A suitable boy

It was the age of English Babus and their pretty mem-sahibs. She was the eldest among five children, a bright eyed reserved little girl. When she was young, her father, unlike most other men of that time, chose to send his daughters to school. School meant a six kilometre walk, but hell there was nothing better she could imagine.

Assam was then divided into chunks of land; tea plantations laid over them, with each chunk looked after by a Babu, a British sahib. In the 1800s when tea was first planted in Chabua in upper Assam, the Babus faced an acute shortage of labour. People were brought in from Bihar and its neighbouring states, to work in tea gardens. Rules were laid down, the labourers were oppressed.

Sometimes when she would return home from school with a bunch of other kids, one of the ambassadors would stop and the Gora babu would give them a lift home.  Those were the times of wintry harvest festivals and feasts; warm fuzzy sunsets that made the barren paddy fields give off a golden glow. Those were the days when her mother would put her siblings to sleep by putting off the kerosene lit lantern and narrating a story of how the Demi God Narasimha killed a demon when it was neither day nor night, not outside or inside, not laid on the ground or in the sky.

Lady estrogen worked up her magic pretty soon and she grew up as pretty and as fresh-faced as a daisy. Suitors lined up and soon the match was made, the marriage fixed. Of course she had no say in it, of course it was a good match, and of course the boy was a ‘suitable’ one since the elders had readily bobbed their cocky heads up and down and agreed.  

The household soon became abuzz with activity; everyone floating around with joy buried deep inside their bosoms, through the morning fog that seeped in the house all hushed up and mixed with the smoke from the kitchen fireplace. They sent her away draped in a creamy golden mekhela chador, with tears down her cheeks and hopes filled in her eyes.

A stream of thick red blood slipped down her broken lip the first time he hit her, right across her left cheek. Her head felt light and she could swear her ears were on fire.  Humans have a tendency to remember how the firsts of anything feels like; like the first time a mother sees her baby walk, the first time someone finally learns how to balance and ride a bicycle, the first high, the first low. Even when she was an old woman she could still remember all the raw and jagged emotions that filled her the first time her husband raised his muscular hand on her.

 It was a small thing; there was less salt in that day’s stew.

Days passed and the first turned into second, second into third and soon her body was full of cuts and bruises, her head was full of jagged emotions. Slaps turned to punches, punches turned to kicks. To her bewilderment, her in-laws never questioned her husband; never did anybody try and stop him when he was abusing her. The kindest thing someone did was the maid, who after seeing her broken lip and darkened eye, held her hand and said this will all stop after she gives him a son.  A son, yes, a son! All she could wish for then was that God blessed her with a son and this abuse would stop once and for all. Love and bliss was the last thing on her wish list. All she wanted was the hitting to stop, just stop. Every night she would try to walk around making the least noise, doing the chores,  doing them perfectly, because even the smallest error would mean another round of raw physical pain. Sometimes there would be two or even three rounds of hitting in a single day and by the time the day ended her life would cling to her body by a thin thread, her head feeling light and her bosom heavy with pain and emotions.

‘Stop!’, she screamed one day.
‘Just stop!’

Another slap.  Another punch.

He had come home early that day, reeking of cheap alcohol and lust. She had cooked rice, dal and fried potatoes, just like he preferred.

‘The milkman told me you didn’t take the milk today’, he said while eating his dinner.

‘Why the hell are you home then? To eat off my money and shit it out?’ His tone was getting angrier and she knew what lay next. She kept quiet.
‘Answer me for God’s sake!’, he threw the plate on her and it missed.

 This made him angrier, he stood up and went to the backward and came back with a thick bamboo log. She knew what would happen next, her mind had already shut down and her body would offer no resistance like always.

‘Who do you think you are?!’, he retorted and raised the bamboo. She suddenly pushed him hard and he fell backwards never expecting this to happen.  She snatched the bamboo stick from his hand and jabbed him in his sternum, because she knew it hurt the most there when he used to hit her. She hit him again in his head and he fainted.

‘I’m your wife!’ she screamed.

She packed up her few things and left.

Years later when she ran her NGO for victims of domestic violence, she would often remember the first time he hit her. She would see those faces swollen by punches and their tired lifeless eyes and she could see her reflection, only 30 years younger. Her speeches would inspire hundreds of young, tortured victims to fight this evil and move ahead in life.

‘Like any other bride, all I expected was a happy home and a loving husband. I was at a point in my life when everything was new and I wasn’t prepared for anything. A new home, new places, new faces.  

Domestic violence is an evil lurking around the households, creeping and crawling into our lives and strangling the women with its claws. The worst part is that our very own life partners are the perpetuators. The society looks down upon its better half and worse still, is that victims who chose to break their silence and leave their husbands are left in their ordeals without any support. Why? I dare to ask why? Aren’t they daughters, sisters, and mothers too? Where is it written that men can hit and abuse their wives and get away with it in the name of marriage? And silence isn’t an answer. We have to speak up, we have to fight the stigma because we know we are right.

It happened to me but it stopped because I chose not to keep quiet. Women are equal, at par with their male counterparts. But saying so isn’t enough, we the women have to believe in it, believe in ourselves. We have to erase everything the society has taught us till now; to be meek, to be obedient, and to be silent lambs. We must remember that we have a choice too. We are strong, independent individuals and no one has any right over our bodies and our minds. We are the mothers, sisters, wives and the better half of our society. We are the life givers.

We are women.’