NOBODY LIGHTS A CANDLE
Anjali Deshpande
4
He saw no one as he passed the farmhouse, slowing down automatically. Then he caught a glimpse of a woman sitting alone against the wall of the farmhouse.
He drove past but something pulled him back. He could not say what it was, a restless energy, a lurking response of a cop to a crime, a regret for not having beaten back the unnecessary aggression of those young raw men, uncouth in their pajamas, simmering discontent at not having taken up the challenge those anarchic villagers had thrown at him. He slowed down, he was already driving slowly, but he slithered to a stop and got down from the bike. He turned it back and walked it towards the gate his helmet still slung from the side. The garlands in the trunks of elephants were now facing each other.
She was an old woman. Her hair was grizzly, grey, and unkempt though a loose plait, tied into a bun hung on the back of her neck. Her sari was a cheap nylon in faded blue, a mismatched black blouse over her hanging pendulous breasts. On her feet were old chappals worn at the heels. Whether the aanchal of her sari refused to stay put on her breasts or had simply slid off from there because of the way she was shivering trying to hold in her sobs was not clear. A small woman shrinking into the wall, she was sobbing quietly. That is what must have caught my attention, he thought. Unlike women in her class she was not beating her breasts or howling loudly. She wept quietly and almost shrank into the wall, hiding, as if afraid to attract attention. One end of her pallu was stuffed in her mouth in an attempt to stifle the sobs that broke through the wad of cloth.
He squatted next to her.
“Why are you crying, amma?” he asked gently.
She did not spring up in surprise. Or retreat. Whether she had heard him was also doubtful. She simply raised her eyes to his and the dumb agony of her eyes complained to him against an unjust cosmos. Her deep anguish came close to denying the existence of god.
She spoke after a long while.
“She was my daughter,” she said. “She was. What a horrible death she died.”
“That girl? Inside there? Tell me.”
Now the old woman looked alarmed.
“I am not from the village. You know that, don’t you? Here, let us go to the market. We will get some tea,” he said.
She slunk back and got up to leave.
“Amma, okay, forget the tea. Let us sit here. Let us. Tell me. May be I can help.”
She did not seem to trust him. He could see that trust had been the first of the treasures the old woman had lost in her life. Her wary eyes, her silent sobs, her shrunken frame, everything a testimony to the loss of faith in life and people. Her sobs were no longer wet. They were dry and crackled like fire. Her eyes were now alert.
He said, “Amma, these villagers, they will not give statement to police. They won’t tell the police anything. I heard them say that. They hated her.”
“She was not a good girl,” said the old woman.
“That I don’t know. But see, what god has given man must not take. God gave her life and we don’t know who took it. Tell me what happened. I am like your son,” he said. “Did you see how she was killed?”
She gasped then and stared at him with wide eyes as if she could not see him at all. He had no idea how she was killed. He could call Nitesh and ask. But his statement had shaken the old woman.
“Even animals are not slaughtered like that. They don’t cut even goats like that.” She began to wail loudly then. He was afraid the hostile villagers would come back. A bunch of children had stopped in a field some distance away and were staring at them. Must be returning from school.
“Amma, these villagers will come back. Let us walk towards the station,” he said and leading his motorbike motioned to her to walk with him. She stuffed her pallu in her mouth again and walked with him. After a while she agreed to ride pillion and he brought her to the railway station.
There was no tea to be found at the station. He bought two bottles of colas and a packet of biscuits from a shop in the market close by and forced one on the woman. Sitting next to her on the bench he sighed. He should now get up and leave. He had stopped to console and was being drawn in by the woman’s obvious reluctance to talk. He decided not to press her any more.
She began on her own, after a few sips from the bottle. She talked slowly and between sobs told him about her ill fated daughter. That is how Adhirath got to know that the girl who had been killed had a name and a dream too. Her mother too had a name who sat there on the bench , Ramwati, who had named her daughter to honour her shining face, Suryabala. Adhir wondered whether it was a curse for her daughter, a name like that, a cursing her to remain in the blazing sun and be scorched.
Suryabala was her youngest daughter, the naughty girl who had studied up to class four, girl who pinched choice pieces of meat from the plates of her three elder brothers. She always wanted the best of everything, clothes, clips, food. How much can you get all this in a dhobi’s house? There is little work and less money. Whoever gives clothes to dhobis to wash nowadays? Amirpur is not a town where you can get contracts to do laundry for hotels. You have to depend on farm work. By the time the girl was sixteen she married her off.
“The ill fated girl was very pretty,” Ramwati said. “The whole world knows that if you have a face like the moon, your fate will be like a sieve. Pleasure will never last. She was married to a fellow in Delhi. In Manglapuri. There too she would loafed around the bazaars, eating chaat or chattering with someone. Scoldings, beatings, kicks, nothing kept her in control. Ill omen was like her twin. As if it was born with her. When she was two she swallowed her father. Was not good at all, she wasn’t.”
Ramwati broke down and cried long and loud. Adhirath sat unmoved. He did not even feel like consoling her anymore. He had left home looking for some happiness and he had found this. He began to regret getting involved. This was Nitesh’s headache, why should he get mixed up in this affair. He must go home now.
Ramwati wiped her tears, blew her nose in her pallu and continued her narration. Who could tell how unlucky her daughter was, not even the jyotishi who had cast her horoscope when she was less than a week old. An ill omen always seemed to follow her. She was widowed wasn’t she? After only two years of marriage. And then they would not feed her properly. Her in-laws could not be blamed, after all she had not even given them a son to carry on their name. On top of it the fate she got with her had consumed their son.
“She came back to us. She did not behave like a grieving widow for long. She had developed airs by living in the town. She would wear coloured bangles and bright saris. Which decent woman does this? And which man will leave such a woman alone? They say that men of the same village are like your brothers or uncles but that is only a myth. Her sisters-in-law also found a good excuse now to keep bickering. We thought if she is so fond of bright colours and jewellery she should be married again. Heaven knows she was pretty. Not a blemish on her moonlike face. We quickly got her married off again. Found a nice man.
“Do you know what she did? That horrible girl? She ran away from there in a fortnight, can you believe it? The first time her brothers thrashed her and sent her back. She kept coming back to us. Three times we made her go back. Kept her locked up in a room. Thrashed her with sticks. But the fourth time that she came back she refused to go. Said his mouth smells like a rotten fish. Said her brother-in-law had designs on her. That her husband rode her all night, would not let her rest at all. The last time she came back to us we folded our hands in front of her in-laws and asked them to grant her a divorce. The biradari panchayat arranged the divorce and fined us. They were asking for ten thousand rupees. Somehow we got them to agree on six thousand. We had to feed the whole panchayat, all the fifty three men. Only then they gave her permission for a separation.
“Her brothers said they would not allow her to stay with us. But where would she go? I wish I had throttled her in the cradle. She wanted to learn the work in a booty palour, that is what she said. She did learn too. Then she found a job in one of those palours. Yes, she took the train from here to go to town and came back and people said all kinds of horrid things. She sometimes did not get back home at night. Village louts hung at the station platform or outside waiting for her and passed lewd comments. They offered her money. We could hardly show our faces in public. Sometimes she would not return at night. It is good that we are not from this village. Once, the pardhan of Chandola had sent a man to our house. He brought the message that if the girl wants to do business, men in the village have lots of money. Just send the girl to the toobewell tomorrow, said the man who brought the pardhan’s message,” she said and fell silent.
“Tubewell?” asked Adhirath.
“In the fields they have toobewells..”
“.....I know tubewells.....”
“...they have a room there. For the electricity plugs and meters. That is where they do all their dirty business,” said the old woman.
“That day her brothers finally threw her out. Who knows where she went. She came to meet me twice. Sporting a big tikuli on her forehead, this big a bindi. Anklets and earrings tinkled on her. She no longer wore bangles. She wore big kangans. Her sisters-in-law made a face when they saw her.
“She definitely met the fate she deserved. She died the way she lived, filthy. But she was my daughter. I gave birth to her, she came out of here,” said the old woman pointing to her abdomen. Her tears had dried up now. “Someone will have to perform her last rites. Where have they taken her body? Those bastard policemen, may God roast them in hell, never told me anything. They did not even tell me where they have taken her, how I will get her body. My poor daughter.” She broke down again.
“The police it must be who told you about her death,” said Adhir. “They took away the body.”
“As if the police would. A man came from the village here, sent by the pardhan. He told me. He said your daughter has been cut open, her intestines are lying in the mud. I ran here. The way I was. By the time I got here they had taken her away. The police did not even come to find me, talk to me.”
“Ammaji, come I will drop you home. I will find out who did this. I will tell you,” he said and could not believe that the words were his. His own voice sounded like that of a stranger’s to him, it seemed as if someone was standing outside him and making this assurance to the old woman and he did not like it at all.
He led her down the stairs of the station and took her back to her village on his motorcycle. That is how he visited Amirpur with her and saw her little house, a pile of bricks behind a walled in courtyard with an asbestos sheet on its top to t which a house would be the poverty of language but some call it home.
email: anjalides@gmail.com
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