Life or somethign like it

Meesha knew that something bad was about to happen, she knew it as surely as she breathed. She looked around her and then at the dump where she lived. Her mother like usual had come home all beaten up. Her hair was dirty and her lip split open. If it wasn't her dad then it was some other man whom she had been with who had beaten her up this bad. She knew that if she didn't escape soon her mother's fate would become her fate, Where she would be sold for money and where her little brother only six months old would be added to the line of the little miserable beggars who ran around the streets asking people for money. She looked at her mother who seemed like a life less corpse. She had come home or whatever there was of the miserable looking pungent smelling tent and had snuck one of her dads little cigarettes. There was something evil in that cigarette, it always made dad beat mom and mom always started to shake real bad if she didn't get any.

She heard her little brother cry and she crept closer to where her mother lay and removed the torn dirty dupatta off of her baby brother "kaku's" face. She knew that kaku hadn't had any milk to drink since last night and he had been patient the dirty little angel. Even though his face was covered with grime he still looked like a little angel. But every time meesha looked at him her eyes filled with tears because just the other day she had heard dad say to sheikhu, the leader of their miserable little group, "my little kaku will make me proud, just you wait and see he will be the best one armed beggar in the whole group." But meesha looked at kaku and wanted to wail out loudly that he had two arms, how could he be the greatest one-armed beggar. She knew what her dad planned to do to her little kaku and she had to do something before he joined the league of the invalid beggars. Before his arm was mercilessly amputated and he was thrown on the street and his life became a useless routine of begging and eating off the streets.

She knew that it was not far away when she herself joined the ranks of the ruined where she became a carbon copy of her mother. Where she was passed to a new man night after night only to return home all beaten up and abused. She was almost 12 and she knew that it would be any day now. She had to run away she just had to.She heard kaku cry a little louder and she put her pinkie finger on his lips and he began to suck greedily. But when he came up with nothing he began to shriek. 12-year-old meesha grabbed her kaku in her tiny grubby hands and came outside the tent. The sight that greeted her always made her want to scream aloud. She could not be a part of it. Four big men sat around a fire where they spit up paan and wiped their dirty fingers with the one-rupee notes the little kids had collected that day. At one side there sat the one legged beggars and at the other the one armed ones, they laughed loudly and the women who sat beside them cackled loudly with their blackened teeth. This was her miserable life.

She quietly sat near her dad and tugged at his shirt. Angrily he spun around and said, "boal" (what?). "Abba, kaku ko bhook laggi hai" (dad the baby is hungry) meesha said scared. Right that minute kaku decided to let the world know how hungry he was. Meesha's dad who was smoking that nasty cigarette swirled around and slapped meesha on her face sending kaku and her flying to the distance, "chup kar ussay" (keep him quiet) he barked. Meesha who had cuddled into a tight ball to protect kaku stood up shakily her knuckles all bloodied and her cheek stinging. She sent one last hateful glance at her dad and slowly walked away. Away far away never to return to that awful place which was her home and which was to be her life.