The savior of a rocking boat

 It’s a very unhappy family; its reputation gone, the land sold and the grandfather and the father rank one and rank two as liquor-lovers in the locality. It means the four young daughters, their grandmother, their mother and the youngest boy, the only lamp among many females, somehow wade through the waters. The last piece of land has been sold recently. They are now remaking the crumbling house. The family patriarchs’ role—both of them anciently addicted to booze—in the project is to get sloshed early in the morning and then leave a trail of drunken mischief that sometimes takes even the laborers and bricklayers in its wake. Sometimes the work gets stopped as the entire construction staff is seen rolling in the sand after availing the kind patron’s offer.

Getting boozed up is their sole profession and they have a thoroughly academic approach in the field. The house is now nearly complete. The young daughters, their mother, the son and a very contended looking young man are surveying the proceedings from the terrace. It looks a happy family with a caring and helping young man around. He is a chap from the neighborhood only. He usually fills up most of the blank spots of duties and responsibilities left vacant by the all-time drunk patriarchs. He is all help personified, twenty-four by seven kind of schedule. The rumormongers allege that he makes love to one, most probably two, three or all four girls. He is passionately relevant to their struggle of life. His lovemaking, caring, eager, innovative blends mean that the rickety cart of the unfortunate family somehow moves on. The lover and the ladies stand together and somehow try to outwit the ill-fate’s constantly conjuring brain to put one more hurdle in their path. And the adherents of prudishly structured morals make faces, put up taunts, take jibes. But does that help the family in any way. The people would rarely help as a society. They would just spread endlessly beguiling toxicity. The poisoned fingers would meander to scrape the little healing crust forming over their wounds to keep the scars alive. The ostentatiously shallow ethical code, programming a censored and controlled social fabric, looks with hate at these little holes. But seeing them altogether, surveying the fruit of their labor sends positive vibes; a kind of musical metaphor among the sermonizing cacophony and hypocritical jabber around them. He is definitely moonlighting as a savior of the rocking boat.