She had to get dressed quickly. The red and white salwar kurta spread over the couch had an outdated embroidery work on the neck and the border, and a bright pink laced dupatta to go with it. “They will be here anytime”, she thought to herself. Without any delay she sat on the conked out stool facing an old dressing table with a mirror cracked from various ends. As she looked at herself in the largest bit of the mirror, she noticed that the scars were able to be seen easily without having to look very carefully. She took a little more white powder to hide the ones on the neck, the cheeks and the blackened eye sockets, then brought her face closer to the mirror and stared at the wounds again. The powdered lesions looked horribly unattractive, clearly incomparable to her otherwise wheatish complexion. She withdrew, and picked up the comb on the table, while still looking into the mirror, “I will hide it with the dupatta. I will keep the wimple so that they won’t show. They won’t be able to see”. She hurriedly wore the attire and wrapped the dupatta around her shoulders.
On the first thought, she would have appeared too young to be getting married, nothing more than fifteen. She could have been younger too, can’t say.
She turned to the cupboard which was at the other end of the room, went ahead and opened it. In the shelf above was kept a small piece of what would have been a red saree, and a bangle wrapped in it. She took the bangle out from the wrap and pushed it on her wrists. “I miss you Ma”, looking at the bangle on her wrist, she remembered all the times she spent with her mother. They lived in a small village in UP, in a small house near the farms, which though appeared in shreds, was a comfortable shelter to the family of 6, her two brothers, the infant sister and the parents. The ceiling in one of the rooms was run down and dripped in the rainy season, so the entire family had a habit of sleeping together in a single room. The father was a peasant and the mother a homemaker. Her school was far from the village, and the journey to school every morning with friends, Meenakshi and Jyoti was something she always looked forward to.
“That was a long time ago”, she thought as she kept the red piece of cloth from where she took the bangle out, back into the cupboard.
It was 6.30 now. The sun had started to set. She went around and switched on all the lights in the room, including that of the bathroom. ~Bang bang~ Suddenly there was loud knock at the door and a harsh female voice startled her, “Radha, open the door”. Hurriedly, she reached out to open the door, and a skinny lady in her thirties, dressed in a jazzy pink coloured pajamas below a spaghetti top barged inside shouting at the top of her voice “Have you been sleeping you bitch? I knocked thrice and have shouted five times from the ground floor”. She had a plate with something edible, though scanty, most likely a chapati and dal, which she roughly placed on the stool next to the dressing table. She turned towards Radha, and pulled her hair. Her eyes widened as she looked at her with hatred, “Next time if it takes more than a single knock, I will shave your head and make you look like a joker”.
It didn’t hurt her anymore. She had been burnt, stabbed and strangled in the past too, that was in spite of having to do all the house chores, everyday without complaining. The food was always scanty and the mistress was always upset.
The food used to be insufficient in the village too, but there was mother’s love to take care of the hunger pangs, and there was father’s reassurance that the good times will follow after the harvest. Had that not been the time of crisis, and had they still be living in their old house, things could have been different. “Dad would not have sent me to this side of the city”, she thought and tears dwelled up in her eyes thinking about the time when father had brought her there. She watched him taking the money from the mistress, while she hid behind the tattered curtains. The feeble glance followed him till he disappeared at the end of the street. The little hands of the eleven year old clutched the mother’s bangle wrapped in the piece of her red saree feeling helpless, in a hope that father would come back for her tomorrow.
He never did.
The night was getting darker, and the lights in the streets were getting brighter. The maids of honor had come out in their balconies, and the guests had started to pour in.
Though, that seemed like a long time ago, she clearly remembered the time when the crisis had set in. It had rained heavily that year, and the river Rapti had changed its course. The small villages along the banks of the river were first to get hit. As the water level rose, Radha’s already dilapidated house and her peasant father’s ready harvest ran down with the gush. Though, the local government had rescued the village promptly and had brought the family to a city shelter guaranteeing full two meals a day, after a week’s time they had nowhere to go. With no land and shelter, and only promises of rehabilitation, the family was left to die on the streets. Few days later, the infant in the family that really could not survive the difficult times, succumbed to her hunger pangs. The times had never been so ruthless.
The money changed hands. The doors opened, and closed. The nerves had now learnt to fall numb. The mind was only accustomed to weave 'dreams' of escape scenarios. The imagination had matured to create illusions galore to satisfy the guilt.
And among the noise of the powerful and the soreness of the wounds, from a distance, she could still hear the faint voice of her mother’s, the sweet lullaby and the messages of hope.
