I
still remember waiting for mother when she was supposed to go to join her
spouse – so little parental in his behaviour, one has more than averse feeling
about saying father – and she had not arrived well past midnight, since her
plane from Delhi to Mumbai had yet to leave on its flight from Lucknow for
Delhi. Nearby also waiting was the famous family of a superstar, with more than
one star right there, the superstar incidentally born a day before my mother.
We left to return in the morning while they waited, their awaited father was
only to be taken home, and my mother’s plane would not leave till later in the
morning anyway. When we came to see her in the morning, she looked exhausted
and harassed and I wished I could gather her up and comfort her and make her
safe. But that was not to be, she was going to join her spouse, and nothing
deterred her in this ever.
Couple
of months or so later, two of the siblings were to join them, and I saw them
and went to spend the day with them, at the hotel where they waited to catch
the plane the next morning. That is when Sgk informed me she was going blind in
one eye, and if the other eye behaved the same way she would be totally blind.
I
was horrified at the casual way I was being informed of this, but this was the
way life was in the parents’ family. Else no one could live under the roof with
him hitting anyone he chose however much he chose, and we simply had to live in
spite of it, and find what life and joy and peace we could. Mostly it was
provided by mother, and her endurance and keeping cheer through it all had
guided us through life into adulthood. But that day I was the only adult in
that room, and the other two were still teenagers, as was the one left back at
her hostel.
I
went on to continue life as usual until Deepaawalie, when I went to visit them
– secretly, since this was not supposed to be allowed under his rule, but he
was out of the country for a couple of years and the three teenagers living at
the house by themselves. Sgk was yet to return, and meanwhile I had talked to a
colleague in Mumbai before going to Delhi; her mother was a doctor, and it so
happened she was well placed and was able to discern the problem when I took
Sgk to see her after her return. Sgk had come along with me patiently, she had
already seen a couple of opticians via her father’s underlings and her friends,
and they had advised her to eat eggs and almonds for her ocular health. She had
little hope.
We
were directed to AIIMS and we went one morning. Sgk was supposed to have dilated pupils for examination and it
took well over an hour for her, unlike expected ten minutes or so for most.
Then she was taken in and it took them over an hour, after which we were asked
to return in the afternoon. I was not letting my heart hope yet. They examined
her extensively in the afternoon and towards evening is when I was called in
and informed by a taciturn senior surgeon that she had to be admitted
immediately.
For
the first time I had hope, surging through.
I
said we needed an evening home, and they arranged to have her admitted day
after, informing me that she had to be allowed to do as little as possible, no
movements.
We
went home. The first thing was to inform various people, next, arrange for
money, and then she was admitted. The surgery went through and her eye was
saved, and I was at the hospital through the day every day for the next three
weeks or so until she was allowed to return home with further instructions of
as little movement as possible for few weeks.
A
friend of hers meanwhile had been taking care of household and kitchen, and she gave me a small clue to what could
have caused the detachment of retina. She was very badly beaten up one day in
full view of everyone, said the friend. So what else is new, I thought.
He,
the father of the family, had written to her saying he had cursed her when she
“misbehaved” and this is what had caused her to go through the blindness and
the surgery, bu thad now withdrawn his curse. She was pathetic asking me over
and over what could she have done so bad as to be cursed thus. I was furious,
but this fraud was his usual behaviour, ever seeking to browbeat and dominate
and using all sorts of lies and hypocrisy to pull everyone else down. I simply
said you know him, ignore him. She knew him better, knew his occult powers to
damage, perhaps more.
It
was to be years, over a decade or so, before I began to know what had caused the
injury to her eye, and while it was the humongous beating she received from her
father, more than usual, it was more than that. She was beaten up well past her
having been operated on for a detached retina due to his beating her, and this
went on for years, with slaps and fists punching her in the eye operated on.
The story of one such beating involved an aunt and a cousin, one that ought to
have been a brother but was not.
…………………………………………………………………………………………..
Over
a decade later I was visiting him, the father of the family, him having moved
away from Delhi leaving his now battered almost to complete incapacity our
mother and having battered the daughter with fists punching in the same eye
that had to be treated surgically periodically, till he could no longer batter
them with any fresh pleasure, and had to find his cheap thrills elsewhere. I
was visiting, because I had given up not seeing him when my mother was
incapacitated.
One
evening as I returned after a walk, there were a few people in his living room,
and I could see his “friend” with her husband; I assumed the young male sitting
with them was one of their own. After a few minutes of my sitting in silence
the young man asked me “ - ,don’t you recognise me?” I looked and said, now I
do. He was a nephew of the father, son of the eldest of his four younger
sisters, a few months older to me.
After
they left he, the father, queried if I had really not recognised him, and I explained
I had problem quite often when I saw people unexpectedly and out of place. This
seemed to displease him, and he said the cousin knew me only because he
expected me, with my being left to wonder what the problem was. I wouldn’t have
a problem with him not acknowledging me.
Next
day or so he informed me he had talked it over with his nephew who had informed
me I had been good to him when he had come looking for a job and for guidance.
I had forgotten about that, but again wondered why a father needs to know from
a nephew about his own progeny being good.
………………………………………………………………………………………
When
I returned to Delhi I mentioned the incident to Sgk, and wondered why the small
incident had blown out of proportion. That is when she began to tell me about
the visit from the second aunt, mgb, and the said cousin svo, who had visited
for a month or so –and the story of how she was beaten up even after she had
been blinded.
It
took her several years of telling, possibly due to trauma she herself
experienced in recalling it all, but just as much because this is how she
usually recounts a tale – feather by feather until suddenly one sees the claws
and more.
……………………………………………………………………………………………
The
aunt and her nephew, both earning and both in need of a holiday, had come for a
month long visit. During which they led the household through a dance catering
to them, and complaining about what they missed. Since they were seen as poor,
and the severely deprived members of the household of the supposedly well to do
brother and uncle were seen as privileged, the household and particularly the
women supposedly responsible were living on knife’s edge for the month.
Sgk
had taken over the responsibility of the household after I left, my having
refused it and being determined to go on with my academic life (at eighteen
years of age) resulting in my being beaten for four months with “get out, leave
my house” until I did leave, so persecuting me was his occupation then on in a
different setting with the whole world as stage while he needed another victim
in addition to the beautiful, intelligent, loving and patient wife he had
victimised for the duration of his marriage. Sgk accepted his logic of leaving
school and doing housework while preparing for a career in medicine, and became
his next victim until he left over a decade later to live free from family and
introduce himself to his wife’s hometown as her husband – she had been known
for her beauty and her achievements and her virtues galore.
So
the visit that year went on with the aunt ruling the roost and demanding
services, the real hostess my mother being treated by the sister in law as an
interloper with no rights, and Sgk treated like a personal servant paid by the
brother explicitly for the purpose of catering to the visitors that were his
premarital relatives. Sgk attempted to do her best and maintain peace even as
she managed her academic life – she was in college – with housecleaning,
cooking and practically all other housework along with catering to visitors’ demands
and needs.
But
the visitors gave no quarter to the fact of what she could afford on what
little household management amount was doled out to her, or to the fact that we
had routines very different from what they were used to, or claimed they were
used to. One such difference was eating habits – we ate lunch if we were at
home, those in school or college ate only if they had been given money by him
for the purpose, and dinner was quite often bread and milk, householder women
being far too exhausted at the end of the day. Sgk was managing to cook for
them to feed them lunch and dinner, along with breakfast for the father – none
of us ate that meal as a rule – but this was not enough for the visitors. They
were used to snacks after lunch, within a couple of hours or so. This simply
was not a routine of our life and she was severely tried.
So
the father of the house came home one day to hear his nephew complain about
lack of snacks while he was hungry after a lunch – that the lunch was sumptuous
beyond what they were used to was of no account to either of them – and
finished the complaining session with “I had to spend a rupee from my own
earnings to buy bread”.
Sgk,
held to account for this lapse as a major sin, boiled over and asked who was
dying without a snack. After all the father had never ever asked, much less
cared, if anyone he was responsible for had eaten or starved. As long as he got
his own food the rest of the family could starve or beg, or bleed hand and foot
in winter for lack of warm clothes and proper footwear.
So
this concern of his for his nephew and his sister seemed rather extraordinary.
And it was, at that. It wasn’t that he cared for any of his parents’
descendents, after all he had never sent them any money much less shown any
concern for this nephew’s mother when she burned, instead stating flatly that
her husband was responsible now she was married. His whole focus in this
argument about the nephew’s one rupee was about nailing a beautiful daughter
into guilt and permanent submission of soul and spirit.
He
blew up at her answering instead rather than offering the apology and promise
to behave according to the demands of his relatives, and thrashed her, as they
watched. She screamed, and this went on for a while, with her attempting to
shield her face. That was not to be – her hands were held so she could only be
hit, and the father hit her on and on and on. None of the visiting relatives
stepped in the midst or stopped him, much as they would like to claim it was
not their intention this should happen – but while it was happening they had
every possibility of stopping it, and certainly made no move to do so. Perhaps they had forgotten she had been
blinded by his beating her previously, and had to have had serious surgery to
be able to see at all, instead of being blind. Or, worse, and quite likely at
that for them, they were subconsciously bent on her being blind and beaten
until she was blind and pathetic instead of a beauty like her mother whom they
hated so very much.
The
younger sister took her away to her own hostel when it was over, telling the
aunt to feel satisfied with taking over the household. She stayed away for a
few days and returned, traumatised more by our mother crying piteously as she
was being taken away, saying “don’t leave me alone, not you, at least” – having
been by now beaten by her husband into a brain damaged state that we were yet
to discover the full horror of.
So
Sgk returned and resumed her load of housework, academics, and more. And her
eyes suffered as her supposedly responsible father ignored, and felt no
compunction about having slapped her in spite of her being in danger of
becoming blind again. And this was not
the last time he did it, either.
………………………………………………………………………………………………….
He
died recently and it was her husband who cared for him, while she catered to
the same aunts and cousins and more with their never ending demands even through
the funeral – before he died, they asked her to visit with her brother but not
bring her father, the link of the relations, with her; so it really had never
been about caring for him, as far as they were concerned, but making demands on
his resources that he allowed only as far as nothing was taken from him.
Sgk
was catering to the aunts and the cousin who had caused her to be mercilessly
beaten in spite of risk of becoming blind again, for the one rupee he had to
spend on his own food for a snack a couple of hours after lunch, and through
the funeral she had been ill with fever even as she cooked for them and served
them, each with separate demands.
Why
does she do it? Is it because she is all too aware of how powerful they are as
small time sources of occult power that can hit and destroy with no positive
power ever? Why had she chosen to keep in touch with them, even as I finally
gave up post their never acknowledging my mother’s death as a matter of grief
for me, even as a matter of common courtesy on a minimum level? They who had
always penalised my mother for her lack of social propriety in not giving that
small gift to a visitor.
……………………………………………………………………………………………
What
we have never turned around to ask is – in all this, where and what was the
role of the cousin that was responsible for his uncle beating a young helpless
woman into certainty rather than mere risk of permanent damage to her eyes,
well past his having beaten her into blindness in the first place? He, the
young male who was himself earning unlike the cousin whose eyes he caused a
further damage to for sake of a rupee of his earning he spent on a snacking
need, he was in position of a brother as far as social norms go, he was and is
supposed to be a protector for his sister.
Why
did he not stop his uncle from hitting the young helpless overburdened girl?
Why did he not get between them, protect the sister, hold the beating hands
away?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
Such
males in nominally human forms do NOT qualify for the epithet “man”.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
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