Broken (Flash Fiction)

Amrita’s son, Rohan, was soon going to turn five years old. 

“Mummy, can I please come with you and choose my birthday present?” begged Rohan.  Amrita agreed but only if he promised to choose one toy out of the many that were there in the store.

After he pinky-swore, she took him to the toy-store which was at the corner of the street. Rohan was delighted to see the various toys that were there on display, and he jumped up and down with excitement. Amrita reminded him once again that he could only pick one toy out of the lot so he should look around and choose wisely. Rohan scrambled around the whole store and finally came to his mother.
 “Mummy, I know what I want for my birthday!”
He dragged her to the shelf and Amrita was rather surprised to see where he was pointing. Rohan had not chosen any car, action figure or toy-train set. Instead, his finger was pointing at a big doll, wearing a pretty purple dress.
“Are you sure you want this, Rohan?” Amrita asked.
“Yes, Mummy, I want her! She even opens and shuts her eyes!” exclaimed Rohan.
Amrita looked at his earnest face and, without another word, she bought him the doll.

As they were waiting in the lobby for the elevator, Rohan ran into two of his friends. He was smiling and he beamed as he showed them his new precious possession.
“Oh my God, Rohan has got a doll!” his friends exclaimed. “Rohan is a girl! Rohan is a girl!” they chanted and teased him.
Rohan’s eyes immediately welled up with tears as he looked at his friends and then stared at his doll. As soon as he was home, Rohan burst into tears. Amrita tried comforting him but he was inconsolable. Amrita, then, decided to just let him be and she went inside the kitchen to prepare dinner. After a while, finding the house to be unusually quiet, she came out only to find that Rohan had cried himself to sleep and the new doll was lying on the floor – her head dislocated from the rest of her body.

Amrita sighed as she realized that once people are broken in a certain fashion, they can never be fixed. Unfortunately, no one had told her this while she was growing up, as she struggled to give up her boisterous ways to meet the expectations of her parents that their daughter could conduct herself in a lady-like manner. Even today, she was surprised each time she saw people in her life break one by one. The role of being the eldest son had broken the care-free nature of her husband and transformed him into becoming a short-tempered person, always burdened with responsibility. He did not even seem to have the faintest memory of the kind of person he once used to be. She had always worried about the day when Rohan’s turn would come, and today, her heart felt heavy as she realized that it had already happened, perhaps a little too soon.