As he went along, feeling sad about that, he found two hamalis toiling to push a cartload of cloth bundles.

"Why, men like these too have no way to lighten the burden of their birth,‟ he thought, looking at them. "To be born poor and ugly is a double jeopardy really. Oh, how the color of the skin came to be the measure of the looks! Well, it could be that the white man owes his dominance of the world more to his fair skin than the grey matter of his brain."

Inexplicably, he was seized by an impulse to follow the travails of the hamalis. So, unmindful of the surrounding traffic, he kept course with the cart. As if to shorten their arduous course, the laborers exerted themselves to accelerate their motion. Lost to them, he came in the way of a speeding car.

Bringing the vehicle to a screeching halt, the woman at the wheel yelled at him in her sarcastic tone, “Hi, you find life burdensome?”

Muttering an apology, as he moved away in confusion, she sped past him in irritation. The poignancy of her insensitivity perturbed him as he lumbered along to the dismal destination.

"Won't it seem the color of the skin is the measure of man's worth as well?‟ he thought in humiliation. "Oh, how dark skin devalues man in more ways than one. Would I ever be able to induce a decent dame to become my wife? Why, even Vasavi refused to entertain ungainly men, didn't she? How come, even the ugly seek beauty in their mates? Why not, it's the beauty that triggers the biological impulse.‟

At that, inadvertently, his thoughts turned to his mother.

"What should have been her compulsions to marry my father?‟ he thought. "Being so beautiful she herself that is! If only she married another, perhaps, Vasavi and I could've been differently made, wouldn't we have been? Won't mother be thinking that way, seeing the plight of her children more so her daughter that is?‟

But, on second thoughts, he felt ashamed that he allowed himself to think in those terms.

"The reality of life is unmistakable, isn't it?‟ he felt dejectedly. "It's the fact of heredity that shapes one's looks for good or for bad. Unfortunately for us, we took after our father. Had we acquired our mother's features, and even a shade of her complexion, it would've been all too different. Vasavi would have been a mother many times over by now and I could have been the playboy of the college. Wouldn't that have made all those who snub me envious of me?‟




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