Mgm said Sgk had lost sight,
since her cataracts cannot be easily dealt with due to her retina problem. That was a few years ago, and I knew nothing more until recently, when we met post their father passing away.
When she – Sgk – was all of 20 or
less, she told me casually she was unable to see with one eye, and if it
continued she would be blind completely. It was only later when she was
operated on after her return from visiting her parents abroad that the story
came out in small pieces – of how it happened. It was due to a severe beating,
involving slaps on the face repeatedly, by her father, for quite some time,
while his loving son held her so she could neither run away nor retaliate – he
did not bother holding the father who went on hitting all the while, he was
only fifteen and had no other role model to follow according to Mgm – that
later she was gradually unable to see. But this was not the first time she had
been affected by his sever physical abuse.
When she was a baby she was lying
in a fever in her mother’s lap who was worried enough to have not done any
cooking, and the male, the children’s father, came home late (having visited
friends) and was enraged at the wife not having cooked for him. When he was
told it was due to her worry about the baby he flung the baby on the wall
opposite. The young mother was in a shock of horror, believing the baby dead.
The baby did not die, but it is not possible there was no effect physically, on
the brain or the eyes or psyche.
Why did the mother not separate?
Society is still not quite so friendly or protective to divorcees, especially
if the husband threatens to take custody (law then gave custody to male parent
in this country) and burn the children alive and hound the ex-wife with all
sorts of maligning at any cost – and this man was more than capable of carrying
the threats through. A beast cannot be deprived of its prey easily and this
young mother preferred to keep her children alive the only way she could think
of how – by being with them and intervening if possible at any cost to herself
if he did try.
She – the baby, grown up and
middle aged now – is terrified of men who are abusive and believes in pleasing
them, but those characteristics can occur otherwise. It is her sight that was
always weak, and she as a first grade student was advised by teachers to have
glasses. When not in first row she couldn’t read the blackboard and got into
trouble due to talking.
At the time of her operation when
she was twenty or so, we were told she had a retina detached, and we were told
it had to be due to some accident or blow. That is when a few people told me
bits of the incident of her being severely slapped. I was busy trying to make
it all happen – the parents were away, abroad, and we needed them to stay away,
especially him, to make it happen, to have her sight restored, without any
traumatic violent tantrum from him to stop the process or make it worse. People
around expected them to rush back to deal with such an emergency – but that did
not happen. He was on a prestigious international assignment and was not about
to spend his own money for a ticket, we need not have worried.
He wrote a letter, in which he
informed her he had cursed her when she failed to serve him well and this blindness
was the result of her fault. (He also took credit for the recovery by informing
everyone he had prayed.) She was piteously almost crying about the “curse”, she
who was brave enough to have her eyes operated on the old fashioned way.
The operation succeeded, and
subsequently they – the hospital – acquired better technology, too, so that she
had repeated much-needed treatments subsequently, during short visits using
laser technology, but she also was living with the same people and was again
slapped hard on the eyes by her father within less than ten years after the
operation. Her face retained a blue green colour around the operated eye for
more than a month after the slapping in the mid eighties.
Why did she go on living there?
Again, it was not easy then for a young woman to separate from an abusive
father unless he is willing to get her married or she does it on her own, and
she probably did not expect a better future than her beautiful, talented,
well-educated mother – and besides, the father had no intention of allowing a
free servant to leave him, much less make effort socially to get her married.
He needed to make examples of how horrible he was to people and he had already
educated the third child, a daughter, and married her to someone she had found
– so he was socially safe if he claimed he was good with good children and
blamed the abused ones of being at fault. But more than anything else the
mother was finally suffering irrecoverably from brain damaged from well over
two decades of severe physical abuse. She needed someone even to feed and bathe
her by then, and so this daughter did not leave. She did housework, cared for
her mother, ran the household, took the abuse and meanwhile went on to start a
doctorate program at the university as well.
There was another occasion when
she was severely abused physically and otherwise – verbally for instance – when
the father had guests, his immediate relatives, who complained to him about
having to spend one rupee to get bread to eat around four p.m.; they were used
to eat a proper meal at lunch time, which our family did provide them; but they
were also used to eat every half hour or every hour or so – a fistful of
peanuts or other snacks – and money provided for our family was so tight (I had
starved for four months before leaving with no lunch or dinner, only a couple
of slices of bread and some milk) we were lucky if we had dinner, much less
afternoon snacks. So as a result of this complaint form his young strapping
male nephew who was of an age to earn and in fact was earning, he hit this
daughter for well over half an hour, perhaps more. This was after the operation
and most likely within less than five years, more likely within two or three
years.
Later there were ’84 massacres,
which happened when he was away and the two women – the completely handicapped
mother and the young daughter with all her responsibilities and problems – were
alone in Delhi; he called to inform them he would not return until it was safe.
This was before he beat her again, when the discoloured eyes stayed that way
for well over a month.
"Today she might have sight again,
I don’t know", I thought for years until very recently. What I did, do, know is that she chose to be with all of those who abused
her. She chose this long after the abuse, again and again, and even when she could
have chosen otherwise. I don’t know her reasons for making the same choice even
after she had she did not any more have to do so for social reasons. What I
know is I no longer have the strength to endanger myself by getting into
contact with her chosen people, and there is no way for me to rescue her since
she will not change her choices. In all probability she does not need me either, or perhaps never did at that,
for one does not let go of someone one either needs or cares for or respects,
not with one call. Those that you do not let go of long after they injured you in every way and in spite of your being able to avail of possibilities to escape them, those are the ones need of your heart, perhaps. Others, you might say you care for, but it is no more than charity you offer, at best.
What I also do not know is when
she came to have so much fury against me as I experienced for quite some time –
certainly it was not when she was operated on, nor for a couple of years after
that, when I left to go abroad.
I was puzzled with her when I
visited or returned subsequently and only understood her when the other sister
left to emigrate – and Sgk did a volte-face and instead of supporting her
blindly at every turn until then, suddenly erupted into a fury against her.
Then I understood.
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