Jayshree Singh
4 min readSep 10, 2022
  • PARENTING AND PRECARIOUS SCALES
CHILD'S KNOWLEDGE, SPACE FOR SELF

Sheena, a girl of five years of age, lands in a house, a mansion like, her senses had not been that cogitative to realise how she and why she has been there in that house of ushers where every being from older to younger kids with their Mom seemed strange to her. The day passes by, her dumbstruck eyes look for something perhaps she has not forgotten, perhaps she has not known where her moments of being with her own Self has brought her to what sort of place. How she had been driven away from her own prior possession; perhaps something she seems missing somewhere around for whom her eyes are in search. She is silent, but passive to check what’s the change she is finding her around. She is in oblivion, as her little heart, unable to brainstorm her mind to understand what’s the storm she is into. She cannot even feel like to utter an alas! She cannot with her eyes wide open cause a stir why she is so in abrupt state of being lonely! Why she is not with voice or sound, why she is not with someone whom she can voice her silence. Perhaps she has been through!! No, it is not! She talks actually with her mind, and to console her queries she gets her answer from her own spirit. Perhaps that’s the spirit of her being calm, passive, unvoiced, and in oblivion often to explore her own mind with her own power-pack spirit. Sheena then moves to next phase of that same day to evening. She finds the kids have parents, but in actual sense she

doesn’t know the definition of

parents, to find any description to explain what are parents for or about. She finds a few of the kids chirpy who seem to be chatting with their mom, the woman a blue — eyed fair looking, draped in sari, serving, cooking, moving around to and fro to check her four kids and the spouse, in some low but in sound

tone. Sheena suddenly been drawn to certain attention by the man of the house, that seems to be loud, but exudes a sense of affection. All kids around rolling their eyes, a few appear quite stunning with their hands on either sides supporting their confident waist and neck, to evade the new kid to enter in their circle. The assisting forces, certainly the kids of the woman of the house, while the man consciously cautious to save any of the kid to get near to new kid to avoid amongst them any sort of tussle, on account of that, the woman not to feel flared up with the attention given by the man of the house to that five year old girl Sheena. The encounter on the first day with all living members indeed not let Sheena feel closer, but indeed something unexplainable to her own strangeness among the strange vociferous persons reveals her being hesitant perhaps, but not shy, not even as being in relinquished state. That condition surely let her feel as if she had space but her spatial being feels somehow displaced. Late evening all kids have some food, although Sheena in fear of being amidst unknown even forgets the skill of eating, or perhaps her mouth and her young little mind in that state of misplaced disengages with the capacity of chewing food. Somehow the big beautiful but stern authority of the woman helps her to finish food in six hours. Oomph! The woman seem to be in question to herself — is she to show love to Sheena Or is she to be in tune to her occupied chores, and to forget particularly for moments her relation with Sheena.
Anyway finding Sheena with some precarious scales in her temper of adjustment with others, the woman surely would have felt bumping the little girl’s head or her head in the wall, as in midst of that busy schedule perhaps woman felt it is writing on the wall, had their not been many excuses extended by the man of the house to let go the hurry to pursue girl as per expectations, let the new kid has its space to take time, but the new litte girl, as the odd kid among the best and favourite kids seem to get woman understood that Sheena definitely has traits to be dumb, dud, dormant, or a Dumbledore, who despite having been served the first service at dinner, yet finished the food last.

Oh my God!!how terribly Sheena might have raised creeping picture of herself! No! But she did not have that sense too, so much in awe, she was!! Soon the bedtime arrives, all kids in cheering spirit hopping, jumping, cracking, creaking the heavy wooden beds with flexible spongy mattresses, who do not know where and whose place is to at what side or corner or in middle! They appeared to know their access to bedsides quite with their existing knowledge of ownership and to give nudge to their own peers if any such temporal, spatial inequity arises and by chance if any of them might realise amongst themselves. Sheena meanwhile knows not, has she to be in that spaces of the power kids or she has to be not or if she has that power-space💡, could she settle herself in midst of them!! So being senselessly viewing the life of hers that’s flowing in time and space of her mind, and in person she was far and far in her vast unfathomable world of her being to find her track, yet quite stern in her silent

persona to trek in the other’s track. (Here ending a part of a narrative, rest to be in next reading)

Jayshree Singh
Jayshree Singh

Written by Jayshree Singh

https://medium.com/@1967jayshreesingh A prolific creative writer as a researcher and critic so credited with Publications more

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