‘Bibi Sahib, my husband
would come home every night, dead drunk. Then he would batter me.
He wouldn’t let me spend even a cent of his earnings.
How could I live with such a man? I left him,
left the village and came to the city.
Now I work in rich people’s homes, such as yours,
I earn for myself and live by my labour.
What good is the vermilion in the hair part that adorns, but like
a wound?
Now how could the Bibi Sahib explain to Dhaniya
that her story wasn’t one of a kind
that she too endures something similar,
day after day, night after night.
But unluckily, she isn’t Dhaniya. She is Bibi Sahib.
And this status has been given to her in reward (bakhshish) by her
husband.
(One who has no status of one’s own must live on charity alone.)
The dignity she attains by living with her husband:
Can a woman hope to find it elsewhere? Anywhere?
Feeling the gash on her forehead as she speaks,
‘Dhaniya, you shouldn’t have left your husband and walked away.’
Self-respect is something; but how should Dhaniya make Bibi Sahib
understand this?
Translated from the Urdu by Mehr Afshan Farooqi