection, got involved in murders of their planning along with their henchmen. Finally on a day of reckoning, I was thrown as a red herring by a land-lord for Raji’s murder, done obviously by his men.

I loved Raji. I met her when I was lying bleeding and unconscious in the bushes by the side of her hut, stabbed by the brother of a girl I had wronged. From that moment till her last, she took complete care of my body and soul.

She was an angel. Looking at her face itself, I could forget all my past and future. Only a blissful present was present when I was with her. The ugly world just melted in her presence. For the first time in my life, I knew what it was to be loved and why people called ‘LOVE� divine.

That bliss did not last long. One fine morning, she went for work in the field nearby and did not return. That night I moved heaven and earth to find her, but to no avail. Next morning, she appeared as corpse in the pond nearby.

Now I am convicted for my Raji’s murder! Anyhow, the world has no meaning to me now. Not even the devilish phenomena which made me what I am. The court ordered my execution. I am going to be hanged till I die in three days. I am happy that I am going to escape that tearing agony of those eyes and join Raji there above. Anyhow, the other world cannot be worse than this one.

People came to the cell and told me that my father has been one who believed that a child, when left to itself, would grow naturally and it is not good that one should interfere with the child’s natural behaviour. But as a child, I did not know that theory. Even if I did, I would not have understood it. Of course, I do not understand any of it even now.

I heard that he has been repenting for all that has happened to me, blaming himself for the devastating ruin of my life. They told me that he surrendered to the police claiming that he was the culprit and not I for what had happened. The police shoed him away as a raving mad man. I believe he has been on his death bed wishing only to be there in the other world before me. My soul is in torment. This is real hell in its insuled form. Now that she wants to go over with me to that unknown another world also, I do not want to die. I want to LIVE, LIVE atleast as a final escape from him.