by Baby Halder
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?”
“But does that make them bad?” I asked.
“Listen, I’ll tell you their story. When Shashti’s elder sister got married, she asked her husba
nd if her mother could stay with them and he agreed. A little later Shashti and her younger sister went to visit them, and they stayed on there. The brother-in-law called his mother-in-law ‘Ma,’ and treated his sisters-in-law like sisters. He arranged both of their marriages. But the younger one was unable to live in her new home. After her elder brother-in-law died, she found it difficult to shoulder the burden of two families, and she was really disturbed to see a relationship developing between the older brother-in-law’s widow and his younger brother. She tried to argue her case, but to no avail: so eventually she came back to her mother’s home, where she’s been ever since.
“As for Shashti herself, well, when her husband’s first wife died he remarried in order to have someone look after their son. But after they’d been married for a while, he left home, saying he was going away on work and would return later. She wrote to him several times while he was away and every now and again he would write back. One day, he came back and stayed with her for nearly a year. Then he took her to her mother’s home and left her there saying he would return shortly to take her back to their home. Shashti was pregnant at the time. He never came back.”
So this was the story. What I still couldn’t understand was how any of this was the sisters’ fault. I knew my husband did not like me going to visit them, so I would visit them when he was not around and he would be none the wiser. I thought, why shouldn’t I go there? I didn’t think there was anything wrong with them, and they were kind to me and my child. Shashti and her mother were both very religious, and Shashti often became possessed by the goddess. I used to wonder how she could be bad if the goddess could enter her. One afternoon, I was at their house when suddenly my husband came home. Shashti’s mother said, “Look, Shankar’s come home! Go, go home at once!” I grabbed my child and rushed home, full of fear. He didn’t say a word when he saw me, but roughly caught me by my hair and started kicking and beating me. Then he began to shout and curse: “You bitch,” he shouted, “I told you not to go there and you won’t listen.” Curses and blows rained down upon me. People walking past on the road could see what was happening, but no one stopped him. In fact, some of them even seemed to be enjoying the spectacle. I lay on the ground quietly, while my child wept with fear. None of this stopped me from visiting the sisters.
Our neighbors said all sorts of things about these women that I found difficult to understand. They claimed that men went to visit them, but I wondered, what was wrong with that? After all, women visited them, too. I refused to think of them negatively. They were also women like me, and for me, as a woman, to think of other women in this way has never been possible, nor will it ever be.
There was a community leader called Pratap who often went to visit them, but that didn’t seem to make any difference to the respect people had for him! It was always the women who were judged differently. I often wanted to ask why this was so, but somehow I could not bring myself to do so. Perhaps they thought the same things about me, too. In fact, most of these people were preoccupied with who was going off with whom, whose daughter had run away with whom, whose wife was seen talking to whom, and so on. Most of them were petty and could not stand to see someone doing well. I felt very bad about this because, as far as I could see, if everyone did what they wanted to, why should anyone else object?
I SUPPOSE THAT, LIVING IN A PLACE LIKE THAT, IT WAS inevitable that I would come across a man like Ajit. He lived across the road from us, and called me Boudi. He was very pleasant and open with all of us, and often played with my son, buying him sweets and little toys at the local shop. But then all this became excessive and I soon figured out what he had on his mind. I tried to tell him that he should keep his distance, otherwise people would talk. But he said he didn’t care and he would do what he wanted. The more I tried to stop him talking to me, the more he pursued me. I was really worried that my husband would misunderstand all this and take it out on me. I began to keep a lookout for him, and the moment I knew it was time for him to come home, I’d go across to a neighbor to visit. But he was cleverer than I thought. He’d hang around waiting until he found out where I was and would turn up there unexpectedly. And for no fault of mine, I became the bad woman in the neighborhood, while he got away scot-free.
My husband beat me up time and again and I tried to ask him why it was I who was getting the beating, and why not the man who was harassing me. After all, to begin with he was my husband’s friend and used to come to see him. Finally, I decided I would not stay silent any more and I began to answer back when my husband threw accusations at me. We spent nights fighting and screaming at each other. I hated the language he used; I hated being beaten; I simply wanted to pick up my things and run away. There were times when I told him this and went off to Baba’s place. But after two or three days, Baba would bring me back and leave me there.
One day Baba saw Ajit hanging around my house and called him over. “What do you want, son? Why do you come here? Don’t you realize that because of you, this poor girl has to face so much violence?”
“But her husband used to beat her earlier also. Why are you saying it’s because of me?”
“Yes, I know, son. Perhaps it’s neither your fault nor hers. Perhaps it’s just fate. I had no idea this bastard Shankar would be like this: he seemed so straightforward when we first met him. But please listen to me, son, and keep away from her.” And with this he went away.
Some of my neighbors then spoke to Ajit’s father and told him in no uncertain terms to keep his son away from me and my child. For a few days this made things better, but soon enough Ajit was up to his old tricks again. I stayed away even from his shadow and the moment I knew he was somewhere around, I would make sure I went in the other direction, but he simply lay in wait for the chance to set eyes on me, and would start harassing me again. If I went somewhere, he would be there on the road waiting for me; if I changed direction, there he would be again. Sometimes I was so angry that I shouted vile abuse at him and did not stop even at abusing his parents. But all this made no difference at all.
One day Shashti and her mother called Ajit to their home and asked him why he was constantly after me like this. “Can’t you see,” they said, “how much violence she has to face because of you?”
“You cannot imagine,” he told them, “how much I love her.”
“But she is married and has a child.”
“So what?” he said. “I still love her.”
The next day Shashti told me all this. I said, “I see. He says he loves me, and this is what love means for him, does it? That he can watch me being beaten, be the cause of it, and still think nothing of it? Is this what love is all about? Does he have any idea at all what love means? I hate him and I spit on him! Please tell him this, Shashti: I don’t even want to set eyes on his shadow!”
But instead of backing off, he became even more persistent. Everyone tried talking to him, but he was adamant. Some people even took it upon themselves to beat him up, but the result of this outburst was that the whole thing became a public issue and even those who knew nothing about it were now in the know. They began to debate who was more at fault, Ajit or I. Some would say it’s the girl, others would say it’s the boy. The whole thing became a real tamasha.
While all this was going on outside, I locked myself within the four walls of my home and wept. I began to think that perhaps there was something wrong with me after all: maybe the whole thing was my fault. I knew everyone would be gossiping, and I now hesitated even to leave the house because I didn’t know how I would face them all. But, of course, I had no choice. I had to get out of the house: there were all sorts of things to be done. All the time I told myself that if life was going to be like this, it would be better for me to go away. I’d think these thoughts and another day would pass by. My son was three years old by now and I was four months pregnant with my next child. It was hard enough to bring up one child amidst all this, let alone deal with the prospect of another on the way!
ONE DA
Y THE LOCAL BOYS COLLECTED A FEW RUPEES FROM each household and went and brought a video to watch. When I saw that everyone was contributing, I also gave them a little money. I used to love watching films and jatras and so that day, in anticipation, I finished all my housework early. When my husband came home, I asked him if I should put his food out, but he said he wasn’t hungry. He kept refusing to eat and time was ticking on. I then asked him again to eat, and I told him I wanted to go and watch a film. He said, there’s no need to do so. So I asked him why. After all, everyone in the neighborhood was going and I could go and come back early if he wished. I couldn’t see anything wrong with this, but he still refused. I was so angry, I blurted out all kinds of things to him. Then I fell silent: I did not go to watch the video.
In the morning the local girls were full of stories about how good the film was, and one of them turned around and asked me why I had not come. I felt both angry and sad at this. I asked myself what I had done to deserve this, why was there no happiness at all in my life. I thought, There are families in which the husband and wife get along with each other; they are happy. People like this must have such a wonderful life. Would my life just stretch out in one long never-ending reel of misery? But it was as if God was deaf to my thoughts.
Then, one day, Shashti’s mother called me to their house. When I arrived there, I realized that my husband had followed me. He did not wait to ask anyone anything. Silently, he picked up a stone from the ground and hit me on the head with it. My forehead split apart, and blood gushed out. I just stood there without moving. Shashti’s mother began to shout and curse him: “Can you see a man standing here talking to her that you need to hit her like this?” she yelled. “We’re all women here, and she’s just a slip of a girl. She’s barely arrived here and you show up to split her head open?” Then she turned to me and said, “I don’t know how you can bear to live with this man. Anyone else would have walked out on him long back.”