A Life Less Ordinary

by Baby Halder

  Quietly, I took my child in my arms and came home. All I asked my husband was what I had done to be beaten like this. The words were barely out of my mouth when he picked up a sturdy piece of wood and began hitting me on my back. A short while later, I felt a piercing pain in my stomach. By the evening it was unbearable and I lay whimpering and crying for my father and mother. The pain was so severe that I could not sit or stand or do anything. I howled in agony all through the night while my husband slept on without a care in the world. Either he did not hear my cries or he couldn’t be bothered to do anything about them. I was now shouting, saying I was going to die, but he was utterly indifferent. I begged him to call someone. I told him I had not felt like this even when I gave birth to my child, but he just said, “Who can I call at this time of night?,” turned over, and went back to sleep.

  In the end, I took my child with me and, clutching my stomach and crying in pain, made it across to the house opposite, where I asked the owner, Mahadev, if he could go and inform my brother of my condition. I pleaded and pleaded with him, saying I was in so much pain that I could not bear it, that if he did not go I would die. “But I don’t even know where your Dada’s home is,” he said.

  “Take my son with you: he knows the way.”

  So, poor man, he held my son’s hand and went in search of my brother. Once he got there, he told him I was in a lot of pain and asked him to hurry back.

  “But what is Shankar doing?” my brother asked him.

  “What do you think?” he replied. “He’s fast asleep.”

  My brother came and put me in a cart and took me away. It was two o’clock in the morning. At that hour, not a single medicine shop was open. We could not find a doctor in the whole of Durgapur. So my brother took me to his house and made me lie down. My sister-in-law began to massage my stomach with oil, but it had no effect. I was in such pain that I wanted to lash out at her and everyone else around. I did not know what to do. My poor sister-in-law went from house to house at that hour of the night and somehow she managed to locate some medicine that could have helped, but even that was of no use. Then my brother brought home a friend of his named Sachin. He pressed my stomach here and there, and then went outside with my brother. After a short while my brother called my sister-in-law out as well. When she came back in she asked when I had last had my period, and I told her it had been four months. Then she asked if I had fallen and hurt myself anywhere. When I said no, she wanted to know how I had hurt myself. I told her that her brother-in-law had beaten me the previous day and since then I had been in this excruciating pain. She said: “You have a child in your womb, but it will not survive. Sachin-da will give you some medicine: it will take around five minutes to work.”

  But instead of five, fifteen minutes passed and the medicine wasn’t working at all. Then Sachin began to worry. He told my brother to rush me to hospital. “We can’t save her,” he said, “and if you do not get her to hospital, she will die.” My brother also started to panic, and quickly got things ready to take me to hospital. Sister-in-law helped me to sit up. Suddenly I felt as if something inside me was slipping out of my body. I became dizzy with fear. My brother’s eyes were also wide with fear, and I found I could not make a sound. No matter how hard I tried, no words came out: I could only moan in pain. I could see my brother and sister-in-law standing by my bedside and I could hear Sachin-da saying to them, “What had to happen has happened. Now let’s just put her on a separate bed.” He turned to my sister-in-law and asked her to give me some hot tea. He asked how I was feeling. I didn’t want to talk, but I tried. With difficulty I pushed open my eyes and tried to say something, but I couldn’t utter a word. Then they lifted me onto another bed. My brother and Sachin then took away the dirty thing that had come out of my body to throw into the jungle. In the morning sister-in-law woke up really early to go to the pond and wash the dirty and bloodied sheets, and I made my painful way along with her. I had no strength at all in my body, but I knew this was something I had to do. So I waited for her to draw water out of the well and then, with difficulty, I washed the sheets.

  The whole day passed in a haze. My husband did not show up at all. Around five in the evening he sent our son over to ask after me. When my boy saw me he said, “Ma, please come home.” How ironic that my husband could not find his way to me but my little boy had crossed one neighborhood and found his way into another to see his mother. Even the neighbors commented on this when they heard. They also criticized him for sending the boy so late—It’s all very well sending the boy now, they said, but what if she had died in the night? My sister-in-law told me that my father-in-law had come and suggested that I go back home to see him. When I got there I found that my father-in-law had come to take me back to attend a wedding in the family.

  I decided to go. My in-laws’ home was a place of peace for me. So we left, traveling the same way as last time. At my in-laws’ there was a constant stream of people who came to see me: it was as if I were a young bride. We would be constantly talking. It seemed that they liked the way I spoke, even though our dialects were quite distinct, and many words were pronounced differently. I liked the way they spoke and the way they behaved very much.

  All the young boys in my in-laws’ home were married by now and I found that wherever we went, I was the sister-in-law who was given the most respect. My father-in-law knew, for example, that I did not like to eat chappatis at night, so he had told everyone that I should be given rice instead. Sometimes he even said that I should be given rice three times a day if I liked! Despite the kindness and the care I received in that home, every time I went there, something or the other would happen after two or three months that would force me back to my tension-filled home. And every time I left, I felt as if I were leaving my own home—as though I were their daughter rather than a daughter-in-law. I wasn’t the only one who was sad: everyone cried to see me go, and I always felt as if I were going somewhere far away from the people who cared for me. But today or tomorrow, I knew that I could not stay at their home indefinitely. My father-in-law was not rich, and everyone had to work in the fields for their living. How then could I be the only one who stayed at home? I couldn’t even help in the fields, for I knew nothing of farming and the tasks it entailed.

  I had only been back a short while when one day Ma and Baba came from Durgapur to fetch me. But I could not just leave everything and go, so I told them I would come on my own later—their home was not far: it could be reached on foot, or for just three rupees by bus. They made me promise I would come, and Baba told me that he had bought a whole lot of new clothes for Durga Puja—as he did every year—for us. Baba took my sister-in-law with them and on their way back, she told them about how my husband had beaten me up so badly that I had nearly died. When I went to see them they told me, “From now on, you can stay here. There is no need to go back.” That was all very well, but how long could I stay? Any visitor who came would soon tire of the tension in that house, and never managed to stay for more than six or seven days. But this time I did not want to leave them, and I told Baba that I would not go back.

  A month later, I was still there and my husband had made no attempt to find out anything about me. I had nowhere to go—I did not want to go back to him and it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to stay on at Baba’s. In desperation, I told Baba that I wanted to go to my aunt’s house. He agreed immediately, and two days later, once he had gotten his salary, he bought train tickets for me and my child and saw us off. We had to travel from Durgapur to Jalangi. Baba had given me 100 rupees and I had even less than that with me.

  I went first to my older aunt’s house. She was no longer the same person I had known. Her hair was now all matted and untidy. Her five sons were all married and lived separately in the huge house they had. She lived with the youngest son, but would eat with anyone—indeed, whoever cooked first became her host for the day. They were all very fond of me and the moment I got there, they asked why I was on my own. “Isn�
�t Brother-in-law with you? How did he let you come alone?”

  “Is there anything wrong with coming alone?” I asked. “Besides, I was at Baba’s home and Shankar does not even know I am here.”

  “But won’t he be angry when he finds out?” asked one of my sisters-in-law.

  “No doubt. But what will he do? What can he do? He’ll shout and scream, and tell everyone that if he gets the chance he’ll beat me up. But what else can he do? I don’t want to live with him anymore.”

  “Do you mean that your father married you off without checking on anything?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what he did. He always said that he would marry me off to whoever came along, and that is exactly what he did. He did not check on anything. One fine day, Ma’s brother came and said to him, ‘I have a boy, do you want to give your girl?’ and Baba immediately said ‘yes.’”

  “So what will you do now?” asked my elder cousin.

  “I will not go back to him. I would much rather be alone. I have one child. I’ll keep him with me and find work somewhere.”

  There was a woman listening to all this. She was well off, from a neighboring house. She said, “So what will you do now? This is all fate. What was written has happened—your marriage, the child at such a young age…” But Aunt interrupted, saying that if it was all down to fate, then why did God give us hands, ears, and all our other faculties?

  I had been at my aunt’s house for fifteen or twenty days and the time had passed pleasantly. The family there looked after my child and I, and I had even managed to see a couple of films with my sisters-in-law.

  I then went to see my younger aunt for a week and then I wanted to go and see my younger uncle in Karimpur. Aunt saw me onto a bus. My uncle was relatively better off than the others: he owned a restaurant and a sweet shop, and his elder son had a shop for tape recorders and radios. They had a large and comfortable house and they ate well. But I sometimes wondered what was the use of that if they had no real love in their hearts for me…Still, I went there, and I’d only been there a few days when Baba came to fetch me. I heard him talking to my uncle about me. My uncle was asking my father why he had been in such a hurry to marry me off. “After all,” he said, “she’s still a child. Why did you have to rush into this? And why did you not tell us? Marriage isn’t a game, you know. Traditionally we consider at least five families before we decide, and we take the advice of five elders…and you? You didn’t so much as ask anyone. You did not invite anyone, we had no information, no news, nothing! You just married her off. You just did as you liked, and now who’s having to face the consequences? Not you, but this poor girl! Anyway, there’s no help for it now: you’ll have to just send the girl right back to her home.”

  Baba had no answer. The very next day, early, I had to leave with him. Together we went to the panchayat house where the elders meet to arbitrate disputes and make other decisions, and Baba sent word to my husband to come there. Five elders were called in as well and in front of them, Baba said to my husband, “See to it now that my daughter is not forced to leave her home again. You must promise to make sure she has everything she needs, and that she never has to leave again.” Saying this, he left. I was devastated. On the way back from Karimpur, I had done my best to explain to Baba why I did not want to go back. He’d tried to reason with me, using all kinds of arguments as to why I should go back. In the end, I just gave in. I’d thought, If everyone is saying I should go back, perhaps they are right. Even so…

  And so I went home with my husband. I found, to my surprise, that we were in a different house altogether. He’d sold the old one to Sandhya-di and taken a new house somewhere deep inside the neighborhood. What I feared had come to pass. I had no wish to live in that overcrowded area: in fact, I would have much preferred to have moved somewhere else altogether. Here, some people spoke to me and others refused to, but either way, it didn’t matter to me. I thought, Well, I’ll speak to those who speak to me and not to those who don’t.

  AND SO TIME PASSED AND I FOUND MYSELF PREGNANT again. On top of this I was worried about how to send my son to school. How would we manage, I wondered. Eventually we did get him into a school, but it wasn’t easy. My husband was no help. He’d gotten into the habit of giving the boy money when he was still very small. Every now and again, he’d hand him fifty paise and the child would take the money and run to the shop. He often missed school because of this, and this led to a lot of tension between us. The child became quite a bone of contention between us, and only I know how much I had to suffer on his behalf…

  Once, when the child was only three and still feeding at my breast, my husband and I had a fight one day and he beat me up and threw me out of the house, telling me never to return. As I was leaving, he snatched the child from my arms and later, he sent him away to his younger brother’s home. I was at my father’s home but I couldn’t settle down to anything. I missed my child so much and worried about him all the time. Baba brought my little niece and put her in my lap, saying she was also a child and perhaps her presence would console me. But it was no use. Finally, I went in search of my son and when I got to my brother-in-law’s home I found him there, playing happily with the other children! I called out “Babu” softly and he looked up and saw me. In an instant, he shot into my arms like a little bird and began grabbing at my breasts with his little hands, trying to pull them toward his mouth. I carried him with me to a temple across the road from their house and let him suckle. As we sat there, a girl of some fifteen or sixteen years of age stopped to watch us. She asked if I was the boy’s mother but I did not respond. I thought, If I say anything, it will lead to more questions—so I just kept quiet. Soon more girls collected, my brother-in-law’s wife among them. “Didi, don’t take the child away from here,” she said. “His father left us with strict instructions that he is not to go anywhere and also that if you came we were not to give the child to you.”

  “Why,” I said angrily, “does the child belong only to him? Look at him! He’s just a baby! He’s still suckling. How can you keep him? Do you have any idea of what I have been through without him? And what will you gain by keeping him away from his mother?” She wasn’t willing to listen to reason at all, and in the end, she had to snatch the child away from me. He didn’t want to leave me any more than I wanted to leave him. I just stood there. After a while, my son came out of the house again, and one of the girls with me said to my brother-in-law’s wife, “Why don’t you give the child to her? She is his mother, after all. How can she live without her child?”

  My boy saw me and started walking toward me. I picked him up and started walking away. Soon I saw that his uncle was coming after us. I walked faster, praying that a bus would come along and we could jump on to it—but there was no bus in sight, and he soon caught up with us. My child howled and cried as my brother-in-law snatched him away from me. I felt like my heart would burst with anger and pain. I did not know what to do. My eyes were streaming with tears as I walked home, forlorn. When I got there, all Baba said was, “So they didn’t give you the child, then?” Ma turned to him and said, “She will not be able to survive without her boy.” And they were right. I couldn’t live without him and I was forced to return to my husband.

  By this time I was nearly full term, and I was eaten up with worry: what would I do with a second child when we already had so much difficulty with just one? It was nearly three days since my labor pains had begun and there was no one to take me to the hospital. When Baba learned of this he and Ma came to see me and Baba shouted at my husband, asking if he was bent upon killing me. They had a big fight. My husband hitched up his lungi and lunged at Baba as if to beat him. “Stay out of our private lives!” he shouted. Baba and Ma did not utter a word. They just turned and left. A couple of days later, Baba came back. By that time the pain had become much worse and I was in sheer agony. One of our neighbors was with me at that point. She told Baba that he should take me away with him, saying, “Your daughter has suffered ter
ribly these last few days.” So Baba got a rickshaw and took me to his company hospital. As he was leaving the hospital, I plaintively asked him, “Baba, will I come out of here alive?” I was thinking of Shashti’s brother-in-law, who had gone into the hospital for some reason and had died there. Baba saw the tears on my cheeks and said, “Don’t cry, child, everything will be all right. After all, there is a God, is there not?” But when I saw all those sharp instruments in the delivery room, I was terrified. I pleaded with the doctors, “Please don’t cut me up!” But they all just laughed at me. Then, like the last time, they tied my hands and limbs to the bed, and took me in. I shouted and screamed, and fainted from fear.

  At ten o’clock that night, my second child was born. I woke only around midnight to find myself in a different room, with the child asleep on a small cot beside me. I had no idea whether the baby was a girl or a boy. Gradually, I moved myself from the bed and looked and found I had another boy. I did not know what to do. God gave me another boy, but I had so wanted a daughter! In the morning, I learned from people in the neighboring beds that the child was quite big—some said it was almost as if he was already six months old! The doctor came in and told me that Baba had asked him to operate on me to close up my tubes, but that he had been unable to do so because I was so weak. He also told me that the child weighed 3.1 kilograms.

  Ma and Baba came the next day, and Baba was thrilled that he had another grandson! He picked the child up and talked to him, making all kinds of baby noises and calling him “sala, sala” all the time. I was eating when the doctor called Baba aside and told him that we would have to wait a month for me to regain my strength before he could operate on me.

  I went back to Baba’s house. After five days there I felt much stronger. The fifth day was a festival day, Vishwakarma Puja, but I did not stay back. I bathed and dressed, took my child, and went home. I was very concerned about my elder son—I did not want his studies to be disrupted. It had been difficult enough to get him into school and I did not want to fritter away that good fortune. I wanted very much that he, and later my other children, should study and have a proper education.