About Me

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Hi, this is somebody who has taken the quieter by-lane to be happy. The hustle and bustle of the big, booming main street was too intimidating. Passing through the quieter by-lane I intend to reach a solitary path, laid out just for me, to reach my destiny, to be happy primarily, and enjoy the fruits of being happy. (www.sandeepdahiya.com)

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Virtue in the Womb of Vice

 The new item number is just too crunchy and juicy. Voluptuous moves. Raunchy notes. Suggestive lyrics. It grips the audience in the slanting ambience of throbbing sensuality. The choreographer, the lyricist and the music director have done full justice to the edifying undercurrents of her mystical curves. They have had their own set of imagination about her while working on their respective parts in the musical number. She gyrates in thigh-length, tight, gold-threaded dhoti and beaded choli.

She has perfect figure, finest curves, very charming features and flawless skin. She flaunts her sexuality with cast-iron certainty. And millions gasp for breath. She carries the aura of a goddess around her: the queen of the forbidden--but most sought after--kingdom of sex. They make as much noise as they do in religious processions with cheering conches and clapping cymbals.  

One thing, but, goes missing in all this glamorous show. There is a shadowy dot in the incessant bustle of revealing anecdotes. It’s her innocent laughter and child-like simplicity of mind. When she smiles, it’s a pure, soft outburst of merriment untouched by any trace of malice and shrewdness. When she laughs, it also is pure like a child does when amused at a small, simple thing. But this unsophisticated self is covered up by her dazzling sex appeal. Even if it shines at all, people prefer to ignore it. They have more important things to gloat over, to quench the hunger of mind, the famed Indian hunger of the opposite sex in the head, beyond all outside taboos and evil talk of dirty acts like sex and all.

She has left swerving trailblazers among young adults. She has earned quite a bit of name in the industry. She gets interviews now and then in the mainstream media. On such occasions, she is her usual unsophisticated self. However, the person on the other end seems on a watch, like peeping over a fence, guarding himself from some strange reaction inside. And all, the audience knows and understands the inhibitions running inside the anchor’s head. They hardly seem to listen to her for their minds are somewhere else.

The skimpiest dress covering the barest minimum fuels the fire of repressed passion among the masses. For each artwork of dance by her watched on the YouTube, they go back to the gray zone on the Internet and draw out ghosts from her past. Yes, it satisfies the hungry, invisible ghosts inside the well-behaved, civilised self. They repeatedly prey upon those video clips where they can see all of her. Not even a shred of clothing intervening. They gloat over her curves, the act, the ejaculations, have theirs and come back to watch her feisty item numbers again. Her visuals in the song and dance videos serving as a mass foreplay to rouse the heaving humanity to take refuge in the purplish corridors of virtual sex. The storm over, all is well in the civilised lanes of society. Everybody is clean and upright. Only she carries the stigma permanently.  

The ink of her past appears too dense. More than the ink’s density, the people seem to just hold onto their lusty fancy for that particular image. It’s their pride possession. They simply don’t want to forego the dustbin to dump the ejaculations of their hungry passion. It gratifies the most overpowering sense, sex. Her item numbers just fan the fire even more. 

It has been a massive effort: the journey from hard porn to soft porn.

The roles she gets, apart from the item numbers, involve sex, glamour, sensuous intrigues and extramarital affairs: the sociable, bridgeable sexuality unlike the unchecked rampancy of outright naked game.

She knows hers is a humongous task. The road from being a porn star to the so called normal film star is riddled with countless obstacles. Sexual zealots fire bullets from both sides. She exists in the chambers of lust in their ever-greedy minds, so she just cannot escape like this. They have to hunt her down. They have tunnel-vision about her and don’t want to see beyond.

Only she knows the amount of effort she has put in moving from full porn to semi porn. It is like traversing poles at the opposite ends. From being a naked mannequin in full public glare, you walk down as they run after you, and you struggle to cover yourself with normal human sensitivities of respect and being treated like anyone around. People somehow resent it, throw jibes and try their best to keep their goods to gratify their lust. So the demonic retinue of the ghosts from her past follows her like a shadow clings to a person walking in the open on a sunny noon.

She is struggling to come out of the cloistered corridors, but the path ahead is nothing short of an ominous labyrinth. She has to dilute the dark ink of the past. Wipe it altogether and write a new identity, to feel normal like any other actor in the industry. It is like bringing night and day together: from soft porn to normal roles.

She wants to go further. She is an artist and works on her acting skills to the last ounce of her perseverance. She wants the regular roles like any other actress around. But she cannot enter each and every brain to wipe the pieces of her past lying there, allowing them to see her present and appreciate her art. The directors who approach her have ready-made, predetermined formula of a feisty woman, the woman for whom men fall, creating ripples around. These are feisty tales of sex, murder, extramarital relations and scores of lusty intrigues. All this but seems to set up a prelude to the same urge to see her porn movies.

There are trolls as well, the social media crusaders, who yank reputations to shreds, pour their boiling scorn and burn the images from safe heavens. There are abuses, lewd remarks, copy-pasted links of her online porn clips, gross invitations and still more. She no longer takes them head on and simply blocks them. But the words haunt her for long hours during the nights when she is practicing her acting skills.

With the big, bossy, disparaging world buzzing around, she sometimes gets judgmental on her own self, and finds herself at fault for getting into the porn industry to begin with. But wasn’t that the launch-pad for crossing the jarring atmospherics of anonymity, escaping her adolescent nightmare of just getting sold by life without leaving any mark, and that too with such flawless skin, exotic features and dreamy contours? It was a search for embryonic possibilities, to give life to her dreams, to make a mark, to become something from nothing. And with her inexperienced self, she jumped into the pool with incisive sincerity. The towering grandeur of success bathed her flawless skin with pointed flashlights of riotous recognition. She wrote towering tales of her feats on millions of craving hearts.

The art of sex! It was a wild river toppling the mountains, eating the slopes and breaking boulders. Ruthless. Like it will never stop. But beyond the fury, after falling over a huge cliff face, in the slow-swirling waters of the after-fall majesty, the man lying sprawled, spent under her, she laughed so innocently, with such unassuming vivacity that it instantly changed her persona from an unsparing manhood-slayer to a simple vulnerable girl.

Even in her movies now one can hear that innocent trill, like a little bell softly chiming around the neck of a mountain sheep. A little jaunt on the green slope. And the whiffs of tinkling bell carried by the gentle air down the valley. It’s but lost in bigger noises. This little insignia of her vulnerability, this tiny pause in the journey of the stormy mountain river, this interlude amidst crazily heaving waves is missed by almost all the spectators.

Most of the men, who comprise the audience of her current movies, have masturbated some time or the other while watching the porn clips portraying her as the temptress sucking away all the lust from the planet. Her super-feminine force raises tornados of infatuation, obsession and excitement. They own her in that part of their brain which stimulates desire. They want the sensation to remain stuck in their groins. They fight to stop it from sneaking into the aesthetic corridors of art and beauty.

The image, with its customary stimulation, is too big and overpowering. It keeps flashing in their minds as they watch her in the movies now. They expect the same gratification. While they ogle at the character in the movie, a different scene is playing in their minds. Parallel stories interlope: the one on the screen playing the part of foreplay, and the one in the mind catching up on the more concrete, luscious, lusty practicality.

The more she tries to prove her acting credentials, the more they delve deeper into the spools of the Internet to grab handfuls of lusty morsels to satisfy their hunger. With the scenes from hard-porn blazing in their minds, they are mildly comfortable as long as her roles are on the margin of soft-porn.

She is in the office of a famous director today. There is a word that he is finalising the cast for his upcoming pot-boiler. For the last two months she has been working on her acting skills in a famous acting school.

“Well, it will be too revolutionary to put you in the cast. The role is too, too….,” he hesitates, rolls his eyes and draws his fingers over his bald pate.

His office is ensconced in luxury. There is private grandeur and imposing ambience well managed by a famous interior designer. She shifts uncomfortably in her chair. In the palpable silence, she can literally feel his chain of thoughts at the time. Her past and that iron-cast image seem to have seeped and submerged with the pulse of the ongoing time. Its magnetic force is too strong for her to completely escape out of its orbit.

He is in the pink of health for a man in mid-fifties. His eyes are assured like they have the fully authorised assessment of any situation related to film-making.

“The role is too mainstream for you,” he says firmly and winks as if to convince himself of his logic.

She gets a pinprick and avoids a visible shudder. It is a fight to maintain her dignity in the halls of fame glittering with virtuous testimonies on the walls around.

“I have been working very hard for this role. Please take an audition, of any duration, of whatever intensity required for the character,” she tries to stay normal.

“Oh, audition. You know, umn, it’s more about suitability for the character. Like, all actors have certain affinity for the role they are most suitable. We simply spot that suitability,” he is driving it hard.

“But it’s not fair. I deserve a chance to be tested. I, I…,” her determination is melting, the typecast of her past is too bold.

She avoids his gaze and is drawn to the reticent muse of a famous heroine looking at her from some framed portrait on the wall. Oh, that was the unhurried old world. Times have changed now. Her brief eerie is broken by his drooling words.

“Why work so hard to bruise your beautiful skin on a path that is new to you. By doing the kind of roles which you have done so far, you have earned name, fame and money! You rule their hearts like none of the actresses around,” he laughs and looks lividly.

“But, you know…,” he cuts her mid sentence.

He seems to have set up his mind into the pursuit of a fancy which lies inside all successful men. They have elastic interpretations of the situation of a woman who wants a part in their success story. They are naturally inclined to pull it for their advantage. He is no exception. 

“Ok, you can spread more pleasure than you think. Let’s have an audition,” he leans back in his chair and his eyes bore into her bosom.

He appears perfectly at ease with himself, undaunted and untroubled by any doubt about the success of the project at hand.

“You know, it’s a huge budget film. A make or break for many. It’s not that easy as you think,” he knits his brows and appears damn serious.

She takes his serious expression even more seriously.

“Yaa, I understand. But at least accept me as one of the competitors. I can prove myself. Hope you watched my last movie,” she sits erect in her chair like a thorough professional.

He doesn’t remember anything except the feisty dance on a raunchy number. Her curves swirl around in his imagination. He closes his eyes and takes his memory still further, away to the fantasy world of naked, unprohibited revelry. He recalls the minutest details of her anatomy. The shade of pubic hair, the genitalia, like so many others, still different, her rampant foray into sucking out all pleasure and spit triumphantly, and that innocent trill of laughter.

She is surprised, watching him with eyes closed for a long pause. She breaks the reverie.

“Sir, you know…,” she draws him out of that other worldly charm.

“Hmmm!” he appears a bit irritated like someone shaken out of deep sleep midway through a heavenly dream. “You know it will be too revolutionary,” his eyebrows are drawn taught.

She doesn’t say anything. For his age he is a strong, fit, confident man. He gets up to take out a file from the rack by the wall. He is aroused. Possibly he has got up in that state to show what is going inside him. She can see it. It’s protruding. He doesn’t want to hide it even, as if wanting to convey the message. She feels insecure, even sad and looks resignedly. On an instinct, she adjusts her knee-length skirt as if to protect herself.

The office air hangs in suspension as if jolted out of its senses by a startling, telling remark.

He gets back into his chair, more relaxed now, sure that his arousal has been seen. The message is directly passed. His bald head is glowing purple red.  

“You know, it’s a fight. This world of actors and actresses. Specially for the big banner movies. It requires talent, skills, luck as well, connections, image and even personal inclinations and choices,” he stops for her to absorb the bitter truth.

She feels saliva in her mouth and swallows it nervously. The deep hum of sadness surfaces in her big eyes.

“You know ambitious young actresses go to any length to grab the top spot. And of course there are gentlemen who welcome such dedication,” he smiles, staring deep into her bluish-brown eyes.

“Well! I, I am ready for …audition,” she mumbles.

She is losing confidence rapidly.

“Then go for the audition,” he stands up.

He has already unzipped himself and the audition phallus is out. It’s an open invitation. A simple give and take. A short audition and the role for her.

He seems helpless. He is shivering out of sheer excitement forced by the raw, scandalous adventure of transgression into her modesty, of being able to propel his naked instinct beyond the fence of law and decorum. He has transposed the dream onto the plain of reality. It’s like grafting himself as the male character in all those plays of naked flesh.

Just the mere sight of it fills her mouth with the typical taste of it. She has done it many times in the past, with such gripping greed and madness that it felt like she was out there to drain all masculinity of its coffers of thirst forever.

He is shaking and imploring her to drain him out of his misery, of his frustration born of unquenchable thirst.

“Come on! After this there is no stopping for you. You will choose your roles,” he is gasping for breath.

There is a chance for her to be an actress, a real actress like anyone around. It’s tempting. She is holding the chair armrests very tightly. But something holds her back. She has been working too hard, late into the nights to push herself further to come out of this soft-porn mould. And the deal seems like going back again into the past to redeem future.

She has a struggle ahead she knows it. She is determined to face it. She is not ready to go into the future with the life-support of the past she is cutting from her life. It seems unjustified, even unethical to both the past and the future.

She gets up and turns around the table to approach him. He is on the verge of fainting, with all those wildest fancies just about to clutch him into the heavens of ecstasy. He feels her touch on the protruding phallus of his life-long hunger. Helpless he surrenders and closes his eyes.

He wakes up to the taut sound of his trouser-zip. She has safely put his strayed self into the safety of his pants and closed the doors on it. He cannot believe it.

“Do you even know what are you doing! It’s over for you!” he flies into a blinding rage.

“Yes sir, this project might be over. But not all is lost for me. I have a struggle ahead and would prefer to work over months, even years, instead of taking five-minute short-cuts to reach there. That will take me back to where I started from,” she is very calm, and looks at him with unoffended, sad eyes. 

She comes forward again and shakes his hand very politely and professionally and backs out. With even more politeness she closes the door behind her. There are tears of pride in her eyes as she crosses the floor. And a new wave of determination pervades her beautiful curves.

All that Woman is

 

It’s 819 AD. The classical Indian thought is handsomely ashore. It has been a long and arduous journey starting from the savagely unsystematic outpours driven primarily by fear. We have now reached the airy overbearance of spacious logic and busy realism. Indian mystics have laid firm foundations for the systematization of thought about the unknown.

With open arms, texts and commentaries on the Vedas welcome the infinite manifestations of the universal goodwill. Human thought has beaten the limits of awe, wonder, obedience, surrender and love for the unknown. It is looking beyond now, further into the mind to dive into the luminous whirlpool of the human brain.  

Human mind is fertile with logical imagination. One more step has been taken. Vedanta literature has shown man the next step in Indian philosophical thought. It’s no longer about the ideas shaped by plain conjecture. Now it’s not just bare surrender to the gaping unknowns. There is an effort to interpret the forces of nature. There is cultivation of thought and logic. There is an effort to understand the process of the humans grasping the reality.

Brahma Sutras of Sage Badarayana Vyasa have set up a platform for human thought and logic to take the next stride. Human mind looks within to understand the ways and means of interpreting the messages sent by our sense organs.    

Philosopher and theologian Adi Shankara is plodding and pushing across the vast Indian expanses to take the human mind’s reach further by integrating the diverse thoughts in Hinduism. He has a huge collection of commentaries on Vedic texts. The pioneer sage has thrown further light on the Upanishads. Calmly commanding, he is slaying scores of blindfolding rituals to lay down the concepts of Advaita Vedanta, i.e., unity of the soul and the attributelesss supreme identity.

Ritualism has eaten the vitality of Indian thought and philosophy. He is travelling across India to revive the spirit of Hinduism to establish it as the instrument of self realization; to be a master of one's own destiny, not just a helpless beggar before the deities. Wherever he goes, he challenges those who oppose him, hammers down their shaky superstitions to overpower them with his logical interpretations of our thought processes and natural phenomena around. It's a blizzard of logic sweeping the length and breadth of India. Neatly accustomed to his efficiency by now, he arrives in Mithila state in the northern Gangetic plains, near the frontier between modern day India and Nepal.    

The great scholar has reached Tharhi village. A gently gay autumn welcomes him. There is mystique restfulness spread around. A perfectly pensive evening is building up. The great thatched hall in the hermitage premises is softly abuzz with scholarly excitement. The forces of dark which put shadows in minds seem to peer grimly over the wooden fences around the place. The scholars wait with their vigorous jealousies. The Shankaracharya has arrived only a couple of hours ago and is ready to take logical pot-shots at the rival theologians.

His shaven head and calm eyes don’t give any sign of the long, arduous journey. But he has much ground to cover. India is a huge landmass. The differences are numerous in nature and categories. They start immediately. Adi is on a spiritual rollercoaster and easily prevails upon daunting bearded rishis and feckless, incompetent scholars who make much noise like empty vessels.

A young student, a string of holy thread worn diagonally across his torso and wearing white cotton dhoti, is lost in the great philosopher’s persuasive logic. He has big gentle eyes but still can manage a pensive look. He has a question.

Swamiji, the words of your logic fail to take me to the exact picture of reality. Does it mean there is no specific plane of reality? And we just reach a level, given our understanding of the words involved in the sentences, where we infer as per our own convenience and limitations? Is it like a person with good eyesight can watch distant objects in comparison to somebody with a bad one?”

Adi smiles at the question. His calm eyes bore straight into the young student’s handsome face. The penetrating focus in those eyes is very striking.

“Study hard for each word in the books of theology. Work for the meaning of each and every word. Focus your senses to grasp the maximum a word has to offer. You will see the farthest one can see!” it sounds like a blessing.

Time seems lost in some splendorous assumption.

There is something extraordinary about this boy. Next morning, before setting out on his mission again, the Shankaracharya calls the boy. He again looks into the deep, reflective pools of his eyes. The great philosopher smiles. There is the stability of an undisturbed ocean in the young student’s eyes.

“He can take very deep dives to carry the gems of reality from the mysterious depths,” the sage softly tells himself.

Adi gives the young student a palm leaf compilation of the Brahma Sutra of Badarayana. The text is a famous systematization of the philosophical ideas piled up layer after layer in the Upanishads. The Brahma Sutras explore the nature of the human existence and absolute reality. They emphasise the importance and need of attaining spiritually liberating knowledge. 

It is a reward and blessing beyond words. Just the ownership of the text containing the apex of the Indian philosophical thought is a matter of pride. The young disciple walks back to his house, holding the cloth bag containing the precious text like it is hiding the most precious jewels on the earth. He has been exceptionally hungry for the knowledge and words of holy Sanskrit texts. In fact this is what hunger means to him. He has mastered Vedas, Upvedas and Upanishads. Now he possesses the cream of all that knowledge, the gist. He wants to go further, see beyond, break the frontier of all human thought reached so far. He is holding the text even more dearly than his life.          

“Vachaspati, Vachaspati come out. O God what has possessed this boy! That book has a magic spell. I have to call babaji to break it!” Vatsala, his mother, is very anxious.

Her neighbours are standing around her in front of the hut he has locked himself in. She is a widow and he the only son. They have sympathy for her.

“He hasn’t come out for the last two days. These books can turn a young man mad,” she is sobbing.

There is more sympathy for the widow struggling to raise her son, who is all concerned about Vedic knowledge and now this book. There are driblets of resentment against his lack of understanding for his widow mother’s position.

With exaggerated indisposition, they raise a chorus. There is a pandemonium. He is drawn out of his moon-washed eerie. He hasn’t opened the book even once. It is precious. It has priceless meaning to each and every word written in it. He has been looking at it and taken away into the sublime stillness of a mystifying trance.

He can hear his mother’s lamentation outside and the words of sympathy floating around. He opens the grass and reed thatch door of the hut and steps out. The sun is too bright and blinds him with its garish luxury of sunrays. He squints and looks deep into the blue sky. There is musty silence. A cool breeze is blowing carrying malleable sensitivity in its gentle drifts. A flock of sparrows raises a ruckus and the noise goes unruly, whirlpooling over the huts. They hold him with empathy taking him to be sick.

The proximity of the precious manuscript carries the effect of a thunderbolt strike. He is lost in the yeasty aroma of the parchment paper. It is almost being in a delirium. The young man gets fever. He mumbles strange meaningless words about the ultimate reality. His mother gets scared and even thinks of throwing the book away. But then stops from doing this, herself being scared of its powers.

Vachaspati regains his footing from the jolt after a week. He carefully starts touching the book, almost cautious like touching fire. He familiarizes himself with the ecstatic swoop, smell and feel of the palm leaves and the Sanskrit words. He is vigilant as if he is walking on a rope with fire burning below. He has miles to go on the rope to reach the destination. The Brahma Sutras are the bamboo, supporting him, balancing him, preventing his fall into the sweeping pungency of illogical, straying thoughts and disbelief.

Away from the wrecking turmoil of mundane existence, the world then ceases to exist for him. It is just the Brahma Sutras, the beginning. And the end? He wants his awakened self to be that end. Aham Brahmasmi. I am the all potent supreme entity. But he has to prove it to himself. He has to break that delusional veil that filters the supreme knowledge from barging fully into the compartment of our being, leaving us angry, ignorant and frustrated. He has to understand why and how we see the perceived reality. Can the reality be changed for the better? Is it fixed? Is it pliable, to be moulded into better shape by our heightened awareness? There are endless questions. He has long left the path paved with well-tailored simplicities. This path is prickly, gives bloodied feet, but then which real path isn’t?  

There is an all-fired urgency for the cause. The intricate extravagance of his brain has sucked him into a world of its own. He has now cut himself off from the society. A secluded grove is the safe house with the precious book. Here he spends the time from dawn to dusk, pondering thousand times over the meaning of each word, phrase and sentence, and then looks ahead with the torchlight of his boosted reason.

With its sweeping scope, the time sees effortless change of seasons carrying hopes and heartbreaks in their overburdened carriage. The humanity heaves on, ladenly slogging with its load of miseries interjected off and on with flashes of happiness. With expertly manoeuvring conscience, he is engaged in his fight against his perennial foes, the unremitting doubts and questions.

It has been eight years since the book landed in his hands. There has been just one routine. Carried by early morning’s verve, he reaches the grove with a time’s meal and some water. The trees look down at him in astonishment and awe. And further upward, the sky seems lost in the quagmire of this pleasant absurdity. Away from the hoot and holler of the fight for survival on the familiarly well-worn path, here the stakes are etched into the infinite distances of the mysteries of the mind and the unknown.

He goes back to his hut late at night. Slowly opens his hut’s door, finds the rice and cooked lentils on his bed, eats slowly and silently, and goes to sleep. The night closes over him with the same resigned, time-worn expression carried through its bluish dark shadows. Mournful starlight bearing a voluminous testimony to the extent a human mind can go within to seek the greatest mysteries exploding in the farthest corners of the universe.

His mother’s tears have dried up. She has accepted her fate.  

He has forgotten the number of times he has read the book. Each time he reads it, there is a new meaning to it. Each and every word appears to carry layers after layers of hidden meanings. He is peeling off the layers to reach the kernel of truth. It but is endless. There are foggy meanderings and he has to beat the teasing fatality yawning from side to side. He rises higher with each jump into the air to see beyond the fence. He just cannot overcome this feeling that there is limitless joy to be harnessed through the path of learning.

On the surface, it is acerbic and acrimonious. His mother is not keeping well these days. She struggles to catch her breath while toiling hard to earn two meals a day for herself and her son. She is worried what would happen to him after she is gone. Marriage as an institution is supposed to guarantee hope and care in future. She has been thinking of getting him married. But who would give his daughter to somebody who doesn’t seem to act and behave like a common householder? A prospective groom should at least appear likely to stay yoked in domesticities. From that angle he appears feckless and incompetent.

Individual destinies are but battered and buffeted in varied ways. The world is full of people bound by conditions which force them to settle for the minimum. Like while most of the parents try to ensure a life-long security for their daughter, looking at the groom’s prospects from multiple angles, there are still some who are placed so tightly that just getting their daughter married somehow to anybody gives them the satisfaction of fulfilling a duty. There is one such family in a neighbouring village. The father consents to Vachaspati’s mother’s proposal. Her maternal spirit hurriedly shambles off to take some solace for being saved from total disaster.

“It is our good luck to get our daughter married to such an avid scholar!” the girl’s father even smiles.

Vachaspati is so lost in the questions raised by reading and rereading of the Brahma Sutra that he hardly knows what goes on in the world around him. He is so full of the ever-persistent questions about the finality, the ultimate reality that there is hardly any scope for the sense organs to do their work and break his spell. To him the extravagant green of the rainy season is no different from the death throes of the pale autumn windfalls.  

He is in a reverie, like he is most of the time, when his mother informs him about his marriage. He doesn’t seem to react in any way. His nonchalance is taken as his consent and the marriage is fixed. With overriding benevolence, slumberous sunrays change her world almost instantly. He is married to Bhamti on Guru Purnima (Vyasa Purnima) in the month of Asadha. It is an auspicious conjugal day when many couples start their marital innings. For him but it is the night to start on his real quest.        

His hut is decorated for the bridal night. A full moon has lit up the stage outside. There is chirrupy laughter among the relatives. The nature is lost in effusive dreaminess. Shyly his bride is ushered in with a big tumbler of hot milk, the auspicious memento of libido, in her hand. She raises her eyes to sneak a look at him. In the light of the oil lamp a new world opens.  

Vachaspati is sitting erect on a reed mattress on the floor. A sheaf of clean palm leaves by his side. On the small wooden writing desk, a palm leaf is waiting for the first word. His hand is on the feather quill still in the brass inkpot. Time seems to have been suspended. The lamp is burning almost steadily. It’s a frozen moment, like it will remain for the next 12 years.

She moves slowly and sits on the edge of the bridal bed. There are flowers on the clean white cotton sheet. The sheet will remain as such. Undisturbed. Clean. Time has stopped. It’s not before the dawn that he slowly opens his eyes. His hand frozen on the writing quill moves and the first Sanskrit word of his historical commentary on Brahma Sutra is written. There is a force. She can feel it. She knows she has no choice other than being a part in this creative stillness. She has to be present, but like there is nobody around except him. She gets housewifely busy, without been seen or heard.

And the days pass, as easily as the weeks, which roll like months, which in turn swagger with the ease of years. There is no distraction even for some odd, lean and lonely moment.

He is in a cocoon. He is breaking the walls of disillusions to see the light of logic to take the Indian metaphysical thought to a new level after the Brahma Sutras. The Brahma Sutras have given him the tools to dig the mammoth mountain of mysteries. Stoutly assured, he is busy with his spadework.

Bhamti knows the classical duties of a wife to her husband. She lives her duties. This is what marriage means to her. She has to keep his cocoon safe for him to continue working. She is the silent nurturer of his world. She is invisible but manages everything. She is like the air which you cannot see but one will die if not for its presence. It’s her duty to help him stay on his chosen path and she abides to it without fail.

Subtle, lithe and statuesque, she moves so slowly as if afraid to shift even the air particles while she cleans the floor, puts food plate in front of him, takes it away, fills the ink pot, gets fresh pair of writing quills, safely stashes the worked upon sheaves of palm leaves, arranges new palm leaves, lights the lamp as it starts getting dark, pours oil in the lamp through the night, takes his dhoti to wash and put fresh one nearby. In between she lovingly looks at his picture, for he is just a picture, unchanging except the quill moving on the parchment paper.

The picture is broken only twice or thrice a day when he gets up for bathing and toilet. But this also is merely an extension of the picture. Stillness is layered around, its kind and condescending touch hush down any ruffled feather in any corner. 

Initially, during the long drawn out spells of the lonely nights, she would feel cravings for his touch as she watched him from the corner of the hut, where she sleeps on the ground on a simple grass mattress. Then she felt guilty even in this much transgression for polluting the air with desire. Now just looking at his pensive, absorbed face gives her all the gratification she needs as a woman from her man.

She is a mother now. There is a child in the womb of her love and care. She has to nurture it at the cost of the major portion of her own life, her own share in this world. Her pregnancy has lasted years and she is the same smiling, uncomplaining mother, keeping her hands safely around her bulging tummy as the world moves on. In the cloaking silence, a divine acceptance is precariously eked out to hold onto the moments frozen to redefine time itself. Her soft self is saturated with a merry and mellow contentment. She carries a smile on her lips, while his face is drawn into a firm, unmoving expression.   

Well that’s what basically a woman is, a mother. A man is just the instrument of her reaching her status of being a mother. To be a mother she has to cut a major portion of her own self to help life thrive in a new unit, in a new human being to scale new heights and meet fresh dreams.

It has been twelve years since their marriage and twelve years of his working on his commentary on Brahma Sutras. It is a stormy night. Squalls of rain beat on the thatched hut. Wind plummets down hard. There is no risk to this hut at least. She has been working on making it sturdier and stronger over the years during her spare time. It’s exactly this type of weather she has had in mind while working on it.

His face bears a strange expression, like you have been running for a long time, and then you see the destination, you want to run harder but the body is keeping you within limits. During the latter half of the night the storm starts to abate. His face also eases up, springing a surprise by getting a faint smile at the corner of his lips. It makes her world, that smile. He seems to be walking slowly now, with destination just nearby. And then he stops.

It’s a bright dawn. Robust trajectories of a new day arrive with exuberant spirits. The storm has spent its fury. Calmness, as it’s supposed to, has spread its resilient aura. He has written the concluding word. A journey has been accomplished. He stands up and stretches his arms. It’s like a stone statue coming to life. He looks around and sees the world after so many years. There is a woman in the hut. Her uncared and untended beauty shines like moon’s corner over the edge of a dark cloud. A sombre solemnity lingers over her gentle features. There is quintessential look of grandeur in her eyes. 

The mother, the donator, the giver! Her pregnancy has lasted all storms. The delivery has been painful. She is shy again. She melts under his gaze. He is curious.

“Who are you and what are you doing in my hut?” he asks politely, words coming with huge effort after such a long spell of silence.

She smiles, in an unobtrusive way, like a mother listening to the first words of her child. 

“I’m your wife. We were married 12 years back,” she tries to remind him very delicately as if afraid to break his poise.

He has been on some other plane of reality, so doesn’t remember anything. He looks at her hands and realization strikes him. He remembers these. Even in that astral plane, these hands have been the root of his support. These hands which bathed him, fed him, kept everything away that might have broken his mystical spell. He has been feeling that the task at hand has been as much of these hands as his own. This pair of hands has melted into his veritable being. His quest has been with four hands. He always had this feeling, but had taken it as some divine support.

But can there be a bigger divinity than a mother’s efforts?

“You have been serving me for 12 years and never told me!” he has tears in his eyes.

She just smiles and her eyes melt under the faint warmth of an emotion. Unable to speak, she just looks at him.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I had taken a vow that I will renounce this world after completing this work!” tears are streaming down his bearded face.

“I always knew the importance of your cause, so just served you. It’s my wifely duty,” she speaks very sweetly, as if it was never about her, like her life did not and doesn’t matter.

“But this is injustice to you. All this service and pain. With my vow, I have to leave for the Himalayas for penance. What becomes of your efforts? Where is the fruit of all that you did?” he is agonized.

There is a flood of tears. A sage who has busted the secrets of reality to make human thought further capable of deciphering more about the ultimate is crying.

She comes closer and again assuages his pain, frees him of his guilt.

Wiping his tears she says with a calm smile, “Your tears, your acceptance, your realization, this work, all these are my rewards. Like I didn’t stop you earlier, even in your vow of penance, I will not be a hindrance. It will give me happiness if I still help you in seeking further truth as a recluse by allowing you to go. By freeing you of any duty that you may think as a husband might prevent you from your mission. Please go guilt-free.” 

He hasn’t yet given a title to his commentary.

“What is your name?” he asks almost bowed before her generosity.

“Bhamti,” she just drops the word softly to be picked by the invisible eddies of air and carried to his ears.

Wiping his tears, he moves towards the collection, picks out a fresh palm leaf and writes Bhamti on it. The title. And puts it on top of the work.

“You are the love and guiding spirit behind all this. You are the soul of this work, I’m just the body. This world may forget me but not you,” he prepares to leave.

Bhamti.

She watches him go to the hills. Bhamti, the masterwork, is there for the world to dive into to fetch out more gems of metaphysical thoughts.

A man might take multiple rounds of earth to search his destiny; a woman realizes hers just by being there with her love and care.

A man might break mountains with the raw power of hammer; a woman is the air that fills his lungs to fuel his determination.

A man might aim to crack the ultimate secret; a woman normally does it just by being a mother, by allowing a life to thrive parasitically inside her, at her cost, gobbling her share of food, blood and flesh.

And no thought can be beyond love. And nobody is more suitable in manifesting love than a woman.

 

She is Cheaper than a Buffalo

 The summer is at its peak. Hot loo vaporises the beads of sweat before they trickle down. It’s almost noontime, and the sun is moving to its tortuous pinnacle. A little sand-swirl swings in its tiny typhoon-trajectory. It is shifting towards her. She moves away, but then forgetting herself runs towards the infant asleep among the crumpled soiled clothes put in a broad wicker-basket under a tree. She has to take up the little one before the sand-swirl passes over it. She stalls the ill omen by a whisker. The baby is safe, she smiles at it.

Her already fatigued body groans with pain as a result of the effort. The child whimpers, she gets a frown, the littlest trace of it, but then effortlessly turns it into a smile. She is a mother after all. No child exists to make a mother perfectly angry. Under the shade of the mulberry tree, at the corner of the tiny agricultural plot of land, she sings a lullaby. Her song spreads over the red hot, yellowish tomatoes baking under the sun.

She sings well. It sounds like an oddity against the background of rough Haryanvi outpours of farming retorts, abuses and crude diction, the famed ruff and gruff of the peasant dialect in this part of northern India. Their behaviour beats even their diction, by the way. The musicality gives a clue that she might not be a Haryanvi. Her looks stamp the truth even further. She is petite, dusky, round faced with delicate features. She has come from far, from a different world altogether.

The child is asleep again after suckling at the drops of her maternal affection. Nothing satisfies a mother more than giving something extra to her child. She now shades her eyes with the palm of her hand to look into the distance. The sandy path leading out of the village lying in the silvery blue distance is forlorn. The heat rising from the sand shakes the horizon like—she recalls it in a flash—the steam swaying over the cauldron on the fire-pit at home.

He is nowhere to be seen, her husband, who is expected to bring her food. It was supposed to be a breakfast, but it’s now almost lunch time. She has worked on empty stomach for around five hours, taking just waters to subdue the guttural complaints of her empty stomach.

She isn’t feeling as bad as she should, given her position overall and particularly today. Her five-month-old son is around, almost as a saviour, casting a lifeful shadow like a tiny fluke of cloud, sheltering her from the fire of hunger, loneliness and self-pity. The breaks from work, to hold him, to sing songs, to breast feed him, to change his cloth diapers, are more comforting than even the rest under the mulberry’s dense shade.

She takes her dose of energy by looking at the sleeping child’s serene face. It’s as happy and calm as the face of the wealthiest person on the earth. After all, all of us are born with the same share of happiness. It’s another matter that it gets robbed off as we grow old, making most of us poor and leaving just a few of us rich in the end. 

She takes a few swigs of water. Immediately she feels fresh to start again. The sun is almost firing over the summer tomatoes. She is worried about the loo. It gives sunstrokes. If that happens, it will be worse for her child. She wants to keep herself safe, for it means keeping the child safe. Mother’s feverish milk isn’t good for the child’s health. But then she has to work, there is no option. After all, the daily outputs of 30-40 kg help her in running the household.

It does serve another purpose also. Her husband beats her a bit less. It often is like this. Whenever she doesn’t bother him with money to buy the daily necessities to pull the rickety cart of their humble home, he sobers down so much as to only throw abuses, instead of the kicks he delivers in the other scenario. To avoid bothering him, and be lucky with abuses only without the bonus of kicks, she home delivers tomatoes within the village, at a price suitably lesser than the street hawkers, to tilt the deal in her favour.

Despite fighting it out day and night, with sweat, kicks and social scorn, she feels like she doesn’t exist at all. Not here at least. She is invisible, casteless and exists like a dirtpath-side bush whom nobody sees particularly. But she exists in memories. Vivid memories of her small hamlet in Jharkhand flash over her lone self. That was the time when she lived. Now she just survives. Somehow.   

She remembers that world. Its flashes help her in meeting a present which is completely devoid of her past, and more poignantly, where she can’t think of future beyond the grasp of another day with her infant in her arms and the toddler holding her hand. It’s like dragging an ungrateful life like a stone tied to your foot. You are secretly eager to leave it behind and move on to get better luck in the next birth. Well, belief in rebirth is a big invisible blank cheque. It helps, guys! You fill up your figure as you deem fit.

She works for some more time. The hunger has returned. The baby is scowling again. She offers the remaining drops in her bosom. It is pacified. Again the flashes from the world that was! They reach her to provide solace, a replacement for bread: the greenery, the huts, the small hamlet, the stream nearby, the pond, and the tree. The big banyan in particular. She had grown playing hide and seek in its leafy green mess and aerial roots.

That was the world where she really lived. Here it is no life; in fact, there are so many occasions when she even wishes to be dead. But then even death repels those who look forward to it as a benefactor. It prefers to play cruel and barge in as an unwanted encroacher into destinies. That’s what makes death what it is. 

She recalls her mother’s wails as they brought the father’s body. He had died in a coal mine collapse. To keep the day’s white for his brood of children, he worked in coal mines near Rajhara town. Sakhui village, Padwa block, Palamu district, Jharkhand, she reads the line in her mind as many times as possible, regularly, lest she forget it.

It contains her roots. One shouldn’t forget one’s roots. She knows it well. That will be even worse than dying and make this living meaningless. She has written it on a piece of paper and put it next to the silver earrings, her most valuable item on her bridal self. She gets worried about it. Has she lost it? It’s her back-up because she doesn’t trust her mind now because it’s plagued with so many worries. After all, it’s her domicile, her certificate of identity. She will write one more copy, she decides. It’s better to have two. It’s safe.

A quaint hamlet of 600 or so souls. Their faces loom large over her father’s body. Tribals, scheduled castes and Muslims, surviving at the fringes, in blackness, in soot, and die a black death. They had to put a lot of effort to wash the black from the corpse but finally gave up, hoping that mother earth won’t differentiate among white, black, yellow or brown in offering sleep in its sandy womb. The burial had to be postponed for a few hours. The village-head had gone to Daltonganj, the district city about 13 Km away. The coalmine labourer was buried outside the hamlet among the cluster of tiny earth-mounds which served as the cemetery.

She sees her world, vividly, as if she has hyperopia, disabling her to focus on the world nearby and taking her far-seeing eyes to peek into distances.

There is a solitary mango tree in the distance. There were so many around their village. She recalls the huge one by the pond. She had jumped from an overhanging branch into a group of frogs. She chuckles as the scene strikes with playful vivacity.

The cool breeze blowing through Mahua trees sashays over hundreds of kilometres and calms her down and comforts her, listens to her plight, feels her loneliness. She laughs loudly as she recalls a drunken melee at a marriage in the village. The drink made of Mahua flowers is the poor villagers’ companion in celebration, just as are its wood, flowers and seeds. She closes her eyes and inhales the typical smell of Mahua. She isn’t that far from her home, she feels. The distance though is more than 1,000 km.

Apart from tomatoes, she has picked up some lady-fingers today to sell in the neighbourhood. Ramtorai, she picks up one and holds it. She says it loudly. They call it bhindi here. People cackle with laughter when she calls these ramtorai. It’s a big time entertainment to them. Pumpkin is konhra there. But it’s Kaddu here. Cucumber is Kundri there. But it’s Kheera here. She has been learning fast. She wants them to laugh a bit less at her.   

There were oranges and melons along the stream; at least, a thing of delight for the eyes, if not for the stomach. She finds the treeless monotony here intimidating. It’s an agricultural monolith propelled by mechanisation. It’s in the grasp of paddy and wheat ennui. Her husband owns just a little bit of land, so they are into vegetables to survive.

The hunger is terrible now. All efforts to not think of it are futile. Her mouth waters as she recalls the instrument of beating hunger back home. It strikes her imagination: the corolla of Mahua flowers, a fleshy blossom, pale yellow coloured saviour when they hadn’t almost anything at home. So delicious, fresh, exciting, disagreeable, pungent and sweetish! A riot of sensations, a poor man’s delicacy.

The blossoms are dried under the sun to turn brown to be used later. It gives her goose-bumps as she recalls the blossoms springing from the ends of the smaller tree branches, in bunches from 20 to 30, approaching ripeness, swelling with juice, falling to the ground. And she and other children laying the first claim. She is smiling. The memory has driven away all the pains of life. The gathering of Mahua windfalls. Drying of the flowers on dung-coated earth. Gossips under Mahua tree. The oil-fried Mahua blossoms. The distillation of spirits from the dried blossoms. Well, that was life. None of it exists here.

Remembering the past means remembering herself. Although physically present here, nobody seems to bother that she exists. So she captures a piece of that world in her memory.

Mahua blossoms fall till June when the fruits ripe. We don’t shake the trees or break the fruits. It will not bear fruits if these are plucked by hand. We wait for their natural fall. The ripe fruit is about the size of a peach. It has three different skins and has a white nut or kernel inside. The fruit is used in three ways. The two outer skins are both eaten raw and cooked as vegetables. The dried inner skin is ground up into flour. Oil is extracted from the kernel which is used for cooking purposes and for fake-mixing with ghee.

The trail of thought comes clearly. It feels triumphant like a lesson crammed to the hilt in a nursery class. She is thankful to the God that despite the hard living, she has retained the memories of her land.

She recalls the pleasant, acidic taste of hair plum and the pinch of its thorny thicket. They used to jest that it was their apple, the poor man’s apple.

She isn’t new to agriculture. They had a little plot of arable land. Sanai was grown as green manure. The goats really liked it. She remembers the robust crops of maize and bora paddy. She helped her mother in her backbreaking toil in the tiny field. That world in the memories is more substantial than the one around her.                 

Then there was the storm which blew her away from the land of her dreams.

Her mother found it impossible to feed the multiple hungry mouths around her. Her sister’s husband stayed in Delhi, a fact of high esteem for anybody in that part. It doesn’t matter if that person spent nights on the pavement, and worked as a labourer during the day or even begged.

He was visiting their place and offered to help the widow by getting a job for her eldest daughter in Delhi.

“I will make her life,” he proffered with a glint of hope in his yellowish eyes.

So she travelled with him to Delhi, the land of dreams, where everybody had money, even the poorest had big bucks in their wallet. She was scared of the bigness of things around her. Everything was in a mad rush. It was so noisy that she stated crying. The craziness of hurtling things and rushing people held her in a tight grip.

It was a world squeezed in a tight fist by the railway line, between the railway stations of Azadpur and Subzi Mandi. It was so close to the railway line that the stinking air pushed by the trains left a clanking, steely storm day and night. Honking trains and clattering rails were the biggest facts of life, the facts which defined the world itself. These were tiny hutments and hovels, piled one upon another, encroaching by millimetres into each other, to leave no privacy, no space for anything you can relate to a human being.  Illegally constructed on the railway’s land, it stuck to the polluted, dirty neighbourhood like a leech that won’t go even if crushed to bloodied death. And there it drew the feeble chances of survival for countless unfortunates hiding there.

Everything related to life was in a miniature, except the human misery, which was bigger than the trains passing by. It was a black hole which had sucked the whole world into itself. A human swarm which buzzed mindlessly. There was everything, but it was squeezed so tight that it felt like you are standing in a crowd with no space even to scratch your bum. On top of that the incessant clatter of rails bore into your bones as the vibrations crept into your spine as you lay on the wood board to get what they mean by sleep.

From this hovel, he ran a business of arranging purchased brides, a business born of the ill-famed practice of female infanticide in north India, particularly in Haryana, where patriarchy demands a male heir, even from those who have hardly inherited anything and possess no education and skills of any kind to make a living themselves.

There is a significant chunk of marriageable vagabonds in Haryana who are not eligible bachelors from any angle. They are from poor families, are almost illiterate, have low or no land-holding, and don’t exist anywhere in social standing. They come with the added qualifications of chronic drinking and smoking. But they need to have a bride and a male heir from her; otherwise, their souls won’t rest in peace after death. And here comes the business of selling and purchasing brides.  

The unfortunate girl is taken as a sex slave cum servant by the incompetent drunkard, her best utility being an instrument of giving birth to a male heir so that the father can get moksha or liberation after his death.

She was bought for INR 75,000. A bit overpaid, many said.

That very day, someone in the neighbourhood bought a buffalo for INR 82,000. Quite underpaid, still many more said.

So she is the unpaid servant. About sex we need not say anything. About heirs, she has already started the prospects. But to fulfil the role of a mother to her children, who will have almost no inheritance except poverty and misery, she has to kill her present to salvage another day. Her partner, after all, spoils more than he earns in their shared life.

The baby is crying. She comes back to the present world. The shadows have lengthened. The memories have served like a feisty lunch.

She sees two figures on the sandy path coming from the neighbouring village on the other side. So she had been looking in the wrong direction. He is coming from the other way. And lunch? Forget about that. She looks agitated. Even anger creeps in, strange though, given her petite, humbled, unassuming persona.

Her heart starts beating faster. Her breathing is more laboured. The hours-long toil on an empty stomach hasn’t been able to break her proud spirit. But the visuals, turning from vague signals to specific outlines, leave her jolted. Something seems to have snapped suddenly. She gasps for breath and almost falls down. Taking the baby in her arms she cries. 

“It’s that accursed woman. O he the filthy bag has...how can he?” she wipes her tear tears with the corner of her headcloth.

All the hard work in the field seems wasted. She has been fighting to make a home and he kicks it with such impunity. Repeatedly. Not that she minds too much about the kicks he gives her after getting drunk. That doesn’t appear more than anything beyond the normal, acceptable routine of life. Even the talks and gossips of him having an affair with this woman is tolerable. But to be seen with her, his little sense of worth gets torn away.

She has been just a plaything to her husband. A purchased bride is more of a servant. Even with his low social standing and almost no reputation, he has been able to lord over her. After all, she is just a purchased bride, bought from the hut of misery like farmers trade in cattle. Her price is lower than a good, rotund, glossy black buffalo. No surprise that she occupies almost no place, no name, no dignity in the village. Hers is just an invisible, see-through existence.

Even the street urchins take her in casual stride like they do with the beggars roaming around. She moves around imperceptibly, like a ghost. People just see through her. The only fact known about her is that she is a lowly-placed Muslim from the poorest of a poor family and has been bought at a price lower than an average buffalo.

He is drunk and walks with swag: an arrogance which seems to be drawn out of the purpose to insult and wound his wife by taking the torture one notch higher, to a point where any woman, no matter whether she is the gentlest or most aggressive, will feel the brutal pain of it. He seems to have run out of kicks and abuses. So here is the new method to torture his wife, to give her deeper cuts and injuries.

The two of them are walking on the field divide now, having left the sandy countryside path to reach their patch of land. She can now see the face of her husband’s companion. She feels something more painful than slaps and abuses. The other woman is hardly attractive in appearance. She is in fact obese. Somebody’s wife from the so called low caste in the social hierarchy, she walks proudly with a Jat farmer, even though he is haggard, famished, hawkish, and even qualifies below many men from her own community. But then in a caste society, being born into the dominant caste takes precedence over most of the deficits own is born with and equips himself with after birth through his deeds or rather misdeeds.

The other woman in her husband’s life!

Her soul burns. It’s more insulting than the barrage of nasty legs and hands, and still fouler tongue. The other woman has a better social standing than hers in being a caste born Hindu. More importantly, she is not a purchased bride, bought like a buffalo at some cattle fair. The distance between them decreases. It arrives with more visuals now. The other woman has a proud, jibing, mocking look on her face. The confidence born of stealing a man from under his wife’s nose can sometimes propel the evil version of femininity in some women.

A storm is building up in the otherwise unmoving waters of the little lake of her being. He has already started abusing her even before entering their field of tomatoes. Choicest abuses, redder, hotter than any tomato around. From the heap of rotten tomatoes, sorted out while packing in wicker baskets for selling, he picks up a handful and hurls at her. She turns around and crouches down to save her child from getting hit by the slimy, smelly projectiles. She can feel the rotten juice sticking to her kurta, the soft plops and hard hits.

She runs to lay the child at a safe distance. He expects her to take to her heels and is mocking, shouting at the top of his voice.

“Go and run to the hell hole you came from, you filthy bitch!”   

She has already given him a male heir, two in fact, the other one, almost three now, is with her forever prone to faint mother-in-law at their small, misery-personifying house back in the village. So he feels free. If she vanishes in thin air right now, he will be the happiest person for the riddance. 

To his mild surprise, he sees her coming to them now. “Bah, so she seems eager to get introduced to you.”

The other woman shamelessly titters. There have been historical injustices to her and her community. Any chance to humiliate a Jat’s wife is most welcome.

Her husband and the other woman are standing side by side. She forms the triangle at a distance. The man moves forward, raises his hand and slaps hard. It happens with effortless ease, no cause, no effect. She just stiffens her face, not showing any trace of pain. No tears, no howling. Perhaps this boldness is meant for the other woman, her way of dissent, her small effort in not showing them the effect they want to see. After all, a man strikes a woman to see basically the tell-tale effect of his brutish aggression.

He strikes on the other cheek. The strike is followed by perfect silence. The hard skin of his fingers goes plop on the soft skin of her cheek. She is unmoved. He is feeling ravaged by anger. This rebelliousness is worse that she hitting back. In the grip of cheap liquor, he pauses as if thinking of devising some newer way to insult and humiliate her.

It fuels the mocking spirits in the other woman. She takes it on from the point her surprised lover has left. She catches the mutineer, who has rebelled not to cry, by her hair and raises the other one to smack her hard on the face. The uprooted girl’s small hand comes to life. Before the plumpy hand adds to her insult, her finger catches the soft, wavy wrist. The attacker’s bangles get crushed, puncturing her skin. There is blood. The injured woman shrieks with disbelieving anger and attacks with full force.

To him it’s comical, the heavy woman attacking the small one. The uprooted woman defends well. He is enjoying the show from a distance.

“Fight, fight you bitches, give each other the taste of nice blood,” he hollers and claps in enjoyment.

It’s a full on cat fight. They roll among tomatoes, crush many and get all earth smitten.

“I am his wife you slut!” her hair tangled, tomatoes crushed on her face, she yells with such force that the drunk man loses his disgusting sense of entertainment.

She has pinned down the woman who is almost double her size. The latter is panting, out of breath, her massive breasts heaving with the propensity to topple the small woman off her, beads of sweat surfacing profusely on the coarse dark skin of her face.

She raises her hand to strike, but it doesn’t come down. Hurting doesn’t come naturally to her. She has just defended herself.

Far away from her native place, with almost no possibility of ever meeting any of her relatives, she knows it takes a bit more to survive apart from the uncomplaining hard work and unquestioning acceptance of slaps and kicks by her husband.

She feels survival needs more. And survive she has to for her children. Perhaps survival requires a bit of honour as well. And honour she has salvaged. It feels better than having a bumper crop and a day without violence at home.

She lets go off the beaten opponent and walks up to her child. The moment she turns her face, tears burst out. She but doesn’t want to be seen weak and crying. She wipes her tears, making it look like she is cleaning her face of the mess it is in. She picks a sickle lying in a furrow on the way. Holding it in her hand she stands by the child.

“More than with you, your husband lies in my cot!” the other woman is heard yelling, the words meant to hurt her, to salvage some victory from the defeat.

“How many of your children are sired by him? He has two with me. If it’s three with you, go and tell your husband of your achievement!” she waves the sickle.

They are moving back to the village they have come from. She knows he won’t be back at least today.

Far away from her village, with no chances of ever going back, and almost nonexistent chances of earning some honour in the society she has been cast into, she feels totally lost. There is a vacuum around. Her head is buzzing.

The child is crying. She offers it her empty breasts to suckle for satisfaction. She can barely walk, so cannot afford to waste the last ounces of her remaining strength. She has to wind up things. She has to collect the uncrushed tomatoes, then she has to walk back home. She has to see how is her other son. It has to be done as soon as possible.