UNTIL THE AGE OF FOUR I LIVED SOMEWHERE IN JAMMU and Kashmir with my father and mother, my brothers and my sister. Baba, my father, worked there. It was a beautiful place with tall, high mountains and many different kinds of flowers. From there Baba took us to Murshidabad. After we had been there awhile, Baba was transferred to Dalhousie and we went to live there. Dalhousie reminded me a lot of Jammu and Kashmir. Snow would fall from the sky, the snowflakes swirling around like a swarm of bees, and settle gently on the ground. And when it rained, it was impossible to leave the house, so we would just play inside, or we’d watch the rain falling from our windows. We loved Dalhousie and we stayed there for quite a long time. We’d go out walking every day. We were so happy, just looking at all the flowers on the hillsides. We played all sorts of games among the flowers, and sometimes a rainbow would arch across the mountains, filling my heart with joy.
We wept when Baba took us to Murshidabad again, where my elder uncle, our Jetha, lived. Baba rented a house for us, and sent us children to school. Then he left us and went off to his job again. Every month he would send money home to cover our household expenses. At first the money would arrive regularly, but then, gradually, there were gaps of several months. Ma found it very difficult to make do: how could she not? After a while, even his letters began to arrive only after long gaps. Ma wrote letter upon letter to him, but there was never any response. Baba was so far away that Ma could not even go there. She was very worried, but despite all her difficulties, she did not let us stop studying.
Several years passed before Baba came home again. We were so happy to see him. But after a month or two, he was gone again. For a short while, he sent home money regularly, but then the same old pattern started again. Ma was so angry and frustrated that she often took it out on us. She asked our Jetha for help, but he was having a difficult enough time making ends meet for his own family. Meanwhile, Didi, my elder sister, was growing up, and that was another worry on Ma’s head. Ma asked Baba’s friends for help, but none of them was in a position to take on the burden of another family. Ma also thought of getting a job, but that would have meant going out of the house, which she had never done. And after all, what work could she do? Another of her worries was, what would people say? But worrying about what people will say does not help to fill an empty stomach, does it?
Then, one day, without any warning, Baba turned up. Ma burst into tears when she saw him. And all of us began to cry, too. My Jetha and others in the neighbourhood tried hard to explain to Baba that going off like this was not the right thing to do, but he did not seem to be convinced. He just left Ma and went off again. She was in a terrible state. I was a little better off than she because at least I had some friends, especially Tutul and Dolly, whom I could always talk to and who loved me a lot.
A short while after Baba left this time, he wrote us a letter to say that he’d soon be retiring and coming back home. We were overjoyed, but when Baba eventually came home, he did not seem at all happy to have retired. He would not speak to us or to Ma properly, and he’d lose his temper at the smallest things. We were a little frightened of him, and now we began to keep out of his way—whenever we saw him coming, we would creep away.
Didi was growing up, and Ma could not stop worrying about her. One day my younger uncle from Karimpur wrote to say that he had found a possible match for her. As soon as he read my uncle’s letter, Baba quickly packed a few things, took my sister, and, without saying anything to anyone, left for Karimpur. Ma was really upset. She kept saying she couldn’t live like this anymore. When, she asked God, would she have peace in her life? Suddenly it all became too much for her, and one day, with grief in her heart and my little brother in her arms, she just walked away from home.
At first we thought she’d just gone to the market as usual. But when she didn’t return even after a couple of days, we realized that something was amiss, and all of us began to cry. Our Jetha, who lived nearby, tried to reassure us, saying that perhaps she had gone to visit her brother and would be back soon. Baba was in Karimpur when she left and four days later, when he came back, he asked us what she had said before leaving. We told him she had said she was going to the market. He then went to her brother’s house in search of her, but she wasn’t there. He searched every place where she could have possibly gone, but there was no trace of her. He was completely at a loss—he’d looked everywhere and was now really worried because there was nowhere else to look.
Finally, someone suggested that he should consult a faith healer and see if he could help. And so Baba set off in that direction. He kept doing this: someone would suggest one thing and he’d go off and do that, and someone else would suggest something else and he would turn around and do that. But he must have known—just as all the people in our neighborhood had perhaps guessed—why she had left. And everyone blamed him, saying she wouldn’t have left if it had just been a question of a little bickering. These things upset us a lot, but there was not much we could do. Baba was also unhappy. These nagging worries had changed him a lot. He was also very concerned about Didi. How could a grown girl be kept at home once the mother had gone? Didi wasn’t even that old—just fifteen or so. But Baba wasn’t willing to wait, and he just married her off so that no one would have anything left to say.
It was only after Didi went away that we realized how difficult things could be without a mother. When the moment had come for Didi to leave, she’d cried, saying that if Ma had not gone, we wouldn’t have had to shoulder this burden. “You’re sending me off,” she told Baba, “but now the responsibility of looking after these young children will be yours. They have no one else to call their own.” Didi left and our problems began in earnest. Baba never stayed at home. Sometimes he would give us money and tell us to get ourselves something to eat. But he would still say: “Whatever you do, don’t forget to study.”
That was why, in the midst of all this hardship and trouble, we never stopped going to school. I had a good friend in school whose mother often called me home and gave me something to eat, and even asked me to stay with them. Our school headmaster was also very kind to me. He gave me notebooks and pencils, and after Ma left and our tuitions stopped, he got his daughter to give me free tuitions.
I loved school as much as I hated home. I never wanted to go home—there was no one there who appreciated my work in the same way as my teachers at school, so there was no incentive for me to go back. The days when there was no school stretched out forever, and I missed Ma and Didi terribly, so whenever I got the chance, I’d run off to play with my friends. I used to love playing games with them! We played kit-kit, lukochuri, and rumalchuri and skipped to our hearts’ content, and the hours would just melt away.
I never missed a day of school, and often people did not know that I’d come to school without having eaten a thing. I was too scared of Baba to tell him there was no food. One day a friend of mine came to our house to fetch me so we could go to school together. I quickly got ready to go. My friend told me I should eat something before we left, and I blurted out that there was nothing in the house to eat. Baba heard this. I didn’t know he was at home, or else I would not have said anything. That day, when I came home from school, he beat me so badly that it was three days before I could get up and many more before I felt able to go back to school again. My teachers and friends came to ask after me.
As soon as my brother was a little older, he decided he could not live with Baba, and so he went to stay with my aunt. Once he got there, he realized that she wasn’t too well off, either, and was only just managing to scrape by herself. At home now there was only Baba, myself, and my younger brother. Our Jetha thought the best way to put our family back together again was to get Baba to remarry. When he first suggested this, Baba resisted, but very soon he came around to the idea.
My stepmother never listened to anything Baba said. She never fed us on time, she often beat us without reason, and she’d cook up tales about us and tell Baba and we’d get beaten by him as well. Baba was not willing to listen to anything we had to say, and there were times when he would refuse even to look at us. There was nothing we could do. When Jetha realized what was going on, he called Baba and explained to him that before he punished the children he should at least try to find out whether they were at fault. After being told this, Baba began to change. He began to realize that not everything our stepmother told him about us was true. But then, the moment he began to question her, things became much worse at home. Whenever things became unbearable, he would take her to her brother’s home and leave her there. There her father and brother often tried to reason with her, but the moment she came back to our home, everything was the same again. She would not feed us properly, nor treat us well. Things got so bad that sometimes we—and even Baba—were forced to try to cook our own meals. Since we were still so small, we would sometimes burn our fingers in the process. While all this was going on, Baba started something—a business perhaps—that took him away from home for two or three days at a stretch, but the moment he returned he’d have to listen to our tales of woe about not being properly fed or looked after.
Days and weeks and months went by like this, and then suddenly one day Baba announced that he had to go to Dhanbad for an interview for a driver’s job. He told Jetha he was going and he came back a month later. He was only at home a few days before he was off again, leaving us in Jetha’s care. And this time he was away for many months. He didn’t send us any money, either, and we were in real difficulty. He turned up out of the blue one day and took us both and our stepmother to Dhanbad, where he’d been given a place to stay. My brother and I were sent back to school. He did not bother to buy us books and notebooks, but we managed somehow. I loved school and worked hard. Perhaps that is why I had so many well-wishers there. I don’t quite know how Baba spent the money he earned, but I do know that he used to drink, and that this had become much worse after my real Ma left.
We’d been in Dhanbad only a few days when Baba got a job in a factory in Durgapur. So he left us with a friend who was like a sister to him and went off to Durgapur. Even though she wasn’t a blood relation, she was really good to us, but when the money Baba had left with her for our expenses ran out, she became very worried. What would she do now? After a lot of thought she decided it would be best to send my brother and me to her father, and to send my new Ma to her brother. By the time she made this decision, Kali Puja had come round. On Puja night, everyone wore new, colorful clothes to celebrate, and there was a general atmosphere of festivity. But not for us. My brother and I sat on our doorstep and watched all this, and we cried.
I was really angry with Baba. Because of him we had to listen to all sorts of things from people. They would say things like, “Even though you have parents, you might as well be orphans”; and “Your father works somewhere far away, and that’s why you are in this state”; and “If you don’t have a mother, you have no one!”
Baba came back a few days after Kali Puja. It was the middle of the night. We were all asleep, but when we heard his voice we woke up with a start. He called us to him and gave us the good news that Ma had returned, and it made us so happy. I asked him again and again where she was, and he said that if you both want to meet her you will have to come with me now. He then told our new Ma a lie. He said, “I am going to your father’s house. Tomorrow morning, take the train and join me there. I don’t want to delay things any further right now. There are also some people I owe money to.” He added, “If they see me they will demand to be paid and I don’t have any money, so it’s best to leave quietly.” He lied to her like this and took us with him and left. When we got to Durgapur we found that the woman Baba was calling our mother was another mother altogether. I said to my brother, “How much more do you think we will have to bear?” and he began to cry. Our third mother could not bear to see him cry, so she gathered him in her arms and began to soothe him. That made me think that perhaps we would get love from her, but the reality that unfolded was quite different.
Baba would not let our third mother out of the house: she wasn’t even allowed to go to the tap to fetch water. If water was needed, we were sent out for it. And we were so frightened of Baba that we did not dare say anything. The people in our neighborhood felt very sorry for us, but they, too, could not do anything. This mother’s sister, that is, our aunt, was a very simple and loving woman. She cared for us a lot. Sometimes she would take us to her home, but Baba did not like that. She tried to tell her sister to treat us better, but our third ma said, “What can I do? I’m only following their father’s wishes.” We used to think that she, too, did not like her sister taking us away to her home.
Baba had brought us to Durgapur, but he did not say a word about us starting school again. I had become so used to going to school that once all the household chores were done, I would go off anyway with other children from our neighborhood. But Baba was not happy about this. One day one of the girls from our neighborhood saw me standing at the edge of our road and crying. She told Baba. He came and asked me why I was crying, and through my sobs I told him that I was really missing Ma and asked why he had lied to us about her having come back. This ma was not our real ma…Baba’s eye suddenly fell on the coin I was clutching in my hand, and he asked me what it was. I had to tell him then that it was the ten-paisa coin Ma had pressed into my palm the day she left and that every time I saw it I remembered Ma.
Baba felt very bad at this. Gently, he asked me what my brother and I wanted. I said I wanted to study. A few days after this Baba sent me to Jetha’s house, saying I should stay there and that way I could carry on with my studies as well. But he never once considered that Jetha did not have a lot of money to spare, that his health was not particularly good, and that it would be unfair to impose this burden on him. Once there, I realized there was no way I could carry on studying, so I decided to at least seek out my old school friends. First I went to see Tutul. She had just come back from school and was really happy to see me. I used to call her mother Kaki-ma, and when she saw me, she welcomed me and quickly cooked some food for the two of us. Kaki-ma’s kindness reminded me of my own mother and my hand stilled while eating. When Kaki-ma asked if anything was the matter, I told her that had my mother been there, she, too, would have fed me with the same care and love. Kaki-ma merely said, “Yes, child, but what is to be done? It’s your fate to not have a mother even while you do have one.”
After eating, Tutul and I started chatting, and then we went off to meet our other friend, Dolly. Dolly was a beautiful Brahmin girl and our fathers knew each other. One day, when Dolly’s father asked me about Baba, I gave him all the news and also told him everything about myself. Dolly’s Baba talked to the school headmaster, who knew me because I had been a student in his school. I was really happy when he told me to start coming to school the next day. And so I started at school again.
But now another problem came up. Because I was now living in Jetha’s house, my third ma found it really difficult to cope with all the household tasks. And one day she and Baba arrived at Jetha’s house to take me away. Jetha refused to let me go, saying, “She’s going to school and doing so well, I will not let her go away.” But Baba insisted and said all kinds of terrible things to him. In the end, Jetha gave in, but he told them that if they made me unhappy there was no way they would get any happiness themselves.
They took me away from Jetha’s house, and once again my studies stopped. Now I thought of only two things: whether I was asleep or awake, my thoughts would constantly turn to my studies and my mother. I had heard that excess of worry makes people ill, and sure enough, that happened to me. Baba took me to a hospital, but the doctors were unable to diagnose my illness. This worried Baba, and he called in another doctor. I told the doctor everything that had been worrying me, and he was very angry with Baba, and scolded him.
Gradually I got better. One day, while I was still in the hospital, I woke in the morning to find my bedsheets wet with blood. I was frightened and I began to cry. The nurse heard me and came to find out what was wrong, but I was so scared I could not say anything to her. But then she noticed the sheet and asked me if anything like this had happened to me before. I said no, and she understood the reason for my fear. A few people had gathered there and they were all smiling. Patients in the other beds tried to explain to me that there was nothing to worry about, that this happens when girls grow up. The doctor came and told me I was well now and could go home. I begged the nurse to allow me to stay on for a few days, but she said there was nothing wrong with me, and that all would be well if I followed her instructions.
Baba came and took me home. When my new Ma saw me, I thought she looked a little concerned. I went in for a bath and when I had finished I saw her looking at my bloodstained clothes. I told her what had happened in the hospital and then I thought she was telling Baba something—he looked a bit worried, too, although he did not say anything. In fact, every time I looked at him, it seemed that he was thinking about me, but I did not have the courage to ask what was on his mind.
NOW, ONCE AGAIN, I BEGAN TO WORRY ABOUT MY STUDIES. Perhaps Baba understood what was in my heart, although he did not say anything because he knew that my new Ma would not want him to talk to me about it. I was constantly surprised by her behavior. At times she would be so loving toward my brother and me, and then suddenly we would become the cause of tension and conflict between her and Baba, and the whole house would become a battlefield. Baba’s behavior had changed, too. He no longer scolded me, and if I did anything wrong or made any mistakes, he would simply say, “You’re not a child anymore. You should be more careful.” He told me so often that I was no longer a child that I began to wonder if perhaps I had grown up after all.
Slowly, I began to see signs that told me this indeed was so. One day I was sitting on the chowki, reading aloud, when I suddenly looked up and saw Baba watching me intently. He was listening carefully to what I was reading. When he saw me looking at him he asked me if I would like to go to my aunt’s house. I made no answer. I don’t know if he thought I was being rude, but he did not say anything. Earlier, if I did not reply to something he asked, he would sternly tell me off.
I think the boy who lived in the hotel behind our house, like Baba, had also begun to think I was now grown up. Every time I sat down to read in the room, I would find him watching me from his window. If I went to fetch water from the tap outside, he would come and stand there and watch me. One day I noticed him talking to my brother and pointing at me. I think he was asking about me. Another day I saw him asking a friend I used to play with about me. She came and told me afterward, and asked, “Why does that boy want to know everything about you?”
“What’s so strange about that? Everyone here wants to know everything about everybody. But don’t tell Baba about him—otherwise he’ll beat me up.” She kept smiling at me as if she knew something I didn’t—that’s why I had to add that.
This friend of mine was named Krishna. She was short and fair, with a slightly crooked tooth, but she was still good-looking. Her sister, Mani, was also lovely. The three of us took tuitions together. I remember that one day there was no electricity and we were sitting and studying by the light of a lamp. I tried to move the lamp a bit and the hot glass brushed against the teacher’s knee! I was scared to death! Now he’s sure to tell Baba and then I’ll get a beating, I thought. But he did nothing of the sort. He just kept quiet. But even though he did not give the incident any importance, Krishna and Mani kept reminding me of it and teasing me.
They must have also told their father about me, for one day their Baba and mine talked a lot about me and my brother. Their father asked Baba why he did not let his children be children. “Why do you keep scolding them all the time?” he asked. “Why don’t you let them play when they want to? You’re always stopping them playing, or going out if they want to…They’re still children, after all: do you have to keep them busy with household chores all the time? Don’t you think they want to go out and play, like all children do? Your daughter is so scared of you that even when she is ill she dare not tell you. And anyway, what good would it do even if she does? She also knows that. Tell me: is this right?”
Krishna’s father was not wrong. When my mother left, she took all the joy in our lives with her. Baba did not allow me to wear bangles; I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone, to play with anyone, and often not even allowed out of the house. I was so scared of being beaten that I would look for opportunities to go out and play only when I knew he was not around to stop me. I was only eleven or twelve years old at the time, and I used to think that no one could be as unfortunate as me. I used to think that only I knew what it means to lose a mother. Sometimes when I thought about Ma, I would think that if it had been Baba who had left instead of her, perhaps things would not have been so bad. After all, what had Baba given us, except fear? I used to think that perhaps there were no children who feared their own father as much as we did. His appearance, with his round, plump face; his tall, solid frame; and his huge moustache, did not help. He frightened everyone away—other children were scared even to come near him!
I longed for my mother. I used to think that if only I could have her love and support, my fear of Baba would be manageable. Had she been around, I would not have had to abandon my studies: of this I was sure. She wanted so much for me to study. In fact, had it not been for her, and her support and constant encouragement, I would not have studied even as much as I had. It was only now that I was able to appreciate how important it was to be able to read and write. The years I had spent at school had taught me that much at least. History was my favorite subject. I loved it and really enjoyed it, and perhaps that was why the history teachers also liked me. They used to tell us about different battles, about the Rani of Jhansi, about Nawab Sirajudowlah, about all sorts of kings and queens and nobles. I often wished I could meet all the people whose stories we heard. I would have liked to have talked to them. And whenever I studied history, I would remember my mother. I don’t know why…I just did. Maybe it was somehow connected to the things that our neighbors used to say about us—about how such a well-knit family had fallen apart with just the departure of one person. Or perhaps it was that Rani Lakshmi Bai’s story—about how she took her little boy and fled with him on her horse—reminded me of the day Ma took my little brother and left us. But then I thought, What’s the use of wondering and speculating? History reminded me of Ma, just as women walking down the road did, and that was all.
Baba also kept on searching for Ma. Every time he came home from somewhere, the first question we asked him was whether he had any news of Ma. He’d say, “No, child,” and then he’d let out a long sigh. I felt very bad for him at such times. I thought that finally he was beginning to understand that if he had not treated her so badly, she would never have left. And yet he was the same father who seemed so happy when our new Ma came into the house. It was difficult to tell whether he was really happy or not.
It was a few days after Krishna’s Baba had talked to mine that Baba called me and asked if I wanted to live at my elder aunt’s house. At the time I had not answered. Shortly afterward, I heard him talking to my new Ma. They were talking about my marriage. I had no idea what marriage was. All I knew was that it was an occasion for song and dance, that often lots of people went to marriages and had lots of fun.
I had only one elder aunt, and she was very fond of me, so even though I had not answered when Baba had asked me if I wanted to go and stay with her, when he did send me there, I was very happy. My elder brother was already with her—he was working in a large restaurant. I stayed at my aunt’s home for some months, and those days passed well for me. My aunt would take her daughter and me out somewhere every evening, and every night she would tell us stories. It was while listening to a story of hers one night that I was suddenly reminded of a funny story that my friend Dolly used to tell us. I started to laugh, and my cousin asked me what was so funny. When I told her, she insisted that I should tell her the story. And I was keen to tell it as well, so I said to her, “Okay, so listen…”
Once upon a time there was a jackal and a village headman. The headman’s garden was full to overgrowing with aubergines. When the jackal saw the aubergines his mouth began to water, and he began to wonder how he could get at them. There was a fence of thorns surrounding the headman’s garden. But the jackal just had to get to the aubergines. He began to imagine what would happen if he ran back and took a running jump into the garden. He was just about to try when the headman woke up and, frightened, the jackal ran away. After this, the jackal would go to the garden every day, looking for an opportunity to jump in, but would return in the evening disappointed. One day, as he was passing by the headman’s house, he saw the headman’s wife making pithas and her husband sitting there eating them, one after the other. The jackal hid and watched him. Once he’s eaten, the jackal thought to himself, he will surely go to sleep…
I had only gotten this far when my aunt sternly told us to stop chattering and go to bed. But my cousin insisted that I finish the story. So I said, “Okay, listen again…”
The jackal had thought that the headman would eat his fill and sleep soundly. And that is exactly what happened. Overjoyed, the jackal took a running leap to get to the aubergines and…fell hard on the fence of thorns. Thorns stuck into his paws, his legs, his whole body—and he fell to the ground bleeding. Instead of gorging on aubergines, he spent the whole night picking thorns out of his skin. Come morning, he was still hidden from the headman, picking out thorns, but no matter how hard he tried, there was one stubborn thorn, stuck in his ear, that he could not pull out. Finally, when he could bear it no more, he went to the headman’s house, crying, “Brother, are you there? Are you there?” He began to bang on the door.
The headman asked, “Who’s that at this unearthly hour?”
“It’s me, Brother, the jackal.”
“What’s wrong? Why are you knocking at my door so early?” the headman asked.
The jackal said, “Please come out.”
So the headman came out, and what did he see? The jackal all covered in blood.
“What happened to you, jackal?” the headman asked.
“Don’t ask, Brother…I tried to get into your garden to steal aubergines and…”
The headman was furious. “Why are you disturbing me now?” he snapped The jackal told him that he’d spent hours pulling out thorns but there was one stuck in his ear that he just could not reach, so he’d come to the headman for help. The headman was angry anyway that the jackal had dared to get into his garden to steal, so he thought, “Let me teach this fellow a lesson.”
“All right, but what if your ear gets cut when I’m taking out the thorn?” he asked.
“No matter,” the jackal said, “if my ear gets cut, at least it will be for a good cause.”
So, instead of pulling out the thorn, the headman cut the jackal’s ear in that exact place. The ear began to bleed, but the jackal did not say anything. Just as he was about to leave, he turned and said, “Brother, you have cut my ear, now what will you give me in exchange?”
“I have nothing to give you,” the headman said, “but if you like you can take this spade for digging.”
The jackal took the spade and left.
On the way he met a farmer who was scraping at the earth with his hands. The jackal asked why he was using his hands, and the farmer replied that he had nothing else. “I have this spade,” said the jackal. “I can give it to you, but you will have to give me something in exchange.” The farmer took the spade and said to the jackal, “I have nothing to give you. All I have is this staff that I use for grazing the cows. Would you like it?”
“Why not?” said that jackal. “I’ll take it.”
Halfway through the story my cousin said, “It’s getting late. Let’s go to sleep now—we’ll hear the rest of the story tomorrow.” I asked if she would remember the story so far, and she said yes. Then both of us went off to sleep. We woke late in the morning to a scolding from Aunt, who told us off for oversleeping, and warned us to sleep on time that night and not to spend our time chatting. But that night, no sooner had Aunt left us than my cousin said, “Okay, now tell me the rest of the story, but make sure you whisper so she does not get to know that we are awake.” I asked her if she remembered where we had left off, that the jackal was about to take the farmer’s stick in exchange for his spade? “Yes, yes,” she replied. “Now get on with the rest.” So I said, “All right, so listen…”
The jackal took the staff and went on his way. A short distance later, what does he see but a peasant using his bare hands to chase a cow away! So he asked, “Brother, what are you doing?”
The peasant said, “This cow is eating up all my grain, so I am trying to make it run away.”
“But how can you do that with your bare hands?” the jackal asked. “I have this staff…would you like to take it?”
“Why not? I’ll take it.”
So the jackal gave it to him. “Will you give me something in exchange?”
“But what if the staff breaks?” said the peasant.
“Well, what if it does? At least it will have been put to good use.”
The peasant said, “But I have nothing to give you…except, wait. I have this small shovel.”
“All right,” said the jackal, “give me whatever you have.” And so saying, he took the shovel and went on his way.
A little further along, he met another farmer who was digging mud with kitchen tongs. When the jackal saw him he asked, “Is this all you could find to dig with?” The farmer replied that he had nothing else. So the jackal said, “I can give you this shovel if you like.”
“Okay, give it to me,” replied the farmer, “but what if it breaks?”
And once again the jackal said, “Well, so what? At least it will have been put to good use.”
When the farmer began digging, the shovel broke into two pieces.
“Hey, Brother, why have you broken my shovel?” said the jackal. “Now you’ll have to give me a new one or give me something else in exchange.”
The farmer said, “You may have lost your shovel, but other than these tongs I have nothing to give you. Please take these if you wish.”
The jackal took the tongs and headed off again. Suddenly he felt hungry. In the distance he spied a house and headed toward it. He saw a woman sitting by the stove, stirring rice with a stick. “Sister, what are you doing?” asked the jackal. “I am very hungry. Please give me some of that rice you are cooking.” The woman turned to her husband: “Just look at this jackal! The food isn’t even ready yet and he wants to eat!”
“She is right,” the jackal told the man, “but what can I do? I’m dying of hunger.”
“Well, just have a little patience,” the wife replied, “the food is nearly done.”
Then the jackal and the man and woman all sat down to eat together. After they’d finished, the jackal said, “I have eaten so well, but I have nothing to give you other than this small thing.” The husband asked to see what it was, so the jackal showed him the tongs, saying, “This is no use to you, but it might come in use for your wife.” The woman took the tongs happily.
“You’ve got something useful,” said the jackal, “but what about me? Do you mean to send me away empty-handed?” To this the woman replied, “My husband has a drum…would you like to take that?” The jackal said, “All right, give me that.” He took the drum and left, and he was happy that in the end he had found something he wanted.
All along the way he beat the drum and sang:
I went to eat aubergines and I left behind my ear,
in exchange for the ear I got a spade,
tak duma dum dum dum dum,
in exchange for the spade, I got a stick,
tak duma dum dum dum dum,
in exchange for the stick, I got a shovel,
tak duma dum dum dum dum,
in exchange for the shovel, I got some tongs,
tak duma dum dum dum dum,
in exchange for the tongs, I got a drum,
tak dum dum dudum dudum.
And singing away, he made his way home.
By the time I got to the end of the story, I was quite sleepy and I nodded off. Sometime later, I awoke and I don’t know why, but at that moment, a memory powerfully came back to me of the ten-paise coin my mother had pressed into my palm the day she had left home. One day my aunt took that coin from me and threw it away. After that, I searched high and low for it, but it was nowhere to be found. I was just thinking about this and wondering what my aunt had done to the only thing my mother had left me to remember her by when I was startled to hear a slight noise. I looked to see what it was and found that my cousin was talking in whispers with someone outside the room. Then it seemed as if she went somewhere. After a while she came back and quietly lay down next to me. I looked toward the window to see how late it was when I saw a boy standing there. He shone his torch into our room, and I quickly closed my eyes lest he should see.
After that, I couldn’t get to sleep at all. In the morning, I wondered if I should tell Aunt what had happened during the night, but then I felt scared. I thought, What if she says something to me instead? What would I do? After a lot of thought, I decided to stay silent. But I was dying to tell someone: that secret kept flapping around inside me! In the end, when I just couldn’t keep it in any longer, I told the whole story to two sisters, Sandhya and Ratna, who lived next door to my aunt. They advised me not to speak of this to anyone. “She’s your aunt’s daughter,” they said, “and she will not say anything to her, but she may just turn around and accuse you of something. You’d better be careful. She knows you have no one to speak up for you and take your side.”
After what happened that night, I felt very depressed and I increasingly felt the need to go away, at least for a short while. When I told my aunt this, she asked me where I wanted to go. I said, “Maybe to my sister’s home? Just for a couple of days?”
“But what if your Baba comes to pick you up when you’re not here? What will I say to him?”
“What’s the problem? He can just as easily collect me from his elder daughter’s home, can’t he?”
So then she asked her son to take me to my sister’s house.
When I arrived and my Didi saw me, she began to cry. She kept saying that she had no mother, she had no one and none of us cared for her. I realized she was not happy in her marriage, but I put that thought out of my head and took her little baby into my arms. Didi told the child, “Look, this is your aunt.” We had heard that Didi had had a little boy, but Baba had not gone to see her after the child’s birth and he had not allowed us to do so, either. “If Ma had been around, she would have dropped everything and come to see me and her grandchild,” she said.
Didi and I were talking when her husband came back. He gave a shout of joy when he saw me. “Oh, Sister-in-law! I thought you had forgotten all about us!” His voice brought the rest of the household out, and in no time at all we were laughing and crying and talking all at once.
I spent a whole month with my Didi and the time passed very well. Didi’s brother-in-law would take me out every evening to show me something or the other. Didi kept asking me why I went out every day. “If Baba hears about this, he will not be happy.” But no one paid any heed to what she said. Her brother-in-law laughed and joked and teased me all the time. He used to spend a lot of time with me. In fact, he would keep talking to me and following me even when I was going off to sleep with his mother. Sometimes I would get quite fed up with him and he would reduce me to tears. But whenever that happened my Didi was always kind to me, and she would call me to her. Didi was round and plump—a bit like my father—and there were times when my cousins would tease her, call her “elephant” and try to make her angry. But even her brother-in-law had to stop teasing me when she told him off.
The days passed pleasantly in laughter and jokes with Didi’s husband and her brother-in-law. I spent my time with her child, bathing him, talking to Didi about Ma and all our memories of old times spent in our home. Before I knew it, nearly a month had passed, and one day I heard that Baba, my new Ma, and my brother had come, and they were staying with my aunt. They’d come to have a bit of a break but also to fetch me. Didi sent a message that they must come to her home, that she considered our new Ma like our real mother so Baba should not hesitate to bring her with him. Two or three days after this message was sent, Baba brought everyone with him and came to Didi’s home. Her husband and everyone at their home were extremely hospitable and they made them welcome. Of course many people whispered things about our new Ma, but the others decided there was no point in paying attention to such things and they just ignored them.
AFTER A WHILE AT DIDI’S PLACE, BABA TOOK ME BACK TO Aunt’s house. Everyone was sorry to see me go—I’d been feeling sad ever since I had heard that he was coming to take us away, but there were tears even in Baba’s eyes as we left. As she came out of the house, Didi was also crying, and she kept saying that whatever had to happen with her had already happened, but now her sister should not suffer the same fate.
When we got to Aunt’s house, I heard that her daughter was to get married in some eight or ten days. This was the same girl to whom I had recounted the tale of the jackal and the farmer and then she had run out to meet the boy I’d seen at the window. I was happy to hear that she was to get married, but I was also a bit upset to hear that Baba had not taken enough time off from his workplace to be able to stay for the wedding, and that he also wanted to take me back with him—in fact, he’d come all the way to fetch me. My aunt realized what I was thinking and said to Baba, “If it’s not possible for you to stay on, at least leave this poor motherless girl with me here.” But Baba had made up his mind and refused to budge. Frustrated, my aunt suggested that at least he should meet my elder uncle before he left. Just when it seemed Baba might relent, our new mother interrupted and said they could not afford to delay. Having said that, they turned and left me and my brother in the room and went away.
Aunt was angry with Baba, and no sooner had he and my stepmother stepped out than she began to tell us all sorts of tales about him: things that we had not heard before and would not, even in our wildest imaginings, have thought. But they did not seem to be things said in anger. She told us that Baba had always been plump and round; that even as a child, he used to eat a lot, and because of this everyone called him Nadu Gopal, although his real name was Upendranath. He had not studied much but he had managed to get a good job. And this he got in the strangest way. One day he was working in the courtyard outside his home when an army van passed by. The people inside saw this healthy, well-built man and they called out to him and asked him to get into the van. Soon after that, people heard that he had joined the army. When my uncle heard this he was downcast: he felt he had lost his right arm, and did not know how he would manage. In those days everyone was afraid of army jobs because they were said to turn good men into rogues and this is why my grandmother was so angry when my father, his father, and one of their friends turned up at her house to see the woman who was to become our mother. But then, if it had not been fated that our mother, Ganga, would marry Upendranath, our father, how would it have happened?
Baba liked Ganga the moment he saw her. One day he turned up alone at her house to see her. He learned that she had gone to the village pond to bathe. When he managed to find the pond, he found that Ganga had finished her bath and was on her way back. She got really nervous when she saw him and quickly hid herself somewhere—she’d heard that military men were very violent and that they beat up women. Anyway, he did not manage to meet her that time, nor on several successive visits. Ganga’s mother would get very irritated at his persistence. “This fellow just will not leave my daughter alone. He’s determined to take her away,” she said. And of course she was right.
Very soon things began moving, an auspicious time was fixed, and the marriage took place. Upendranath spent two or three months with his bride and then returned to his job. He wrote to his wife once a month, and he came home when my Didi was born. When he arrived, my grandmother put the child in his arms, saying: “She looks just like you.” Baba started to laugh, at which my mother made a face and said sourly, “Look at the way he’s laughing! He’s so happy that he’s got a daughter, and he’s come running all this way. He’s finally remembered that he has a home and a wife.” My grandmother tried to tell Ma to be quiet: “He’s come home after such a long time,” she said, “and instead of making him welcome, all you can think of is reproaching him!”
But Baba said, “No, Ma, you be quiet. Let her say what she wants to.”
“And why should I not speak?” retorted my mother. “This is the first time he’s come back since we got married. If his job was so precious to him, why did he get married in the first place?” At this, everyone—my grandmother, my uncle, and everyone—burst out laughing. Baba was smiling and soon Ma also broke into a smile. My aunt teased Baba: “Brother, you’d better go and console your wife!”
Aunt would have told us more stories, but just then Baba came back. I think he had been getting our things together. He told my aunt that we would all go to our elder uncle’s house and then carry on home from there. We then said good-bye to her and left.
WE SPENT A DAY AT MY UNCLE’S HOME. HE SEEMED QUITE worried about Didi, and said to my Baba, “You’ve sent her off to another home, but you have not bothered to keep track of whether she is happy or not. That poor girl, she must think she has no one at all: no mother, and a father who does not even seem to care about her anymore. At least go and see her once.” Baba said he had just been to see her. At this, Uncle was quiet, then he pointed to me and said, “Don’t make the same mistake with her. Make sure you check out the people you will marry her to.” Baba looked at him, but I don’t think he really heard what Uncle was saying.
That night, Uncle’s elder daughter, my cousin, insisted that Baba tell us a story. Baba was a real storehouse of stories, so he began one for us, and before we knew it, half the night had gone. While we were listening, I kept thinking how lucky Uncle’s daughters were! Five daughters, born one after the other as their parents each time tried for a boy, and yet Uncle had given them so much love. And he loved us the same way. I also liked my uncle very much. My grandfather had died while I was still a child, but I had heard people say that my uncle was tall and fair like him—just like my cousin, the long-awaited boy, who came after his five sisters.
When we said good-bye to Uncle, he seemed well and healthy, but just a few days later we heard that he had been take ill. Baba and Ma went to see him, and when they returned they brought him back with them. One night Baba and Ma were talking and we heard them say that when they had gone to see Uncle, they had found him asleep. To Baba, he looked just like our grandfather at that moment and Baba began to cry when he saw him. Uncle woke up and said, “Don’t cry, it’s good you have come. I don’t think I’m going to last much longer now. Somehow I have managed to marry off my one daughter but these little ones will now be your responsibility.” Baba said, “Nothing is going to happen to you. I have come to take you home with me.”
Baba brought Uncle back to Durgapur with him and took him to the company hospital to have him looked at. When he was a little better, Uncle’s son, Shiv, came to our home to see his father. Uncle told him that he was feeling better but there was no guaranteeing how things would be in the future. Shiv then asked him to come back home, but Baba refused, saying that he would not let him go until he was satisfied that Uncle was fully recovered. Uncle would also have preferred that, but Shiv whispered something to him that seemed to change his mind. Uncle told Baba that since Shiv was insisting, it would be better for him to go. “Come on, son,” he said to Shiv, “let’s go.”
Baba said, “Brother, since you are being treated here, wouldn’t it be better to wait until your treatment is complete?” But Uncle was not willing to listen. Had it been anyone but Uncle, they, too, would not have wanted to stay with us, for it did not remain a secret for long that Ma was very upset over all the expense of Uncle’s illness: she had talked about it loudly in the kitchen one day when Shiv was sitting outside and could hear everything.
Uncle left. One night, some days after this, I got up from bed to go to the bathroom. On my way out of the house, I saw Baba standing by himself in the dark. I asked him softly, “What’s wrong, Baba?” He started to say something and then stopped. “Nothing. Nothing at all,” he said, and he drew me gently toward him. I could see that there were tears in his eyes. Perhaps it was the dark that hid his tears from my stepmother, but she could not have mistaken who was standing with Baba outside. I couldn’t understand why she did not come out, but just watched us through a crack in the door. After that night, Baba and Ma had many fights about me—so many that the whole house became full of tension, and I heard them say that the sooner I was married off, the better. Because of the tense atmosphere at home, Baba began to keep his distance from me, and I likewise avoided him. Did my stepmother really think that I, a twelve-year-old child, could have such an abnormal relationship with her father that his wife needed to be worried about it? To me, this was unimaginable, but that was precisely what my stepmother thought and that made things extremely difficult for me. I was so embarrassed by the whole thing that I found it difficult even to talk to the neighbors.
The escalating tension at home almost made me forget that not so long ago I had been a young girl who loved going to school. There were times when I felt that, like my own mother, I should also leave home and go away. But then, I would ask myself, where would I go? I had no place to call my own. I was consumed by such thoughts as the days somehow passed. Baba’s attitude to me began to change visibly. I was no longer the apple of his eye, but more like a thorn in his flesh. The smallest things would irritate him, and somehow this just destroyed my confidence. I began to wonder and worry whether others too found me irritating.
I had stopped listening to the never-ending squabbles between Baba and Ma, but the lingering tension in the home affected me deeply. Every time I heard them complain about me, or about how they could get rid of me, I would go out of the house and cry. Then one day, when I could bear it no longer, I told Baba that I wanted to go to Aunt’s house again. “You’ve only just been there,” he said, “how can you go again? What will they think?” Baba and Ma joined forces against me, but I insisted. I wasn’t going to give up that easily. I just dug in my heels, and in the end they had to agree. Perhaps Baba thought that this was the only way to ease the tension. I must have been right, because Baba then told me to go and tell Aunt everything about myself. “Perhaps she can do something for you,” he said.
THE VERY NEXT DAY BABA BOUGHT ME A TICKET AND PUT me on the bus to my aunt’s house. A few hours later I got off the bus and went straight to her son’s shop, which was just by the bus stand. When I got there, I said to him, “Dada, I’m very hungry. Please give me something to eat.” He looked a little worried when he saw me and said, “What’s going on? Why are you here alone? Is everything all right at home?” He sounded really anxious. “Let me eat first,” I said, “and then I’ll tell you. I am really hungry.” So he took me to a sweet shop where he sat me down on a bench and I ate my fill.
After that he took me home, and there I learned that the cousin to whom I had recounted the story of the jackal and the farmer, and who was to have been married, was still single. As she and I were talking, Aunt came in and she was shocked to see me. When she asked what I was doing there, I poured out the whole story about the constant bickering between Baba and my stepmother and the tension at home. She listened and her eyes filled with tears. “You did right to come,” she told me, “and now you must stay here. In a couple of days some people are coming to see your Didi with a view to marriage, and your sister-in-law will have to cook for them. You can stay and help her.”
That night my Didi and I talked long into the night. When I told her that the boy she was marrying was very good, she said, “How do you know?” I said that I’d overheard Aunt and Sandhya’s mother talking and they were saying what a lovely pair they would make. At this, Didi blushed and said, “Okay, that’s enough! Now go to sleep, it’s late.”
Now, if you go to bed late, you wake up late. But who was going to explain this to Aunt? She was in the habit of waking early and roasting the flat rice we call mudi, and it was our job to put together everything she needed for this. She would call us to wake up but we’d continue to sleep; then after several attempts, we’d get up, do her work, and go right back to bed. But she’d keep calling out to us while roasting the mudi, just to make sure that we didn’t go back to sleep. If we didn’t answer, she’d get angry and shout at us, saying, “These good-for-nothing girls have gone back to sleep again!” Then we’d quickly jump out of bed and go and do her bidding!
But even if she managed to wake us up, Aunt never told us what we were expected to do all day long. Didi was used to this, but I had spent a few years in school and I found it very difficult to hang around doing nothing. Visitors to Aunt’s house would ask her about me if they saw me hanging around, and when she told them I was my father’s daughter they found it difficult to believe that someone so young could have grown up so much. “Oh, Ma!” they’d cry, “that little girl? She’s really grown up! She used to be such a child.” I liked to hear them talk, particularly those who were from Murshidabad, because their way of speaking was very nice.
The people who came to see Didi were also from Murshidabad and had the same sweet way of speaking, and perhaps because of that we were very hospitable to them. I helped to look after them. Aunt’s daughter-in-law cooked for them, and it was my job to serve them tea and food. This I did enthusiastically, running around here and there in my dress, and I heard some people ask who this young and energetic girl was who was working so hard. Aunt immediately understood what lay behind that seemingly innocent question, and she told them that I was the daughter of a man who had a good job and it wasn’t likely that he would give his daughter away to any old fellow.
After the visitors left, I realized how tired I was. I went outside the house, leaned against the wall, and sank to the ground with my legs spread in front of me. I liked sitting like that. I thought of all those people who had praised my work—what would they have said if they had known that ever since she was a small child, Baby had known little other than the hard drudgery of household chores?
Poor Baby! What else could one say of her? Imagine a childhood so brief, so ephemeral, that you could sit down and the whole thing would unravel in front of you in barely half an hour! And yet her childhood fascinates Baby. Perhaps everyone is fascinated by the things they’ve been deprived of, the things they long for. Baby remembers her childhood, she savors every moment of it, she licks it as a cow would her newborn calf, tasting every part. She remembers her Ma and Baba with their stories of Jammu and Kashmir where she was born, and how, when she arrived in the world, her eyes would not open easily because she’d come two months before her time. How, just a day before she was born, her father had left her mother in the hospital and gone to join the war, and there a bullet had hit him. And why would it not? With his wife lying in hospital, waiting to give birth, he could hardly have been expected to concentrate on anything else!
And there wasn’t only Kashmir, but Dalhousie, too. Here, Baba would sometimes take the children for a walk in the evenings. The roads were so dark that they could not see a thing. They couldn’t even hear the sound of approaching cars, and it wasn’t until they saw their headlights that they were aware that there was a car on those dark roads. They’d walk along and come home frozen, where they would sit down in front of the one heater they had, crowding around it to try and get warm. Ma would tell them to make sure they put some mustard oil on their hands before going to bed, and then she’d do it for them and they’d fall asleep. When they awoke, it would still be dark and cold and it was difficult to know how late it was.
The house was quite high up, and from there they could see the mountains above them. From their house, the mountain roads looked like small and narrow strips and the cars going along them seemed like toy cars. Where would one find such a beautiful place? Baby remembered those days and wondered if Fate would ever allow her to go back there.
I know well what lay in store for Baby. Baba had told her to ask Aunt to make some “arrangement” for her, but after she had left, he must have talked to her stepmother about how difficult it was for them to manage without Baby around and they must have decided to get her to come back. Baby wondered what was so important that she had to be there. After all, there was nothing in the household tasks that someone else could not do. And then she remembered the one thing for which her presence was essential, and it made her smile. Baby’s stepmother kept her head covered night and day, and she would never go out into the fields alone to relieve herself. Baba would not let her and it was Baby’s job to accompany her into the fields! I’m embarrassed to even talk about it, but whatever it was, they had decided that they wanted to take Baby back and one day, they came to Aunt’s house and did just that.
I MUST HAVE BEEN BACK FROM AUNT’S PLACE A COUPLE of months when, one day, my stepmother’s brother came to our house and brought another man with him. My stepmother asked me to make tea for them and then came into the kitchen and asked me to serve the tea. I took the tea in and did as I was told, and my stepmother’s brother, my uncle, asked me to sit down. I did so, and the man with him began to ask me questions. “What is your name? What is your father’s name? Do you know how to sew? Can you cook? Can you read and write…?” I was so nervous I could barely answer and I kept thinking, naively, that there must be some reason why he was asking me so many questions. At the time I could not have imagined that I would be married off to a man like him. I was a little over twelve years old and he was twenty-six!
After they’d eaten and drunk, Uncle took that man away. I went out to play and a friend of mine joined me. She was laughing and making fun of me. “So,” she said, “they came to see you, didn’t they?” I was taken aback. Then I laughed and said, “So what if they did? It will be a good thing to get married! At least I will get to have a feast.” “Is that what you think?” she laughed, “that you yourself will get married and you will have a feast?” So I said, “Why not? Haven’t you noticed how well people eat at weddings?” My friend gave me a funny look and burst out laughing. I didn’t think this was out of the ordinary. After all, lots of people thought me a bit odd, because, apart from a few, I did not talk to many people and they did not talk to me. So often they used to think I was a bit strange.
A few days later the man who had come with my uncle returned with two others. At the time, I was playing outside dressed in my dress. My stepmother asked me to come inside. I thought, Why have these people turned up again? What do they want now? Then my brother pointed to one of them and said, “Look, this man will be our son-in-law.” I turned to my stepmother and asked, “Ma, is this right? Will one of them be our son-in-law?” At this my father, my stepmother, and my brother all burst out laughing. “You will always remain a buddhu, a fool,” my father exclaimed, “I don’t know what the future holds for you. When will you get some sense?” I felt that Baba was not happy with me.
I could never bear to see Baba unhappy. Whenever he was unhappy, whenever he shed tears, I would also weep. I remember one day my Didi beat up my brother and Baba stopped her, saying, “Don’t beat him, child. Now you are the only one he has.” He began to weep and my Didi and I had also burst into tears.
I suppose it was not wrong of Baba to call me foolish and mad in front of those people. I had not been able to say a word to them in response to all the questions that had been put to me. I felt too scared and tongue-tied. So Baba had answered them all—or rather, he had given them all sorts of evasive answers. When they asked about my brothers and sister, for example, Baba did not even mention the brother Ma took away with her when she left.
After they left, I thought of all the questions Baba had left unanswered. I thought, If he had not even mentioned my little brother, why should he have told them about the scar he’d gotten on his forehead while playing? One day, when I was still in class two, my brother had insisted on coming to school with me and Ma said, “Take him with you, if he wants to go.” So I did. On the way we came across a water tap and he said he wanted a drink of water, so we went over to it. Suddenly, he slipped and fell and cut his forehead. He was bleeding profusely. I was so frightened I began to cry loudly. I covered his wound with my headscarf and we staggered home. Baba was not at home, but my mother quickly took my brother to the hospital. I did not even stop to wash my hands and rushed off to school as I was. But when everyone saw my bloody hands, they told the teacher and he sent me home. On the way back I met my Baba’s friend Dhananjay Kaku, who knew what had happened—he must have met Ma on the way. Dhananjay Kaku was a good man—he was a potter by caste—and he always had a kind word for us. His home was close to our school and we often went there during break to watch his father at the potter’s wheel—the movement of that wheel, and the way his father so deftly shaped the clay, fascinated us. We couldn’t understand how, almost in the blink of an eye, a bit of mud could turn into a beautifully shaped pot.
The same visitors who had come to see me had also asked questions about my Didi. And all Baba had told them was that she was now married and at her in-laws’ home. Had I not been so frightened to speak, imagine the things I would have told them! At her wedding, I’d brought my friends Dolly and Tutul over and we had spent our time eating and drinking until Dolly’s grandfather came to fetch her and Tutul, who lived close by. Dolly’s father was a friend of my father’s and they often spent a lot of time together, so when he came Baba invited him in to share some sweets with him. There was also a band at Didi’s wedding, and her husband had brought nearly seven hundred people with the baraat, the wedding party. We didn’t expect so many people, but somehow we managed because Baba still had the pension he had gotten from his job and this money came in handy to feed all the wedding guests. Whatever was left he frittered away on drinking and on searching for my mother. He’d also had some jewelry made for Didi, and I remember that she had asked him why he was spending so much money. “How will my sister feel if you spend all your money on me?” she had asked. “Why not get some made for her as well?” In fact, she told him that if he did not do so, she wouldn’t wear any jewelry herself. So he made some small things for me, too—little earrings, and things like that. And Didi made me put them on—everyone thought I looked so beautiful!
One day, shortly after Didi’s wedding, I’d gone to visit my aunt and while combing my hair there, one of my earrings got caught in my hair and broke. My stepmother asked me to give her all my ornaments, saying she would have them properly made again, so I handed them over. For a long time after that there was no sign of them at all. No one said a word, and even when I asked about them there was no response. But soon afterward I noticed my stepmother was wearing new earrings…while the disappearance of my jewels still remained a mystery. If I ever asked about my things I was told they were at the repair shop, and after that I heard no more about them.
My stepmother and my father had had a love marriage, and that, too, in a Kali temple! Baba and she both drank. At first they would drink when we were not around, but as time passed, they lost that discretion and were often drunk and boisterous in front of us. We did not like this, but no matter what we said to try and embarrass them, it made no difference. They just drank if they wished to, and heard what they wanted to hear. Strangely, we were the ones who ended up feeling ashamed, and we’d then make ourselves scarce and get out of their way! We were at a loss to understand what we could do. Baba and my stepmother continued to be in love even after their marriage. Every day at mealtimes, they would argue: if one did not eat, the other refused to do so, too. They had special names for each other. She would say, “Mana, you eat first.” And he would say, “No, Rani, you eat first.” And if sometimes Baba lost his temper and refused to eat, he’d stomp off to work and then she would refuse to eat as well.
All this went on, and before I knew it I was twelve years and eleven months old. One day I saw Baba and my maternal aunt coming back from the bazaar with bags full of vegetables. They gave the bags to me to empty out and I did that carefully. As I came out, I noticed a suitcase lying nearby. I asked Baba about it and he told me it had things for my wedding. My stepmother and aunt opened the suitcase and showed me what was inside. I was so happy to see all those wonderful things! The next day, Baba brought me a new quilt, a mattress, and a pillow and I was beside myself with joy! Outside the house, some people had put up a sort of awning, and beneath it sat a large chulah mounted on bricks. The whole neighborhood was filled with music. I was watching all this and playing with the children outside when my aunt called me inside and asked me to be seated on a pidi. My stepmother then began to smear turmeric paste on my body, and then others came and joined in. I was told that I could not eat that day, that I had to fast. I was surprised: as far as I knew, fasts were kept on religious days, but there was no festival then…
Now, when she thinks back, Baby wonders how she spent that day of sorrow in such merriment. Little did Baby know that this was the beginning of her days of grief and pain, little did she know what the future held for her. On the seventeenth day, a Wednesday in the month of Agrahayan, Baby was married.
ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT, I WAS MARRIED. BUT I SPENT THAT entire night chatting with my friends, some local girls and an older woman from the area. The next day was a Thursday, and Ma said she would not send me away on such an inauspicious day. Before I knew it, the day became like every other and I quickly lost myself in household tasks. Every now and again, I’d sing and jump about and play. There were no tears in anyone’s eyes that day: not in my mother’s, not in mine. I was carefree and happy. And I laughed a lot that day. In the afternoon, after I’d bathed, I got dressed. I pulled out a dress and when my aunt saw me she laughed and said, “No, no, not that! You should wear a sari.” I did not know how to—my wedding day was the first time I’d actually worn one. So I asked my aunt if she could help me to tie it, and so she did.
On Friday, one of the women from the neighborhood came and helped me dress. She’d done that for me and my husband on the wedding day, too. Then a taxi was called and my husband and I were seated inside. My mother’s brother and sister and my own brother also sat with us. I had no idea where we were going or why. As we sat down, my aunt came up to me and put a handful of rice and dal in my aanchal and whispered to me that I should give these to my mother, and say: “Ma, with these I pay you back for all the days you have fed and clothed me, and looked after me.” I did as she asked, but I noticed that as I said this, Baba began to cry. I looked at him and I also burst into tears. At this, he cried even harder. With tears running down his face, he clutched my husband’s hand and said, “Son, I’ve given you my daughter: now it’s up to you to look after her. She’s a motherless child.”
The taxi started off. My husband’s home was not far from ours—the bus fare was only three rupees. When the taxi pulled up a woman from the neighborhood came up and took my hand to help me out. She then led me into my new home. People crowded around, offering me sweets, urging me to eat, but I was so terrified, I could not even open my mouth! Even when my uncle and aunt pressed me to eat, I refused. All I could do was to stare at all the people collected there.
Later, in the afternoon, one of the women came and dressed me up, sprinkling fistfuls of vermilion powder on my head. I just sat quietly in a corner. People had gathered there to get a glimpse of the new bride, and I had covered my hair according to my aunt’s instructions. They came to see me and they gave me money and utensils or other gifts. Then they sat down to eat. When they’d finished, someone from outside called for the new bride to be sent out. A woman caught hold of my hand and pulled me outside to where everyone was sitting. She handed me a handi full of sweets and said, “Now take this and serve everyone. Put two pieces on everyone’s pattal leaf.” I was so nervous and my hands were shaking so much that every time I put a piece on someone’s plate it would end up somewhere else! I didn’t know what to do, whether to make sure my head was covered because the pallu kept slipping off, or to serve the sweets.
All the time my aunt’s instructions to keep my head covered were buzzing around in my head. Frustrated, I angrily put the handi down and started to set my sari pallu right on my head when everyone started to laugh. I was mortified. I wished the ground would open and just swallow me up! I left the handi right there and fled into the house, where I cried and cried. Meanwhile people started to tease my husband. “So, Shankar,” they said to him, “you’ve brought home a mere child! What are you going to do with such a young wife?” Then the woman who had taken me out came back and again took me by the hand, saying, “Come along, today is the bahu bhaat. The new bahu has to serve everyone.” So I went out again and this time, somehow, I managed to serve everyone. I felt as if every part of me was trembling as I did this. When everyone had finished eating, it was my husband’s turn. And then, when he had finished, my aunt said I should eat from his plate.
I began to insist that I wanted to eat with her and my uncle, but my uncle scolded me, saying, “We’re not going to be here forever, you know. You’re the one who has to be here. Just be quiet and eat.” And as soon as they finished eating, my uncle, aunt, and my brother left.
Now I was alone with my husband. I kept looking at him and wondering what he would do now, but he did not utter a word. I kept watching him quietly. For a little while, he did this and that, all sorts of little chores in the room, then he spread a mat on the chowki and indicated to me that I should sleep there. I lay down on the chowki and fell asleep immediately. In the night, I woke up with a start and found him lying next to me! I sat up, frightened, then I moved away and spread a small mat on the floor and went to sleep there.
In the morning when I woke up, I noticed that my husband’s house was by a pukka road, and it had a tiled roof. The rent for the house was one hundred rupees—this I found out from the woman who had helped me out of the taxi. She was called Sandhya. My husband addressed her husband as Dada, elder brother. Sandhya called me “sister” and I referred to her as Didi, elder sister. They lived across the road from us. They had a tap in their house from where I would get water. We even had to go there to use the toilet, since we didn’t have one in our own home. Sandhya-di told me I should look upon her husband as my elder brother-in-law. “Your husband calls him Dada,” she said, “and whenever you are in his presence, you should cover your head.” Her husband had a lot of regard for me and whenever I was around someplace, he would quickly move away. He had a machine for cutting fodder, which he would buy in the market, cut at home, and then sell. Talking to Sandhya-di, watching chara being cut, the days passed well enough, but no sooner would evening come than I would be filled with fear and dread. My heart would start beating frantically. I used to sleep on the same mat as my husband, but I’d turn my head the other way. Three or four days passed like this and then, suddenly, one night, he caught hold of me and pulled me roughly toward him. He put his hand on my breast and told me in a gentle voice that he did not like living like this and he no longer wanted to do so. And so saying, he began to press his body against mine. I started to cry out in fear. But then, I thought, what’s the point? I’ll just wake everyone by shouting like this, so I shut my eyes and my mouth tightly and let him do what he wanted. I just endured everything.
The next morning when I went to see Sandhya-di, she took one look at my face and asked me what was wrong. “What happened?” she said. After a short while, I told her I wanted to go back to my father’s home. Then I came back home and began to prepare the fire to cook. It was then that I looked up and saw my brother walking down the road toward our house. The moment he stepped through the door I announced, “I’m coming back with you.”
“Why? Where’s brother-in-law?”
I told him he was inside, so my brother went into the room and asked my husband, “Whatever’s the matter, brother-in-law? Why is Baby so upset?”
Shankar laughed and said, “Nothing’s the matter. Your sister still thinks she’s a little girl.” When he heard this, my brother just turned around and went home alone. When he got there, Baba asked him, “You’d gone to see your Didi, hadn’t you?” And he said, “Yes, and she’s very unhappy. She burst into tears when she saw me.”
Ma and Baba were so disturbed that they didn’t waste a moment. The very same day they rushed to our house. Baba asked Shankar, “I heard Baby was crying, son. What happened?” But Shankar did not say anything. I said, “Baba, I don’t want to stay here.”
“All right,” he replied. “Why don’t both of you come back with us for a while?” And so we went back with them. As the new son-in-law, my husband was given a lot of importance in Baba’s house. All sorts of delicious dishes were prepared for him. And as for me, everyone kept explaining that I must understand that I wasn’t a child anymore.
Two days passed and it was time to return. But I began to throw tantrums again, saying I wouldn’t go back. Ma got angry with me. Then I began to think: perhaps it was better to be in my own house after all. In Baba’s house I still had to do all the work and got no appreciation at all. At least my husband’s house wasn’t like that. There, I could work as I wished, when I wished, and there was nobody getting at me all the time. I could cook what I wanted, when I wanted, and if I needed anything for the house, I simply asked him and he would bring it. Whenever I had a little free time, I went across to Sandhya-di’s. She had three sons and sometimes, watching them play, I was sorely tempted to join in. There were times when I did—I’d become the old Baby then, and we’d laugh and play and I’d join in their fun and games. Sandhya-di and her husband watched us, and they often laughed when they saw me like this. I could never understand why they found this so amusing. When I asked, Sandhya-di said to me, “We’re laughing because you are still such a child.” I felt very embarrassed when I heard this—it was true, I thought. I’m no longer a child. I’m a woman now, and I haven’t seen any women jumping and playing like this.
About two months after I’d come back from Baba’s house, I suddenly began to feel quite ill. I wanted to throw up, and this feeling persisted for a few days. I couldn’t eat properly: nothing would stay down. One day Sandhya-di asked me whether I’d had my period that month. I told her that I’d only had it once since my marriage, so she talked to my husband and told him he should take me for a checkup. But he didn’t listen to her, so she decided to take me herself and we went together to the government hospital. We ran from one person to another, and in the end we learned that the examination for pregnancies was only done on Fridays and Tuesdays. That day we came back, frustrated, and on Friday, we went again. Once there, I had to fill in a form, and then when my name was announced, I went in to be examined by a lady doctor. I stood in front of her like a deaf-mute. She asked me many things, but no words came out of my mouth. Then she asked if anyone had come with me and I told her my Didi had, so she asked me to call her in.
She asked Sandhya-di a lot of questions about me and then she turned to me and told me to lie down on the bed. I did as she asked and then she began to examine me. She put her hand between my legs and felt around inside. Then she turned to Sandhya-di and announced: “She is pregnant.” I sat up with a start, speechless with fear, but Sandhya-di only laughed. When we got home I could find nothing to say to my husband, but Sandhya-di said to him, “Listen, it’s as I thought. What I was imagining has happened.”
“What’s happened?” he asked.
“Well, the first thing you should do is to distribute sweets to everyone,” she said. Then she told him and her husband what the doctor had said. I felt from their laughter that they were all happy. Two days later, when Baba and Ma came to see me, Sandhya-di gave them the news as well. Ma laughingly said to Baba, “Did you hear that? We’re going to have a small visitor in the house!” But I thought Baba did not look too happy. Two days later, when they were going back to their home, I overheard Baba talking to Ma. “Rani,” he said, “having a child at such a young age, won’t that be dangerous?” My stepmother had no children of her own, but she knew things from here and there and she reassured him, “No, no. She’ll be fine.”
After Baba and Ma left, I went to fetch water. Suddenly I saw Sandhya-di’s husband in front of me. I did not take any notice until I heard Sandhya-di calling out to me and that’s when I realized my mistake. I’d forgotten to cover my head! She was signaling to me frantically, pointing to him and then to my head, and I quickly put my pot down and covered my head. Just then I saw a number of Baba’s friends coming down that road—they were on their way to work. It’s a good thing my head was covered, because if they had recognized me they would have started up on the same things they used to say every day: “Look, there’s Halder-da’s daughter!” one would say. Another would ask his friend in surprise, “So this is where Halder has got his daughter married off?” And another would chip in: “Didn’t he check out anything at all? Why did he do this?”
Whenever I saw them coming down the road I would run into the house and hide. I was terribly ashamed. Sometimes they would call out to me and say, “Hey, girl. So this is where you live, eh?” But I would not answer. I’d just turn my face away and stay silent. I don’t know what effect these things had on Baba, but it was true that he hardly visited me these days. He took the same route to go to work but often when he saw me he pretended not to, and would look away. Even if he was with a friend or someone else and that person said, “Look, isn’t that your daughter?” he still would not acknowledge me. At such times, I understood that he was doing this deliberately, and it would upset me a lot. Sometimes I would go home and weep: sometimes I would go and talk to Sandhya-di. But gradually I began to realize that Baba now wanted to be free of me: he had sent me away and that was that. He no longer wanted to be burdened with my problems.
There was another reason why I often fled to Sandhya-di’s house. Our home was between a large house and a restaurant, at the edge of a road. I felt ashamed to be living in this little hut we called home. When my husband was not home, all sorts of people walking by on the road would peer into the house, so I felt much better when I was at her house. One day, as we were chatting about this and that, I said to her, “Sandhya-di, why don’t we go to see a film?” Normally, her husband did not allow her to leave the home but this time round, he agreed because I was there, and he used to treat me like his own daughter. He gave her a little money and said, “Go ahead, go to the cinema.” Now it was my turn to ask my husband—but he never really talked to me. In the morning, when we woke, I would make him tea and some roti and sabzi, and he’d eat and then leave for work. In the afternoon, he’d return and go straight to the tap outside, have a wash, then come back and lie down. Even if I asked him anything, he would not reply. Whether he was in the house or not didn’t seem to make much difference: even when he was, it was as though he were absent. When I mentioned to him that Sandhya-di and I wanted go to the cinema, he merely laughed and said nothing. But I kept on at him and finally he gave me some money. I thought then that if it were up to him, he would never take me anywhere nor let me go anywhere myself. When I came back from the cinema he was sitting with his face puffed up in anger. He would not talk to me properly and when I put his food in front of him, he just gulped it down and moved away. Given his behavior, I had little hope that he would bother to come to the hospital with me when my time came.
My stomach was growing bigger by the day and I was a little concerned. When I told Sandhya-di, she said I should get Shankar to take me to the hospital. But I told her it was no use: he would not take me. In the end, when no one was willing to come with me yet everyone kept saying that I should show myself to the doctor, I decided one day to go by myself, alone. First no one would believe I was with child, but after the examination, when they realized I was seven months pregnant, the nurse gave me an injection. Then I came home. I was a little less worried now, because I had understood that what was happening to me was the same thing that happened to every girl.
Now people began to say to my father, Halder-da, your daughter is seven months pregnant, you have to feed her the sadh. I had no idea what sadh was or how it should be eaten, but I was happy because Baba and Ma came to fetch us to their home and they went to the market and bought vegetables, meat, fish, and all sorts of nice things. They also bought me a sari and a blouse. On that occasion Ma’s sister, whom we called Badi-ma, and her three daughters also came. Badi-ma cooked all the food and Ma prepared the kheer. Then, as they talked, Ma put some kheer in a bowl and then looked around for a basket to cover it with. She took the vegetable basket and turned the vegetables out on the floor, covering the kheer with the upturned basket.
Ma told Baba that he should go and bathe but he said, “First let us finish with Baby and then we will see.” Ma put seven types of vegetables and kheer into a thali and then sent me off to wear the sari. I came back dressed in the sari and bent to touch Baba’s feet, but as I did so, he recoiled. Shocked, I stood up. Baba said, looking at Ma, “If a girl is pregnant, it is not good to receive her greetings. You don’t know whether she is carrying a snake or a frog or god in her womb.” When she heard this, Badi-ma also refused to accept my greetings and she said, “Go and sit down, today you will eat first and all of us will eat afterward.” As I sat down to eat, Ma came and uncovered the kheer to see if it had curdled or not. If it curdles it is believed that the child will be a girl and if it does not, it is assumed the child will be a boy. The kheer had not curdled and Ma was overjoyed. “It will be a boy! It will be a boy,” she cried to Baba. Baba was also very happy, and all the neighbors milling around sounded overjoyed at the prospect of a son.
After I had eaten, Baba, Ma, Badi-ma, and her daughters sat down to eat. Baba said to Badi-ma, “Didi, I am very frightened. I hope it will not be dangerous to bring a child into the world at a time like this.” Badi-ma rubbished this, saying, “Don’t be silly, nothing will happen.” In the midst of all these celebrations, my husband suddenly decided that he wanted to go home. What a strange thing to do! Everyone tried to dissuade him: “Let it be for today,” they said, “She’s just had the sadh, how can you take her home on the same day? She can’t leave today.” He finally agreed, but said that he would go anyway. “You can bring her home later,” he told them. He was odd, my husband. He had no social graces and did not know how to talk to his elders or how to offer them respect, and if I ever told him that he should try to be respectful, he would just glower at me.
The next day Badi-ma and Baba took me back to my home. On the way Badi-ma explained to me that I should not step out of the house in the evenings, and if I had to do so, it should be in my husband’s company. After they left, I went into the house. The filthy state of the place made me want to turn right round and run back. I’d only been away a day and the house was a real mess. My husband was also very unclean personally. He never cleaned his teeth or washed his face properly. I hated having to eat from his used plate. If I told him to clean his teeth properly, he would ignore me. And somehow he managed to mess up that tiny house so easily. He would never lift up the broom to sweep, and if I was out for a few days, all the dishes and utensils would remain piled up in a dirty heap, waiting to be washed. Often I had no desire to enter the house but forced myself to do so, telling myself that it was only by being a man that you could have such privileges. And it was no use trying to say anything to this man, since my words fell on deaf ears.
One day, when I was eight months pregnant and could stand this no more, I went to Baba’s house. I had imagined I would get some peace there, but the moment I arrived I heard that my mother’s brother was very sick: he had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. As soon as they heard this, my Ma began to cry and Grandmother began to shout abuses, cursing her, as if this were all her fault. Baba took Uncle to see the best possible doctors in Durgapur and my aunt would bring the money from her own home to pay for whatever medicines they prescribed.
My aunt was my uncle’s second wife. Despite many years of being married, she had no children of her own. His first wife went away one day to visit her parents and when she did not come back for a long time, my uncle took a second wife. His first wife left behind a young daughter who was with her father for a while but then, when she insisted that she wanted to go back to her mother, my aunt took her back and left her there. My uncle’s health began to decline soon after that, which is why Dadi-ma was cursing her.
That night, my brother and I finished our meal and went to sleep. Ma and Baba always fed us first before they ate themselves. I was nodding off when I heard Baba say to Ma, “Call Baby and ask her to come and eat a little more.” Ma said, “Why don’t you call her yourself?” He called out to me and I told him I was not hungry, but still he insisted: “Come, child, come and sit with me for a while.” Whenever I went to Baba’s house, it was always like that. Some days they would be so kind to me, they would treat me really well, and feed me all kinds of good things. If Baba saw that I was hesitating to eat, he would leave a little food in his plate and tell me to eat it whenever I felt hungry. Ma did not lag behind, either; whatever she cooked, she would put aside a little for me. One day as I sat down to eat, Ma asked me if my husband ever brought fish or meat home. I said he did but very rarely. At this, Ma called him a miser and put an extra piece of fish on my plate, saying, “Here, eat this. And if you are still hungry, just let me know.” It was odd. On the one hand they looked after me and fed me with such love and care, but on the other, they quarreled about me over all sorts of minor matters. When Ma was angry she had no real control over her tongue and she would say all sorts of things. Finally, when I could bear it no more, I said: “Ma, I have no desire to eat fish or meat, and if my presence is causing you such problems, I had better just go.” I started to put my things together to leave but she stopped me, saying, “Don’t go just now. If you must go, at least wait till the afternoon.”
“No, I won’t stay on, and I won’t come back ever, since my presence causes such problems for you and Baba.”
“But it’s your Baba who causes the problems.”
“Baba is a good person, you’re a good person, everyone is good, but as soon as I arrive, you start bickering, and I can’t bear to see this.” I made as if to go and she again stopped me. “At least wait to say good-bye to your Baba before you leave.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He has gone up to the pond. Let him come back and then you can leave.”
“But I’ll be late, I have to get back and see to the cooking and everything…” The words were barely out of my mouth when I saw Baba coming back. Ma said to him, “Look, she’s all ready to go back! Please tell her to at least eat before she leaves.”
“If your mother is asking you to wait, why don’t you do so for a while?” Baba asked me.
I said, “What? And listen to that squabbling again? I can’t bear this tension between the two of you because of me. God knows why it happens, but I must leave.”
I would have said more, but just then my cousin came running and cried out to Ma that her brother had died. Ma began to cry, and Grandmother, who was there, fainted. Baba did not know what to do or who to look after. He took Ma with him and went quickly to her brother’s house. I was left at home with Grandmother. Many of the neighbors came along to comfort her. I sat her down and sprinkled her forehead with water, but she was inconsolable, and kept sobbing.
When Ma and Baba got to Uncle’s home, they found his body laid out in front of the house. Ma sat down at his feet and began to cry. My aunt’s grief was different. Everyone around had been so unkind to her because she had not borne any children and she, too, no longer had any real interest in my uncle. The neighbors got everything ready to take Uncle away. Ma was sent to fetch Grandmother so she could look at her son’s face one last time. But then everyone began to say that she shouldn’t be taken to see him, that she would not be able to stand to see him like that, and so Ma showed her his face from quite far away and then took her into the house.
Uncle had no son, so his last rites had to be performed by Grandmother’s younger son. He had had his head shaved for this. On the satkarya day, they all went and left me at home—I had not left until then because Baba had held me back, saying he would not be able to manage two distraught and grief-stricken women on his own.
The moment the rituals were over, I set off for home. When I got there, I found the house was locked. I went to Sandhya-di’s. When she saw me she exclaimed, “Arre, you’re back so soon? We were just talking about you. We thought you’d finish everything and then come back.”
“Do you think anyone can survive that daily bickering?” I replied. “I was going to come back much earlier but because my uncle died, I had to stay on. Do you know why my house is locked up? How will I get in?”
“There’s nothing you can do. Just wait here till Shankar comes back.”
“Can you not ask Bhagirath to take a look? My husband may still be at the decorator’s shop.” So Sandhya-di sent her son off to find him.
Sandhya-di was Bengali and her husband Bihari, so she would speak to her children and her husband in Bihari, but would talk to me in Bengali. In a short while, Bhagirath came back with the key. He said he’d found my husband at the shop and when he told him that I had returned, my husband just gave him the key and sent him straight back. I took the key and went home. When I opened the door, the sight that assailed me made my head spin: the house was filthy, with dust and mud everywhere; the kitchen was full of mouse holes where they had dug up the earthen floor and nested; all the utensils were lying in a heap, soiled from being used and caked with dried-up food. It was so terrible that I felt deeply ashamed. I could not bear it, and I ran to Sandhya-di’s house and began beating my head on the wall. When she asked me what was wrong I said to her, “Didi, just come and take a look at the state of the house.”
“I know what it is like,” she said, “I don’t need to see for myself. This is what happens when there is no woman in the house.” After a while she added, “I noticed that often there were days when he would not even bathe, and he’d cook in the same dirty utensils and eat.”
“But why should it need a woman around for a place to stay clean? A man should at least keep the place where he cooks and eats clean.”
Sometimes Grandmother would visit me. One day when she came, I said to her, “Look, just look at what a state my home is in.”
“My dear child,” she said to me, “everything is in your hands. You need to sit him down and explain to him.”
“I’ve tried! But he just won’t listen to anything I say. If I so much as open my mouth, he jumps down my throat! I don’t know what to do.”
Sometimes when I felt very alone in the house and got fed up with staying inside, I would go out, cross the road, and watch the children playing. I wanted so badly to go and play with them. One day, I was standing outside the house watching the children play gulli danda. Suddenly the gulli flew through the air and landed at my feet. I thought I would pick it up and throw it back to the children, but the moment I touched it—I don’t know what happened to me—instead of throwing it back, I picked it up and ran into the field where they were playing and joined in. I lost track of the time, and I would have gone on playing with them but one of them caught hold of my hand and said, “Didi, that lady over there is calling you.” I looked and saw that some women standing by my house were watching me, and one of them, whom I called Aunt, was calling out to me. When I got to her, she chided me: “What on earth do you think you’re doing? What if you hurt your stomach? Look at the size of you! You can hardly walk and you think nothing of rushing off into the field to play! Get back inside at once!”
Shamefacedly, I ran into the house. Everyone in the neighborhood began to make fun of me, especially the young boys and girls, who said, “Look at the new bride! She can hardly move and she is playing gulli danda!” When I heard this, I couldn’t help but laugh.
When I was this happy, my husband’s house did not seem so bad. In Baba’s home I had found it so difficult because of the continuous tension, but here there were only two people and one of them was hardly ever home. He would fight and go away, and then to console myself I would watch the children play, or go to visit Sandhya-di, who was always ready to give me support. It was Sandhya-di who had told my husband to give me whatever I wanted to eat. That way, she told them, my child’s mouth wouldn’t water unduly. And I, fool that I was, believed he would do as she said and I began to dream about what I would ask him for. I decided that when the time came, I would demand some chop mudi. Just thinking of this made me happy; I truly believed he would do as I said, and so I waited for the day to end and the right moment to come. As the hours passed, my anticipation increased and so did my happiness. Then I suddenly remembered that he would not be home in the evening, so I thought, Why don’t I ask him now? But how could I? We hardly spoke to each other…I told myself, it has to be done, let me try once and see what happens. So I went into the kitchen. He was sitting there on a stool, and I kept hovering about. He was looking at me and I at him. Then I told myself that the chop mudi would not come by itself, so I plucked up courage and asked him, with a smile, to give me some money. I had to say it two or three times, but finally he pulled some money out of his lungi and sort of threw it at me rather reluctantly and left.
My husband never gave any money to me. I had to ask him for each and every little thing I needed. He would decide whether he wanted to give me money or not. All kinds of vendors would come into our neighborhood to sell things, and I felt very bad when I saw all the other girls buying from them. Even when there was shopping to be done at the market, he would go himself. Finally, when I could not stand being without money at all, I thought up a plan. When I sat down to cook, I would put aside a fistful of rice every day. After several days when I saw him going out of the house with a bag, I asked if he was going to buy rice, and when he answered yes, I said to him, “I have some rice, would you like to buy that?” He laughed and said, “Show it to me, how many days will it last?”
“Oh, two or three days.”
At this, he put the bag down and, without saying anything to me, went off to work. Foolishly, I had thought I would earn a few rupees this way. Perhaps it would have been better if I hadn’t said anything at all.
The next morning he was drinking tea when I said to him, “Please bring some rice, otherwise I will not be able to cook.”
“But you said you had enough for two or three days,” he said.
“If you pay me, I will cook that rice.” He started to laugh but he did not say anything.
“Don’t you think I need money for some small expenses?” I said. “You will never buy anything for me, and if you don’t give me at least some money, how do you expect me to manage? I can’t buy anything if I want to! Everyone here buys something or the other now and again, but what about me? I just stand and watch.”
“Here, take this,” he said, and handed me ten rupees.
“Two, three kilos of rice for just ten rupees? I will not give you my rice for this pittance.”
He started to laugh so I said, “Don’t laugh. I have saved this by eating a little less every day, but if this is all you’re going to give me then I will not save rice like this anymore.”
“Of course, you don’t get anything to eat here! I suppose you think it’s your father who feeds you, I don’t give you anything at all.”
“What do you give me,” I asked, “other than a few morsels to eat? Do you think I have no desires at all in my life? Every morning you give me the same handful of rice and vegetables, and it never occurs to you how I will make do with so little. You eat your fill and get up, without once asking me if I have eaten or not, whether my stomach is full or not.” But all this had no effect on him.
I thought I should say more, but just then Ma arrived. We made desultory conversation and then she asked me if I had been to the hospital. When I told her I hadn’t and she realized that my pregnancy was nearly full-term, she said, “Come on, come along with me. We’d better make arrangements for when the child arrives.” My husband listened to all this and did not say a word even as I got my things ready. I left with Ma.
The first two or three days in Ma and Baba’s house were pleasant enough, and then their bickering began again. This time round, things seemed much worse and then one day, Baba really lost his temper. He said to Ma, “You’re a fine one, you brought the girl here promising her peace and quiet and now that she is here, you fight with her about every little thing.” Ma muttered something in reply, I could not make out what it was, and Baba began to shake with anger. He was so furious that he began to beat her. He was shouting at her and she at him. I tried hard to get them to calm down, but they were in no mood to listen. Then my temper began to rise. I thought, Are these people unable to spend even one day in peace? “I made a mistake in coming here,” I said to Ma. “If my coming causes you such trouble, I don’t know why you asked me to come at all. You should have just left me there. Oh, God, what have I done to deserve this, is there no peace for me anywhere?” As I said this, I began to beat my head.
Baba rushed toward me—perhaps he was afraid that I might hurt myself—and made as if to pick me up. Then he looked at Ma and held back. Standing there, he said, “Don’t cry, child, please don’t cry.” This made me even angrier than ever, and I began to wail even more loudly. Then he turned to Ma: “Rani, stop her, otherwise she will die. Oh, God,” he cried, “what have I done? What has happened to my daughter?”
He called out to a neighbor, “Brother, look at my daughter. Why is she doing this? What has come over her?” The neighbor came and stood a little way away, calling across, “Baby? What’s wrong?” By this time my temper had skyrocketed and I was in a rage. In the heat of my fury, I was blind to the fact that my clothes were half undone. The blood was pounding in my head. I picked up a large hansia and held it up. “Don’t come near me,” I threatened. “If anyone comes close I will chop them up with this.”
At this, Baba fell at my feet and began crying. “Calm down, child. Calm down, I beg you.” My grandmother came up behind me and said, “Will you put that down or not?” As she said this, she gently pulled it out of my hands and let it slide down, and along with it I fell to the ground with a thud. Baba then rose up and said to Ma, “Rani, put some balm on her forehead.” While she did this, Baba gently told me to sit up. I did as I was told and set my clothes right. “I’ll leave tomorrow morning,” I said.
“All right, go if you must, but right now, just calm down.” Then, weeping, he said, “I’m so sorry, every time you come there is trouble in the house. I’m so sorry I have not been able to give you even a bit of peace. I earn so much and yet I am not able to feed you properly. What kind of father am I? Go away, child, this is no place for you. You will not be able to live here. Take whatever you have, whatever is your due, and leave.”
That night I went to bed hungry. It was quite late at night when Ma woke Baba and asked him to eat. Baba called out to me and said, “Come, child, come and eat something.”
“I don’t feel like it,” I answered, “I’m not hungry.” But both of them came and took hold of my hands, pulled me up, and gave me food. In the morning, my grandmother took me home. When we arrived, she went to meet my maternal aunt and then returned.
Three days after this, my pains started. That morning Baba had sent my brother to the market and had told him to look in on me on the way back. When he came and found me lying down he asked what the matter was. I told him I wasn’t feeling well. My husband was also there at the time. He told my brother, “Your mother was quick to take her away, but she wasn’t able to keep her there for long.”
“Didi was right to come away,” my brother said. “That place is not good for her. I’m also going to leave soon.”
“But where will you go?” I asked him.
“Do you think anyone can live there?” he said. “Why did your mother take her away then?” my husband interrupted. “Just to show how much she loves her, right?”
I could feel the pain getting worse. My brother must have told Baba about my state, for that very day he and Ma came to see me. Baba told my husband that he thought I should be taken to the hospital straightaway. Shankar rounded on him: “So when you took her away saying you would see what happened, why did you not keep her there? Why have you sent her back?”
“Her place is here, this is her lot…” was all Baba said in reply, and then he and Ma left.
During this time, Sandhya-di often came to see me. One day she said to my husband, “Shankar, she’s been in pain for two days now, and nothing is happening. Why don’t you go and call the midwife?” He didn’t say yes or no but when Sandhya-di insisted, he finally went and called the dai. The moment she arrived, she sent everyone out of the room, and then she examined me just as the hospital doctor had done some time ago. Then she massaged my stomach and said, “There’s still two or three days before the child is ready to come, but you need to rest till then. You can get up, though.” I began to tremble with fear. She set my clothes right and then told me that if I had made a knot in any of my clothes or in a rope, I should undo it. Then she made me open the lids of all the spice boxes, and then she put them back on herself. I began to weep. What on earth have I let myself in for? I thought. The dai sat with me for a while, and then she called Sandhya-di in and left.
Five days later I was still in pain and nothing had happened. The pain was intermittent but when it came, I had no idea what to do. When it eased off, I wanted to get up, to go out for a walk, or to go and talk to everyone. During the day, Sandhya-di looked after me and offered me all sorts of things to eat. She forced me to drink hot milk, hot tea, and hot water in the belief that if I did not eat anything, the child would have difficulty being born. At night I slept alone and when the pain swept over me, I would sometimes scream in agony, but it made not a jot of difference to my husband, who slept through it all. On the sixth day, the dai-ma came again and gave me a massage. She examined me again, and said I still had to give it more time. My pain was increasing slowly and along with that, my tears and screams were also more frequent. That day, the dai-ma spent the whole day with me. I had not eaten or slept properly for the last six days and I was sure I was going to die.
When six days had passed and nothing had happened, Sandhya-di began to worry. She called my husband and said, “Shankar, what is this you are doing? This has been going on so long, and yet you have made no arrangements at all. Go, take her to the hospital.” That night, around nine, Sandhya-di and her husband got ready to come with me, my husband, and the dai-ma to the hospital. When Sandhya-di put out her hand to support me, I began to cry. I felt so weak I could hardly walk. But everyone persuaded me that I would have to manage somehow, and then they helped me into a truck that was standing there. We all climbed in and set off for the hospital. Once I was admitted, they all got back into the truck and left.
IN THE HOSPITAL I—A CHILD, NOT EVEN FOURTEEN YEARS old—I, Baby, lay there alone crying and screaming. When the other patients began complaining, Baby was moved to another room, where she was put on a table and her arms and legs were tied. An ayah and a nurse came now and again to look at her. When she began to scream louder, the ayah called a doctor. The doctor put her on a saline drip and pronounced that she was in a bad state. “Don’t leave her alone,” the nurse was told. Around ten at night, Baby felt that something had come out of her. She asked the ayah if the baby had been born. The ayah and nurse burst out laughing. Then, suddenly, she got such a huge cramp that she became mad with pain. Had her hands and feet been free, she would have picked up whatever she could find and shattered it to pieces. The ayah said, “Poor thing, she is in such pain but nothing is happening.” Then she told Baby, “Turn your mind to God, or to Maha Kali, and everything will be all right.” Baby did as she was told. “Oh, God, jai Ma Kali,” she cried out, “your Baby can take no more! Please, either cure her or take her away, but don’t leave her to suffer like this.” Along with the prayer came another spasm of pain so strong that all Baby could do was to shout, “Ma!”
The ayah and the nurse were standing at the foot of the table. The nurse said to the ayah, “I can see the head, but the baby is not coming out.” And so saying, she ran to fetch the doctor. By this time, Baby had taken leave of her senses. The doctor came and tied Baby’s stomach with a belt and then he felt the stomach and said the child had turned. The nurse fetched another doctor. Baby’s hands and feet were jerking with the pain, and she was straining so much that her bonds broke. Quickly, four people came and tied her up again. She continued to scream for her mother, “Ma, oh, Ma! I’m dying, Ma! Save me, Ma! Where are you?”
The doctor caught hold of the baby and pulled it out. Suddenly Baby’s screams and wails died down and she became still. The passage had ruptured and had to be stitched up, and the nurse brought what seemed like frightening-looking scissors and knives to the doctor. Fearfully, Baby asked the ayah, “What is he going to do with all that? I am perfectly all right now.”
“It’s nothing. Just lie still like a good girl.” Baby lay there, listening to the child’s whimpers. “Your son has been born on a good day,” the ayah said. “It’s ten minutes after ten on the night of Janamashtami, and his weight is not too bad, either: three kilos and ten grams.” And talking away like this, she kept Baby distracted while the doctor did his work. Once he was finished, he told the ayah that she could clean up. Oh God, there was so much blood—buckets full of it! Can one still have any strength after losing so much blood? “Clean her up properly,” the doctor said, and left.
After the doctor had left, they took Baby off the table and tried to stand her up, but she fainted and fell to the floor. The ayah ran to call the doctor. The moment he came back, he said he was afraid something like this would happen. Then they picked Baby up and put her on a stretcher and took her to a bed. All Baby was aware of was faint voices in her ears, but she could not speak or even see anything. They tried to put her on a drip, but they could not find a vein in her hand. Another doctor then came along and said, “Here, let me do it.” He turned her hand this way and that and found a place and pushed the needle in. He then told the nurse that when one bottle finished, she should put a second one on. The nurse did that with first one, then another and then a third bottle and then she went away, telling the other patients that even if Baby asked for water, she should not be given it. In the dead of night, when Baby awoke, she felt fine but when she tried to get up she couldn’t. Her body felt as if there were nothing in it: she felt light and thin and as if she were glued to the bed. And she was very thirsty. She asked for water, but no one would give her any—they had been told not to. Just then, Baby noticed a bottle on a table nearby. She was beginning to feel that if she did not drink water she would die. She managed to stretch her arm out and grab the bottle, and drank all the water down in one go. In the morning when she woke up, she saw that her eyes and face were terribly swollen. When the doctor saw her he shouted at her: “Do you want to die? Why did you drink that water?” Baby could only weep. She had no answer.
A little while later, the ayah brought Baby’s child and handed him to her, and then she demanded money to buy sweets. “Your first child has been born on such a good day: a Wednesday, and the birthday of the god Krishna. When will his father come? We have worked so hard, we’ve been awake all night, and you had such a difficult time as well.”
Baby said, “Sister, I am terribly hungry.” The ayah went away and brought her some tea and bread and gave it to her, saying, “It’s time to feed the child.” Baby ate the bread and drank the tea, but she was still hungry.
“Yes, and so you will be,” the ayah said, “after all, everything’s gone out of your body.” Then she changed the subject and asked again, “Isn’t anyone coming from your home?” She had barely said this when Baby’s husband arrived. The moment he appeared, the ayah said to him: “Look, Baba, we’ve stayed awake all night for her. Now give us our due.”
Baby’s husband was delighted at the news that a son had been born to him. The nurse came and saw him and said, “Aha, look at the smile on the face of the father! Is there no one at home who could have spent the night with her here? If she had died yesterday, then who would have been there to eat this food that you have brought? You’re lucky that she survived because we had no hope that she would. What kind of man are you that you left her to suffer so much, and for so long, and without even bothering to show your face?” Baby’s husband listened to all this without a word. Baby said to him, “Show me what have you brought. I don’t know whether I will be able to eat anything or not.”
The ayah said, “You need to give her support, she is still very weak. Feed her some good things. It’s not enough to give your attention to the child. The child’s mother also needs to be looked after.” A woman lying in a nearby bed, who was still in the hospital after delivering her child, repeated the same thing. Baby’s husband had brought some rice and dal from home and some fish curry from a restaurant. The child started to cry. Baby put him to her breast, but she had no milk. “First you should eat your fill and then the milk will begin to flow,” the ayah told her. “Until then, you should give him water with sugar in it. I’ll bring you some warm water.” Baby’s milk began to flow after two days.
She was feeding the child when the doctor came. Startled, Baby put the child down. The doctor said, “Are you all right? You have had to suffer a lot. And look at your age, too! Why did you choose to have a child so young?” She did not answer. She kept looking around, unable even to say the child was crying and she needed to feed him. The ayah picked up the crying baby and gave him to her, saying, “Look at this, the child is crying. What kind of girl are you? You should be feeding him. I see that you know nothing at all! Tell me, how on earth will you bring this child up?” Then, her voice softened, “I think they will let you go home today. Make sure you give us our due before you go. Even if I am not here, you can pay whoever is on duty at the time. Don’t run away without paying, okay? Remember, we are the ones who have to clean up after you and there’s no way that can be paid back, but at least leave something for us.”
The next day the doctor came around eleven o’clock. “And how are you feeling today?” he asked Baby gently. “We’re going to release you in the evening. You can leave with someone from your home. I’ll write you a prescription for medicines you need to take: just remember to take them at the right time and don’t work too much, all right?”
Around noon, Baby’s parents came. When they did not find her in the delivery room, they went outside. She was lying on a corner bed. When she saw them she called out to her stepmother, “Ma, I’m here.”
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she said. “Your Baba is waiting outside.”
“Who is this?” asked another patient.
“My mother,” Baby said.
Surprised, she said, “My God, I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s a boy, isn’t it?” Ma said, “You remember I told you it would be a boy? Go and show him to your father.” As Baby got up to go, another patient asked her, “Who has come? Is that your mother?” Then she turned to her mother and said, “So, Didi, aren’t you happy with your little nati, your grandson? Is he good enough for you to marry, do you think?’
And Ma smiled and said, “He certainly is.”
As Baby went out with the child, she saw her father, who cried out, “Don’t bring him here! Don’t!” As she continued to walk toward him, again he said, “Look at this girl! I told you: don’t bring him here. I will look at him at home.” Shortly after Ma and Baba left, Baby’s husband showed up. Baby told him that the hospital had released her. “Then let’s go home,” he said. “Wait, I will get a rickshaw. In the meanwhile, put your things together.” He walked off and then came back and told her to eat the rice that was there in the tiffin box. When Baby’s parents had come they had brought with them a cousin of Baby’s, Sadhna, the daughter of Baby’s aunt. They had asked Sadhna to go with Baby to help with the child, so when the rickshaw came, they all got into it and went back to Baby’s home.
THE RICKSHAW STOPPED OUTSIDE THE HOUSE AND AS usual, when I saw what a state the house was in, I didn’t want to go in. Sadhna told me to wait outside while she cleaned up, so I sat outside with the child. Sandhya-di came when she saw me. Smiling, she asked me, “How are you? How does your body feel?”
“I’m okay now, but I feel very weak.”
“That’ll be there for a while. You’ve gone through a lot. Had it been anyone else, she probably would have given up long ago.” Then, raising her voice, she said, “Oye, Shankar, it’s not enough to just look at the boy, you’ll have to look after his mother as well. Make sure you feed her properly.” Then she turned to Sadhna and said, “First light the fire and make a cup of tea for your Didi.”
The child was in my lap and suddenly he soiled himself. It got onto my clothes and my hands. As soon as I tried to clean one place, another part would get dirty. When Sadhna saw me she said, “Eh ma, what are you doing? Here, let me do it. You’re just shifting it from one place to another!” Shamefaced, I looked at her, and then I turned away, smiling. Sadhna knew exactly what to do. Being the elder daughter, she had had to look after her young siblings. “This is all very well, but how long can Sadhna look after your child?” said Sandhya-di. “Finally, you’re the one who is going to have to bring him up, so you’d better learn how to do all this.”
Sadhna cleaned up the child and handed him back to me, and in a little while she came back with some tea and bread. While I was eating, she cleaned up one corner of the house and made some space for me to lie down. Sadhna, the child, and I would sleep there at night. One night she told me that in her home no one would be allowed to walk in and out of the room where a new mother was before a certain time had elapsed, but I said to her, What can we do? We only have one room.
One day Ma arrived and said to Sadhna, “Come on, it’s time for you to go back.” I asked if she could stay on for a while—at least till the child was a month old. I said that either my husband or I would take her back, but Ma was adamant. Sadhna didn’t want to go, either, but she had to listen to my mother, in whose house she was staying. She left and now I had to manage everything on my own: the housework, looking after the baby, everything. All the neighbors wondered where Sadhna had gone. Why didn’t she stay on a bit longer, they asked; it would have been good if she had. But what could I do? She had come to visit my parents, and if they did not want her to stay with me any longer, I had no say in the matter. Some of them told me to be careful, especially with water, because I was still weak and could catch an infection. They were all so supportive of me, much more so than my Ma and Baba had been, that I sometimes marveled at it. Ma and Baba had come only once since I’d been back from the hospital, and even then it was only to take Sadhna away. And not once did they ask how the child was.
I had to continue to bear all these troubles. My child was barely a month old when my milk began to dry up. The baby would cry from hunger and I could not understand why. A neighbor once asked me, “Why is your child crying so much? Does he not get enough to eat? Why don’t you give him some other milk and see?” I mentioned this to the child’s father, but for several days, he completely ignored me. Then one day, I don’t know what came into his head, but he went out and came back with a tin of milk powder. And with my milk and this milk, the child seemed to be satisfied. We needed to get three tins in a month. Whether we ate or not, the child had to be fed. If I asked my husband for anything else, he’d lose his temper and there would be tension in the house.
TIME PASSED LIKE THIS AND THEN ONE DAY, MY BROTHER and my elder uncle and a friend of theirs named Dharni Kaku arrived at our house. At the time, I was lying down with my child, so I quickly got up and made room for them to sit. “I won’t sit, child,” Uncle said.
“Whyever not? What’s wrong? Why is your face looking so pinched?” I asked. Uncle did not reply, so I turned to Dharni Kaku, but he also remained silent. Finally I asked my brother, “What’s wrong? Why don’t you tell me what it is?” He told me only that our sister was no more and then he began to weep. “Which sister?” I asked him.
“Our Sushila Didi,” he said. But I couldn’t understand what could have happened to Didi. As the implications of what he had said sank in, I felt a chill spread through my body. I stood as if rooted to the ground. Dharni Kaku repeated the news two or three times and suddenly I screamed. I ran straight out of the house all the way to Baba’s place. There, I beat my head on the ground and wailed, “Baba, now we’ve lost Didi as well. First it was Ma—and she’s there and not there—and now it is Didi. We thought even if we don’t have a mother, at least we have an older sister. And now she’s also gone.” Baba held my arm and lifted me up and told me gently to calm down. “I’m going to find out what has happened,” he said.
“But what’s the use?” I asked him. “No one ever bothered to find out anything about her.” Every time I went to see Didi, her neighbors would ask if her father had completely forgotten her, for he never went to see her. Was it because of his new wife, they asked, that our father now had no time for his own children? I told Baba that he had no idea how sad it made my sister to have to listen to all these things. “And now look at you. You never really cared about her,” I said to him between sobs.
When I had run off to see Baba, my uncle and Dharni Kaku left to see my elder brother, who lived in a nearby village with his wife. When Uncle got there, he found my brother just sitting down to eat. He started to rise, but Uncle said to him, “Son, finish your meal first.” When my brother’s wife saw everyone she started to light the fire again but Dharni Kaku said to her, “Daughter, there’s no need to cook for us.” My other brother had left Uncle and Dharni Kaku at my brother’s house and gone to give the news to Grandma. My brother sat back down to eat and was halfway through his meal when my grandma arrived. “Arre, Ajay, what is this I hear about your Didi dying?” My brother was shocked. Dharni Kaku said to my grandma, gently, “Look, we just arrived here, and didn’t want to tell him anything at least until he had finished eating. But you’ve just come and blurted everything out.” My brother left his food half eaten and ran to meet Baba.
I was with Baba at the time. When my brother arrived, his eyes were bloodshot and it looked as if he were ready to kill someone. He couldn’t even cry. It took quite a while for the tears to come. He was watching Baba strangely: here was a man who had just lost his elder daughter, yet there was not a tear in his eye. Suddenly my brother began to cry loudly. Dharni Kaku tried to comfort him, but it was no use and the more he cried, the more my tears fell. When he had run off to meet Baba, Grandma had followed him. Now, wiping her tears, she said to him, “I have never seen your father lift a finger to help your sister. It was only when we forced him that he took the trouble to find out about her.”
“But none of us bothered about her,” said my brother, “that’s why that bastard thought that there was no one to care for her.” Then, softly, he asked Uncle, “What happened to Didi, Uncle?”
“Mangal came to see me,” explained Uncle, “and he told me that she was very unwell and we should go to see her.”
Mangal was my Didi’s husband. This was all he told Uncle and then he disappeared. Uncle’s wife asked after the children, but he did not even stay to answer. As he was leaving, Uncle asked him what was wrong with Didi and all he said was that she had smallpox. Uncle did not even stop to eat anything: he just rushed off straightaway to see Didi. But when he got there, he found her lying wrapped in a sheet in the courtyard. He was shocked, and the fruit he had hurriedly picked up for her fell from his hands and scattered on the ground. He had taken along a tender coconut to offer her so she could bathe with its healing water, and that, too, fell from his hands. There was no sign of her husband: it seemed he had disappeared after he went to Uncle’s house. My heart was hammering in anger at hearing this story but Baba’s eyes were still dry. Once, in anger, Didi had said to Baba, “How can a father be like this? It’s as though I have already performed my father’s last rites, his shraadh.” And now Baba kept repeating, “Now we’ll see who will do whose shraadh.”
Grandma chided him: “Is that all you can think of at a time like this? Your daughter has died and you have not the slightest concern or sorrow for her.”
“No, Didi, that’s not what I mean…”
“What are you saying then?” she interrupted him. “Your daughter is dead and instead of going there straightaway you’re wasting your breath here wondering who said what to whom…”
“Yes,” Uncle said angrily, “do you want to go there or not? Otherwise tell me and I will go.”
“No, Dada, of course I will go. I do want to. But will my daughter still be there? Won’t they have taken her away?”
“No, I have told them and I have left Raju there with her, and have told her to make sure no one takes our girl away before we come.” Raju was my elder aunt.
“So I will be able to see my daughter?” Baba asked.
But those people had put enormous pressure on my aunt and had forced her to let them take the body away. First they said they could not keep a body in the house for so long. She tried to insist that they wait for Uncle and Baba, but then they threatened her and forcibly took the body away. Before anyone from our family could get there, they had completed all the rites and cremated the body. She could do nothing. My uncle and Baba took a long time to get there because they had first to take a train and then walk for three miles. When they finally arrived, my aunt ran out crying, saying to Uncle, “Dada, I was not able to keep my promise! I could not do as you asked. They forced me to let her go!”
The moment I heard the news about Didi, I’d left everything and run off to my father’s house. When I got home, my husband was sitting on the kitchen stool with the baby. When he saw me he said, angrily, “Have you no sense at all? Leaving such a small baby and running off like that!”
“But I knew you were at home,” I said. Just then, Sandhya-di saw that I was back so she came across and said, “What is all this? What happened?”
“My sister is no more and I am in such a sorry state that I can’t even offer to look after her children. They’ll be so bereft. I know what it is like to be a motherless child. Who can they turn to when they are hungry or in need? We have a mother, yet we have spent our lives being motherless. These children will also suffer like we did.”
“Can your father not keep them with him?”
“Do you think those people have any idea how to bring up children? I don’t know what they’re thinking of. We’ll only find out when they come back from Didi’s house.”
“All right, we’ll talk later. Now it’s time you fed your own child.”
I put the baby to my breast and as he suckled, my thoughts turned to Didi. Had my mother been alive today, how much she would have wept to see her daughter gone. But this new mother of ours had not shed a single tear. What would Didi’s children do now? They must be devastated. There was no one to feed them, to comfort them now. If they wept, their father would probably beat them. Or that family would treat them like animals and throw them out of the house. “Get out of here,” they would say. “Who do you think you are?” Imagine those children’s shock and grief—who would they turn to? The same fate awaited them that we had lived through. I looked at my child and wondered what life held for him.
After a couple of days of this, I announced to my husband that I wanted to go to my father’s house.
“But you said they were not there, that they’d gone to Didi’s place, so what will you do there?”
“Grandma is there, and I want to go and find out what happened.” So off I went, and the very next day Baba and Ma came back. Ma went in straightaway to bathe. The moment Baba saw me he put his bag down on the floor and his eyes filled with tears. I began to weep and in between my loud sobs, I asked him to tell me what had happened to Didi. He held me and said, “Child, don’t cry. I’ve lost my daughter, and I keep thinking how difficult her life must have been.”
“Stop crying now,” Grandma said to me. “What’s happened has happened. Crying will not bring her back, will it?”
“Oh, Didi,” Baba said, “she had to bear so much. That bastard Mangal was carrying on with someone else. And if my daughter said anything to him, he would beat her. Some people there were saying she took poison; others said she was ill. So many stories. But I asked her little boy to tell me what had happened. At first, he was a little scared and would not talk to me. I felt so sorry for him, poor little child, he’s only five. Then I picked him up and took him out, and spoke to him there. Slowly he told me…Grandpa, he said, there was nothing wrong with her. I told him, quickly, tell me what happened, I’ll take you with me. Do you want to come? Yes, the child said, you promise you will take me? I said, Yes, yes, and you will stay with Grandmother. Now tell me what happened. I’ll tell you, he said, but you must promise not to tell my father. I promised that I wouldn’t let anything happen to him. Then, slowly, the child started to tell me his story. This is what he said: ‘Do you know Grandpa, that for three or four days now Baba had been fighting with Ma and beating her. Yesterday he locked the door of the room and beat her up very badly. I was in the room at the time. When Ma began to shout for help, Baba caught hold of her throat and began to strangle her. When her tongue started to come out, I cried out: Baba, stop, she will die, let her go, my Ma will die…and I began to howl and beat him on his back but even then he didn’t stop. When Ma’s voice was completely gone and she could not speak anymore, he let her go and she fell with a thud to the ground. Then he began to call out to her but she did not reply.’ I asked him, ‘What happened next?’”
Perhaps Baba thought that Didi had not died then, that there was still some life in her, so he asked again what happened. The child told him that after that, his father had pushed him out of the room and gone away himself. Then he was crying so hard he could not say any more. Baba asked the neighbors and they told him that Didi hadn’t survived the beating.
Baba’s eyes now filled with tears. “Oh, Rani,” he said to Ma, “my poor child, they strangled her to death. What did she do to deserve this? I’m going to see that bastard goes to jail for this.” Later, Baba’s neighbors and others told him that when Mangal heard of this threat, he said, “So what? Let him send me to prison. I’ll make sure that not one sign of that woman is left in this world.” Baba understood this to mean that he would kill off their children when he came out of prison. We discussed this a lot. Baba was angry that they had not waited until he came to cremate her: he would have made sure the body was sent for a post-mortem. He felt really helpless. Many of Baba’s friends in the neighborhood had offered to help, saying he only had to say the word and they would cut off Mangal’s hands so his life would effectively be finished.
Everyone listening to this story had tears in their eyes. Baba could hardly speak, he was so overcome with sorrow and rage. I kept thinking of how she must have felt, the fear in her mind as she watched her husband killing her. Listening to Baba made me want to scream. He was telling us how they had refused to let him take the children away. Finally Baba had left, saying that if God willed, the children would have a good life. But I thought, whether God willed it or not, my sister must have had such a hard life.
After a few days, life returned to normal at Baba’s house. He no longer seemed to be concerned about what Didi’s children were going through. Sometimes I wondered if he even realized that he had two other grandchildren. I wanted to go and see the children, but how could I? I was helpless and tied to my husband. I had to do as he said, I had no independence. But why? I used to wonder at the injustice of this. It was my life, not his. Did I have to behave as he wanted simply because I was with him? He treated me as if I were an animal. If I had no happiness and peace in his house, was it necessary that I should stay on there in that living hell?
A week went by like this in Baba’s house. But I was not happy. Ma and Baba did not tolerate me sitting down anywhere even for a short while. Baba did not mind if Ma did what she wanted, but as for us—my brother and I—he always complained. Some days, if I was not feeling well and wanted to rest, Baba seemed quite unconcerned. But if I lay for a little while in bed, he just would not stand for it. I had to do all the housework when I was there, and if I overstayed my welcome even slightly there would be all sorts of tensions in the house, and I would have to go back to my husband. This is exactly what happened this time.
MY CHILD WAS SOME THREE MONTHS OLD WHEN ONE DAY, after we had eaten, I was cleaning outside the house when my husband looked up and said, “Oh, there’s Baba.” Baba? I wondered, whose Baba? I thought perhaps he meant my father had come, but he pointed and said, “Look, look over there.” I looked, and saw an old man dressed in white. He stood there looking at me and my husband. I was surprised. Then my husband ushered him inside and I quickly got some water to wash his feet. He went in and began to talk to his son while I stayed outside. I could hear a bit of what they were saying: “You got married without telling any of us,” his father said. “But why? Not only did you not tell anyone, but it’s been three years and you have not so much as shown your face at home. And all the time your mother keeps asking after you. We wanted so much to have your marriage at our house, to bring our daughter-in-law home, and yet you did not say a word, and you even had a child without telling us. Don’t you think you owe us at least this much?” After a while he continued: “If this is what you feel, then tell us. We won’t bother you again and we’ll not feel bad about it. We’ll just tell ourselves that we have no son.” My husband muttered something in reply, but I could not make out what it was. I quickly lit the fire and made tea and took it in to him with a biscuit. My father-in-law seemed very angry with me, but what had I done? I had no idea my husband even had parents: he had never so much as spoken of them.
Father and son continued to talk and I listened. I wanted very much to take the child and put him in his grandfather’s lap, but I was not sure if I should. How would he take it, I wondered? What if he rejected the child? Shouldn’t I at least try? So I just picked the baby up and put him in his lap, saying, “Your son may have been unjust to you, but why punish this innocent child for that? Take him in your arms.” My father-in-law smiled gently and his anger vanished. So I left the child with him and went off to cook. I put on the rice and asked my husband what I should make. He told me to wait while he went to fetch some fish.
“Daughter-in-law,” my husband’s father said to me after he had gone, “when you married my son did no one think to ask whether he had a family or not? Or was it that your father saw a lone man and just married you off to him?”
“Baba,” I said, “I know nothing about these things.”
“Where is your father?” he asked. “Where is his home?”
“It’s quite close by. Perhaps you could go there tomorrow morning with your son?”
“How old is my grandchild now? Have you given him a name?”
“He’s three months old and, no, I have not yet found a name for him.”
“So, then we will call him Subal. I have six children,” he added, “and only my eldest son is married, although he is so unfortunate that he’s had no male child: one after the other there have been only girls. My middle son is not yet married and after him is your husband. You don’t even know anything about our work. We are potters. What is your father’s name?”
“Upendranath Halder.”
“Oh, so you are Halders, are you?” I murmured a yes and he continued, “So does he come here to meet his grandchild?”
“Yes, but very seldom.”
I was talking to him with my head bowed and my sari pulled low over my forehead. After we had eaten that day, he commented to my husband that I was a good cook, even if the food was a little too spicy for him. I was relieved to hear this, and I realized that he was not angry with me anymore.
The next morning, my brother came by and when he saw my father-in-law he called from outside, “Who is that, Didi?” I told him, and then went inside to announce my brother’s arrival. “Where is he?” said my father-in-law. “Call him in, call him in.” Then he rushed out and invited him to come in for a while, but my brother said he couldn’t stay as he was on his way to the market. When he got home and he told my father that my father-in-law had come to visit, Baba was really surprised. “Rani,” he said to Ma, “that means Shankar lied to us when he said he had no parents.”
“Leave it be,” she said. “What can we do about it now? Anyway, now that we know, let’s go and meet his father.”
In the evening, they came over. Baba called out from outside, “Baby, I hear your father-in-law is here!” I was cooking and Father-in-law was sitting nearby drinking tea. “He’s right here,” I said, “why don’t you come in?”
“Oho,” said my father-in-law, “come in, Brother, come in and sit down. Daughter, make some tea for your parents.”
“No, no, we’ve just had tea,” Baba protested.
I knew that there was no point making tea, that Baba would not drink it, so I pretended not to hear. “How is everyone at your home?” Baba asked my father-in-law.
“Fine, thank you, everything is fine. Tell me, how is it that you people got your daughter married but you didn’t so much as tell us about it?”
“We had no idea that Shankar’s parents were alive. He lied to us and told us that he was all alone. Had we known you were there, why would we not have told you? I wouldn’t have married off my daughter like this.” Then, after a brief silence, Baba asked, “So, will you take your daughter-in-law with you?”
“No, not yet. First I need to get home and tell everyone what has happened. His mother wanted so much to have a proper wedding, to bring home her daughter-in-law…and look at this chap! He just ran off without a word and got married.”
“But now that it’s happened,” my mother said, “won’t you please give them your blessings so they can live a peaceful and happy life?”
“We’ll leave now,” Baba said. “Tomorrow morning I will send my son here. Please come back with him to our home.”
The next day my brother came and took Father-in-law with him. Ma cooked for him and he enjoyed her food very much—even more than mine, as he told me when he returned. He also liked my father’s home and their way of living. The next day he left us, promising to come back the next month.
I’D BEEN TRYING TO FIND A NAME FOR MY CHILD. HIS grandfather had named him Subal; my husband called him Budhan; but I didn’t like either. My brother-in-law suggested Gautam, which I quite liked, but in the end, I called him Subroto, and his nickname was Babu.
After he’d been gone a month, my father-in-law came back to fetch me. As soon as he arrived, he asked my husband whether I could return with him.
“How can she just leave like that? We’ll need to get her things ready, to get her some new clothes and all that.”
“Yes, but I can’t wait too long. The crop is ready for harvesting and I need to get back there. If she comes back with me, she can take care of all the household work and your mother can join us in the fields. I don’t expect your wife to help us in the fields, but at home…”
“All right, but just wait a couple of days. I also need to collect some money that’s due to me. Once it comes in, you can go.”
I could understand my father-in-law’s impatience. Everyone would be busy there, especially as the crop was ready for harvesting. He’s left all this and come to fetch me because they need my help, I thought, so I decided to get ready to leave as soon as possible. I had no idea how they expected me to conduct myself there. But I felt so happy—as though I was being taken out on a pleasure trip. But I was also wondering how I would manage alone—who would there be for me to talk to? What would I do if I wanted to talk about private things, things I wouldn’t want to discuss with people I didn’t know? And if I was busy with household chores all day, who would take care of my child? On top of that, I had no idea how long I was expected to be there.
On impulse, I ran to my father’s home and asked Grandma if she could send someone with me to my in-laws’ house. “Who?” she asked me. I asked her to send her middle daughter, known to everyone as Mez-budi. Grandma agreed, so I ran to Mez-Budi and asked her, “Hey, Budi, will you come with me?”
“Where to?”
“My in-laws’ home.”
“Will Ma let me go?”
“I’ve already asked her. I’ll come to fetch you tomorrow morning, so you’d better be ready! We’ll have to do some walking, I hope you can manage that.” And with that I ran back home.
My father-in-law had told me that in order to get to their home, we would have to walk for about three miles. I was a little worried at this, but then he told me, “I knew this would be difficult for you, so I have asked your brother-in-law to bring a bullock cart to bring you to the house.” Sandhya-di came to see me before I left, and she explained to me in detail how I was expected to behave in my in-laws’ home.
In the morning I was ready bright and early! I went to fetch Mez-budi and found that she was halfway to our place already! So we set off together and boarded our bus. When we got down at our stop, we saw a man standing with a bullock cart. Mez-budi said to me, “Quick, cover your head!” I promptly did so and we clambered up into the cart. This was the first time I’d ever been on a bullock cart. Mez-budi was dying of laughter at the rocking motion of the bullock cart and I was also quietly laughing into my aanchal. My father-in-law followed us on his bicycle. There were large ruts and ditches in the road, and as the bullock cart went over them, it would jerk and rock from side to side. Mez-budi found this very amusing and I kept trying to hush her giggles. The road went on and on—it seemed like forever. I kept asking my brother-in-law how much further it was as we passed village after village.
Finally, we stopped and my brother-in-law said, “Look, there’s my elder aunt.” I got down quickly and touched her feet. “Come, come into the house,” she said. My mother-in-law brought a charpai out. Before sitting down I touched everyone’s feet. I noticed that my mother-in-law was cooking on a wood fire and I began to get a bit worried—how would I manage? I was used to cooking with coal. After a while, my husband’s elder aunt took me to the pond to bathe. I was so happy to see the water, and I wanted immediately to jump in and start swimming, but I stopped myself. What would they think?
The water was beautiful, clear, and as still as a sheet of glass. Some days it was warm and on other days it was cool, and I made every excuse I could to go to the pond. Once in the water, I would jump around and play like a child. People began to ask me if there was no pond where my father lived and I told them that there was, but it was never as clean and clear as this one. One day my younger brother-in-law, Anil, asked me if I knew how to swim. I said yes, so he said, “Let’s go to the pond and see who can cross it faster.”
“Okay, let’s go!”
The pond was quite wide, and we got into it together and began to race. He gave up halfway across, but I reached the other side in a flash! People on the banks were amazed. Who would have thought that a city girl could swim so well? Others remarked that this was the first time that they’d ever seen anyone swim all the way across. Some even came home and talked to me afterward. Many people in the neighborhood began asking my father-in-law questions about me. “Why,” they said, “is this your daughter-in-law or your daughter? She doesn’t even cover her head in front of you.”
“What of it?” said my father-in-law. “I’m the one who has asked her not to. She is like my daughter.” And it was true: he had asked me not to bother covering my head in front of him, only to make sure that it was covered if others were around, because, as he explained, “this is a village and people are not so open-minded.” In fact, people there were curious to see if a city girl like me could manage the housework. Both my father-in-law and mother-in-law assured them that I could, and my husband’s elder aunt also told them that she thought I was good-natured. Everyone there was kind to me and seemed to like me.
I liked my father-in-law’s large house with its open courtyard. Their fields were also large and provided enough rice to feed the family all year round. While I was there, each morning, I would be the first to wake up; I would clean and tidy up, and then make everyone’s tea. By this time the others would be awake, and getting themselves ready for the day. They often remarked that before I came into their household, their tea was never ready so early in the morning. They even asked me to stay on there for longer, but I wondered whether I could. I couldn’t tell them, of course, but my cousin was not at all happy there and she kept insisting that we go back.
I had more than my share of importance because I had a son, and they gave him a lot of love and affection in that house. There was an elder daughter-in-law in the family also, but there were problems between her and her husband and no one talked to them properly. They lived apart in a room of their own in the house, and also cooked separately. I had decided that I would not get caught up in any family politics and would talk to everyone, so I did. The others did not like this, and they made that quite clear. I listened to what they said but did not let it affect me. Their dispute was mostly over property, and the elder brother-in-law was of the view that since he had now separated from the family, they should hand over his share of land to him. His father, however, felt that while he was still alive, he would remain the sole owner and there would be no division of the property. They fought repeatedly over this.
Meanwhile, my sister-in-law tried to make ends meet by making preparations out of flat rice and selling them. I did not like to see her going through such hardship. One day, while I was still there, father and son fought bitterly and the son lashed out at his father. I was watching this spectacle and I felt sick in my heart. I no longer wanted to stay there. A few days after this incident, I asked my father-in-law if he would take me back—I told him my cousin was insisting upon it. Grandma urged him to let me go, because my husband was alone and needed me. My father-in-law said, “I can’t let her go just like this. We need to get her some new clothes—otherwise what will her parents say?” I told him not to bother with such things, and that my parents would not even get to know.
Days passed, and we kept putting off my departure. A month had gone by since my arrival there. They were happy to have me there: I took over all the housework and they were free to work in the fields. One day my cousin asked Anil if he would come with us to climb the hills nearby. “But will you be able to climb up?” he asked.
“Let’s go and see,” she said. So Anil turned to me and said, “Come along, Boudi, let’s go!”
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to walk that far, but he insisted. “Of course you’ll manage. Come on!” The hill looked as if it was close by but as we set off towards it, it seemed to recede into the distance. Finally we made it there. Looking up, it seemed so huge, I wondered how on earth we would manage to climb up. Apart from anything, I had my child with me. Anil took him from me, perhaps because he thought I would not be able to make it carrying a baby. But my cousin and I more or less ran up the slope and he was left far behind! When we got to the top, he called out, “Boudi, quick, come down!’ He sounded frightened, so we rushed down, tripping and falling, but when we got there, we found he was laughing. “Why are you laughing?” I asked him.
“Are you so frightened of langurs?” he asked.
“Did you see any?”
“Oh, God, you just saw langurs and look at the state you are in!” he laughed. He didn’t even give us time to look down from the top and see the little houses dotted around. And of course we weren’t scared of langurs: there were so many of them in our old home in Dalhousie, they’d often come right up to our door!
When we got home, everyone asked if I’d managed to climb up.
“I thought she wouldn’t be able to,” said Anil, “but she managed to even leave me far behind!” They were all surprised at how a city girl could outdo their village girls so easily. My mother-in-law said, “She is more like Manhar’s [my father-in-law’s] daughter than his son’s wife.”
I hadn’t seen such a wide-open and empty place before. Things were so spread out that even if you had to buy salt you needed to walk nearly half a mile to get to the shop. It wasn’t as if I had not seen a village before; I had, but not one like this. My Didi’s father-in-law’s home was also in a village, but it wasn’t like this. What surprises me is that I managed to spend a whole month in such a place. At first I’d thought I wouldn’t be able to spend such a long time there, but gradually everything began to seem possible, so much so that I found I was even able to cook on a wood fire. The only things I did not manage to do were to work in the fields and to roast mudi. Had I done so, my in-laws would have been very happy with me, but this wasn’t possible.
FINALLY, THE DAY CAME FOR ME TO LEAVE. INSTEAD OF Father-in-law, Anil came to see me home. When we got there we found that everything had changed. Our home no longer stood where it was: instead, new houses had been built in that area. The road now ran a few feet behind our little house instead of in front of it, and Sandhya-di’s and our houses now stood side by side. Our veranda touched hers and there was only a thin partition in between. The courtyard was small but still better than the earlier one.
We could see the home of Shashti and her family clearly from this new house. They were three sisters, the eldest was called Shitla, and the middle one, Tushu. I was closest to Shashti, whose real name was Pratima, although I got along quite well with all of them. Shankar did not like me going to their house at all, but I didn’t really care. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with my going there: they seemed like perfectly ordinary people to me. All three sisters were married, but none of them lived with their in-laws. Shashti, whose son was a little older than mine, was fair and attractive but had lost one eye. I liked all the sisters very much: they were kind to anyone who came to visit them, no matter how important or otherwise the person might be.
One day I asked Sandhya-di why my husband did not like me going to see Shashti and her sisters. She said, “You won’t understand,” but I persisted. “Can’t you see that although they’re all married, not one of them lives with her husband?”