A Life Less Ordinary (11 page)

“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 husband 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 DAY 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.”

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.