Tomcats Eat Their Own Young

Parents, Children, Others

 When I returned she was already at a stage that she could hardly talk and rarely did. He had left town to go settle in her town - he had spent college years there but had grown up in another - and was visiting the two daughters who were settled then in the city where we had been brought up most of our childhood, and one of them - Sgk - was taking care of the mother, which included doing everything for her. That included not only all housework but bathing and feeding her, and more. She had taken up the humongous task and had no help from him - except the money he bequeathed that just about paid perhaps for food for one person. He had given them the choice of joining him, after all, his duty done. Mother was free of his violence and so forth - physically - only when it was too late. His manipulations to do the same with others - for one prey finished and left in a pathetic state was not good enough - was another story. 

 He was not about to lose an opportunity to milk the situation either, though heaven knows it was milked enough and atrociously already, by him - he had sympathy of social contacts including her favourite nephew (the one she wouldn't forget when she forgot the name of her own son), for it is always easy to sympathise with the strong, and perhaps even profitable. His "friend" had settled close to him too and they were in touch most days, each visiting other. The "friend"s husband protested and objected, but he had this to say about that - "I don't like that guy" - which is also what he said about the husband of a useful sister too, another person settled nearby in the so-called town of pensioners. 

 He used the situation to proceed to destroy a person he had not yet finished with, using various means at his disposal still - and said, he was aware that now he had to do the role of both parents. My sisters were nudging, either with explicit says or by examples of their behaviour and I thought, all right, give a chance to someone who might be repentant. 

 When I visited him, in our town that I considered home (for it was the town where three of us were born and spent our childhood to various degrees at her parents), I had various encounters. 

 First was with his "friend" who asked how I felt being in his house. I was startled and shocked at the flagrant inappropriateness of the question, of the assumption that she was closer to him than his children and had the right to ask this question in public - there were other relatives present - and said nothing, just looking at her, wondering if she could explain herself. She retracted, realising her faux pas, and said, of course it is your home since it is your father's house, you have a right to be here. I still said nothing, just looking, and then turned away. If she realised she had her foot way deeper in her throat with that, I have no inkling. As I later told Sgk when I returned, I did not mind if he had someone who loved him truly, and he was looked after, even with all his history with us - it was only that there was something rotten about her that I could sense but not explain yet. 

 I have since wondered why she was so sure of her claim to him, why she allowed him to sleep in her home spending weekend after weekend for better part of a decade when his children were small and needed their father, why she was so hellbent on destroying another woman's home when she had home, husband, children of her own, why she was vicious about destroying his children if she loved him. I might have the answer, and it is not about her love for him - which might not exist, at all, perhaps he was as much of a bear for her, to be tortured for pleasure, as those smuggled from India into a neighbouring country, while he danced for her (metaphorically) stupidly and destroyed his home, his family, his progeny for her pleasure. 

It was a vendetta against the woman he chose to marry (and did, with determination), a vendetta carried out by various people using him, on behalf of various people - and destroying the children to whatever extent possible way needed for such a vendetta. For, a mother values her children above all and mother was more mother than manipulating catfight sort - of the latter she had no clue. 

 This vendetta for this "friend" was carried out on behalf of her niece who had been his girlfriend whom he chose not to marry - lucky her - and that one had cut off with him, married another friend and had a good life, keeping him away with determination (he did try to renew the friendship having left his wife behind, and was not so much as invited for a wedding in that family - but chose to play games and send a daughter, Sgk the ever willing, with the "friend" without a disclosure of her identity). But the moment he had picked the most beautiful and well educated young woman of his college to marry the wheels were set in motion for the vendetta, from the "friend" on behalf of her niece. It is another story that his mother and sisters were part of it too, for their own agenda. 

 One day I returned from an evening out during that visit and noticed the "friend" with her husband and another person sitting around, and did not say anything. The third person spoke after a moment, asking if I did not know him, which is when I noticed it was a cousin. We spoke then, and later - after the cousin had left - he asked if I had not recognised him. I explained that often when I see people where I am not expecting them I do not immediately recognise them. I don't know why he was offended at that and remarked that the cousin knew me only because I was in his home, not elsewhere. 

 I was not offended at the implication of being unimportant as he had intended, since I had not in any way implied being important, but was puzzled at his wanting to hurt me on behalf of a nephew he hardly ever saw until his changing town, and as far as we knew had not exactly been the generous uncle to either - but then again it is more like him to hit someone with some excuse than actually benefit anyone. A man can do pretty much as he wishes and blaming the wife is a convenient excuse, no more, if he wishes to withhold from being generous or even dutiful to his other relatives who are either needy or he owes to. 

 Next day or so he spoke to me a little melted with sense of having been wrong on this count and explained that he had spoken to the nephew and had been told that I had been good to him when he had once come for advice about his career. I had in fact forgotten about that, but hearing about it I wondered why is it that a father does not know his own children that he lived with and brought up and either hits them on behalf of a nephew he hardly ever saw and did not help, or then takes he nephew's word about his child having been good in fact. 

 The subject stayed on the back burner and when I returned to where Sgk, mother (and also Mgm in her own home) lived, I asked about this strange conversation. Which is when I was slowly told the story, and even then did not make the connection between the story and the strange conversation for quite some time. 

 This cousin was in fact the one whose spending one rupee for a snack post lunchr - our family ate the same lunch and did not eat until later at night, if then, for there was always a shortage of money too, to punish us for being her children - and informing his uncle had resulted in Sgk being slapped around for better part of an hour and consequently endangered her, risking her losing the eye that had been operated on for retina detachment (due to yet another such beating by him for a similar little excuse), almost, in spite of her having been working for her father (in return for bare minimal subsistence and no frills, certainly, no pocketmoney even) as a full time cook, housekeeper and maid for the family (- I had left a few years before and she was the eldest there and so was chosen to play the role intended for me while the younger two would play the trophy children he needed to satisfy society cowards that he was not evil - ) while she was also going on with her college and doing well at that.  

 What sort of parent does this to his own progeny? (Most animals behave better than this, and if protection of your family is the hallmark of manhood then not only most animals are better than this, there have even been examples of some humans who were better at it in spite of having no gender.) I asked this question only recently, but the answers were old. 

 It was during the years when I had not left and his violence as well as cold calculated revenge against me - him thirty years older, father, I still a student and desperately trying to continue to study, and not give up study and a life only to be his house servant in all but name (as he kept insisting I must do since I was not yet twelve) - it was during one of those times that she had told me about how he had received horrible and inflammatory, provoking letters from his mother week after week filled with complaints. We had been kept with two sets of grandparents for a year while the parents went abroad for part of that year, and the two younger were with her mother who had until then brought us up, and two of us were with his mother and sister who hated her and for some reason me. Perhaps my being like him was the clue, or perhaps that is only superficial and within I am like her and they hated her of course. 

 She, his mother, was taking revenge for not being able to destroy his wife by destroying her firstborn, me, and really there is little I can find even after raking memory about what she could have complained about. I kept quiet and studied and went out to the library to read as much as possible, and if on return I was pointedly informed that they had finished some good food I did not react, since I had learned there was no one else to protect me and this was the only way. There was another cousin living there and nominally it was in her name that a great deal of hatred was poured on me, and I let is wash off as best as possible. That cousin was two years older, three years junior, but that was not the difference that mattered between us, it was that she destroyed my paintings and so forth - and if I cried the common grandmother punished me by shouting at me for being horrible enough to cry. 

 Their horrible behaviour was not about forcing housework and insisting on a parity with the cousin, which of course they did throughout, but  about sheer being horrible, behaviour always stemming from hatred and brimming with it. So I had withdrawn and tried to create my own world, and used reading and a public library and some friends newly made to mitigate the loneliness. I had at some point during that year found a thought in me - that I have to bring up, raise, grow myself, there is no one else. For during that year those I lived with were mostly viciously antagonists, and an aunt by marriage and a cousin uncle was all that there were on that side of the family who did not confirm to the pattern. 

Sgk was there, but she was a favourite with those who were horrible to me - playing politics is very important to get away with games of destroying humans marked for the purpose - and while that was not a problem for me, she was only seven and couldn't possibly help. She loved me though, and expressed it sometimes when we were out on the street and no one to fear. 

 Visiting the other house - where I had spent childhood and had memories of, and where now there were not only those loving grandparents but also the two small and very adorable siblings who were happy there and felt good to see - was some relief sometimes but did not ameliorate much of horror of living where I had to return. There was no telling those grandparents either about anything, since it would be of no use, except once when I was accused of it by the aunt we lived with - the very horrible Kgb - and since I had been so accused I complied, explaining to the adults in the other home that I was doing it, telling them what she said, because she has accused me of it. 

 If I was not much of an elder loving sibling to any of the younger ones - which every one of them has since held me guilty of and said so to me - it had to do with all I had to contend with; and it is hard to harvest what is not sown, and harder to sow further for next year when harvest has been robbed by those who are supposed to care and protect. 

 I was even then accused - by our common relatives - of not treating the cousin as a sister and I had no clue what they meant. Now that I think of it is true that her being a cousin is a knowledge of fact and not heart - but what example did they set? Our two small siblings in the other home had only the old grandmother to look after them, and did any of this home - the unmarried aunt or visiting aunt or even the cousin who was constantly looked after by those hawk eyed vigilante relatives to see if I was bad to her (it did not matter that I was not, and that they in fact were not good to her either - being bad to her was their right, apparently,) - any of them, did they ever have the thought of any love for the very lovable, adorable little ones less than a mile away? Certainly these people did not visit those siblings of mine that were their own blood relatives after all - or even offer to help or bring them over, more than perhaps once, during that whole year and more, and that was a formal lunch rather than anything appropriate for children less than five years old. So if they expected me to treat this cousin who was until then a stranger as a sister any better than I did at my age of ten, and did not show by example of what they meant - I don't see how they made a culprit of me for this.  

 They - not us - were very aware of her being from a poor family, and when they accused me of being proud of the hundred rupees our parents sent every month which hers couldn't - again, we had no clue about any of this and had no clue what that meant either. But at the end of the year when we were still living there and had not been brought back, my two sets of daily wear provided by mother were worn out and torn, and the only decent outfit was the one given by the aunt by marriage, but it couldn't possibly suffice - wash one, wear one, made two minimum necessary for every day use. Sgk was then bought a lovely brand new frock by the common grandmother for less than twenty rupees, but there was none for me. It was probably the still continuing vendetta - but it was also theft. Gold was less than ten rupees a gram then, perhaps as little as five, and when I thought about it recently it was clear that a hundred rupees was far more than sufficient for a household of five and the few guests there were occasionally. 

 I never thought about any of this until very recently. Give enough rope and the really evil hang themselves by providing more and more evidence of their behaviour, and mother's side of the family had dignity and nobility of character that was far more worth striving to aspire to, acquire and grow into. But they also had clear eyed judgement and justice, and if condemnation of those people for that year and subsequent lack of making up - but plenty to the contrary - is late, it does not suffer from lack of opportunity for them to either make up or explain or at the very least apologise. Kgb and her mother were evil in more than one sense of the word and writing horrible letters is only one of the many things they did. I suspect they were far from being unfamiliar with certain evil crafts or even using them. 

 When I was told about the letters, though, my swift and complete reaction was - what kind of a trashy person does not know his own progeny being innocent and good, and is waylaid and influenced into being horrible to the determination of destroying them - even one - by others who would see the fun of his beautiful family destroyed because he aspired to a better life, a better family? How stupid does a man have to be to influenced by the very persons he tried to escape from in marrying someone so different? And since I did not think stupidity of a low sort was the cause, it had to be that he wished this, what he was doing was not innocent but deliberate.  

 The question still remains - what sort of a man does this vendetta to his own young family, his own progeny, that he beats and blinds a daughter for a one rupee (that one rupee then was worth one loaf of bread) of a nephew and destroys the firstborn for being better than and not being equal to that nephew's sister, while he starves his whole family during their growing years, and leaves his beautiful wife in tatters, even as he is starving and beating her over decades into a state of physical damage to the nerves connecting her brain to her body?  

 She knew us. He still doesn't, alive or otherwise. Perhaps it is the difference of those who look down so they can step on living or at least kick them into writhing, shattering pain - and those who look up and do not mind being shorter but love seeing the beauty around. She was the latter. He prided himself on destroying people if they did not submit to him in every which way he demanded, and ruined their lives in every possible way.

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 On a recent trip we met and interacted with a family with two young children. Anoushka was about ten and smart, and we enjoyed talking to her. One day she came very perturbed and asked why tomcats eat their own children. I was startled, she was very upset but was calm on the surface. I held her close and said, it happens in animals, but there are every sort of examples there - there are penguins who starve for months while the chick's mother goes for the much needed feeding and the fathers not only starve and bear the worst cold on the planet to protect and give birth to the chick, they even feed it from their own body substance. And in humans there are all sorts of fathers, some more like penguins, some not quite so good. Perhaps she was reassured with the talk and perspective, perhaps it was the caring and holding and voice carrying care and concern. She felt better.

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