Daughters Inherit Silence
Page 1
Daughters Inherit Silence
Tales From The Deccan Plateau
Rasana Atreya
Contents
Get a free copy of The Temple Is Not My Father
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Afterword
Get a free copy of The Temple Is Not My Father
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Get a free copy of The Temple Is Not My Father
Would You Like A Free Book?
* * *
When Godavari was dedicated to the Goddess, she still believed in goodness and decency. Not anymore.
* * *
Now she has a daughter to protect. And protect her she will, no matter the cost to herself.
* * *
The Temple Is Not My Father explores poignantly the emotional landscape of motherhood, love, loss and identity in the cultural context of India.
* * *
Note:
This novella is exclusively for the subscribers of my mailing list. Not available for purchase.
* * *
Get the book:
* * *
www.rasanaatreya.com
Half of life is lost in charming others.
The other half is lost in going through anxieties caused by others.
Leave this play. You have played enough.
* * *
― Rumi
Daughters do not have to inherit the silence of their mothers.
* * *
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo
Author’s Note
Dear Reader,
* * *
Kovid (pronounced with a soft “d”) was almost the name of my child. Years later, when I needed a strong, culturally significant name for my male protagonist, Kovid took birth between the pages of Daughters Inherit Silence. I wrapped up the novel by March 2019 and sent it out to my beta-readers for feedback. An entire year later, COVID-19 exploded onto the global stage.
* * *
I’ve been have advised to change Kovid’s name because it is uncomfortably close to that of the current global pandemic. A lot of people have lost family and friends, so I do not take this lightly. But I’ve also been thinking about associations. About how symbols and identities can get co-opted, denying the people who had previous claim to it.
* * *
Hitler co-opted the Hindu Swastika, something Indians had used for thousands of years. In India, Hindu homes still have use the Swastika on their doorsteps and inside their homes. Yet, Hindus in the US don’t do this, and I get why. The Holocaust was a horrific pox on the face of humankind, one that must never be forgotten.
* * *
Maybe what I’m trying to do, trying to take back the name, Kovid, is misguided. But, to me, Kovid is as real as my two children. I’ve watched him come alive. I’ve watched him grow as a person, own his mistakes, accept his strengths. To change his name would be to deny him.
* * *
I hope you’ll see him come alive too.
* * *
Sincerely,
Rasana Atreya
* * *
December 28, 2020
San Ramon, CA
1
The Old Man
Lingampally, Telangana, India
Four Years Ago
The large wooden gate, with its arched top built into the compound wall, stood open all day. This gave the customers of Seenu’s Cellphone Repair and Ration Shop a direct view into its courtyard.
The daughter-in-law hated that door open, which was reason enough to keep it that way. At his age, there were few things that brought a man joy.
At the thought of joy, grief spiked. It was not right that a man be dependent on the charity of a woman. A daughter-in-law, at that. Agitation roiled. Faster and faster his wooden rocker went.
A slight figure stepped cautiously over the six-inch wooden threshold of the gate.
The old man’s nostrils flared in disgust at the girl-child. This was what the son he’d loved had left behind.
Eyes lowered, the girl walked across the cobbled courtyard, her movements deliberate.
The old man’s lips tightened, the surrounding skin wrinkling and bunching. He stopped rocking as words, unsaid, agitated in his head like clothes in that piece of machinery the daughter-in-law had splurged money on. What had the world come to when a man could not lay down the law in his own home?
Why couldn’t his son have left behind a place for his parents to call their own? A bank account on which to live? A male heir to cushion their final years? The old man’s living situation left him too humiliated to hold up his head around family, let alone friends. For this he had cut off relations, cut off friendships, cut off his tongue. How else was a man to rein in the words that begged to spew forth?
The girl unslung her bag, quietly placing it next to the hand-pump, and glanced up at the veranda, at her grandfather.
The old man did not react. Show her affection, and the next thing you know, she’s all grown up and married, returning to her marital home sobbing because her in-laws were pressuring her for more dowry.
He resumed his rocking.
Feet washed of grime, sandals carefully lined up against the other slippers in the courtyard, the girl climbed the three steps up to the veranda, past her grandfather, and into the dank interiors of the house the old man was forced to call his own.
2
Jaya
Lingampally, Telangana, India
Four Years Ago
Good-natured bargaining was in full swing as Jaya joined the women at the vegetable seller’s pushcart, parked right in the middle of the dusty village road. She returned the smiles that came her way. She knew all her neighbours by sight, but talked only to a few.
Widowhood did that to you: no one said you couldn’t be part of society anymore, but no one said you could. She was no longer Jaya Rao. She was “that poor Jaya whose husband died.”
The vegetable seller waited patiently as more ladies from the surrounding houses streamed out. Laughing and exchanging greetings, they encircled the 3'x5' cart. They inspected the vegetables, piled artistically in pyramids, and placed their choice of produce in one of the many wicker baskets.
When they were ready, the seller weighed the produce on his manual scale and added up the cost in his head.
As Jaya reached for a wicker basket, a dumpy lady, her stringy grey hair gathered together in an oily braid, gazed at Jaya in horror. “Oh, no! What have you done to yourself?”
Jaya had stepped out of her house, a freshly starched cotton sari draped around her slender frame, and feeling good about herself. Suddenly the winter sun didn’t seem as warm anymore.
“Your skin is looking so dull, you poor thing! All those worries of widowhood grinding you down.”
Jaya was taken aback. The Lingampally Computer Centre—which she owned and operated—was doing better than ever, enough that she could finally think of replacing those big, box air-conditioners that blocked the windows in both the bedrooms at home. She had her eye on the sleek, noiseless, split air-conditioners she could install high up on the wall, operate with a remote control, and not have to get out of bed in the middle of the night. She was financially supporting herself and her in-laws. Her daughter was thriving. Her brother was only a WhatsApp message away. What more could a lady want?
“Get one of those fairness creams,” Stringy Hair said. “Make your skin whiter.” She inclined her head, giving Jaya’s skin tone serious consideration. “Actually, no point. Not like there’s a husband waiting for you at night.”
A few ladies tittered. Many looked away in embarrassment.
Paavani aunty put a gentle hand on Jaya’s shoulder. “Ignore her,” she said in an undertone. “The poor lady needs to put you down in order to make her own life seem better. I think you look very pretty.”
Jaya smiled at her in gratitude and reached across for the tomatoes. She inspected a few cursorily before adding them to her basket. She tried not to be too picky, aware the man was a daily-wage earner. Too much leftover produce, blemished or damaged from handling, would cut into his earnings for the day.
“This Jaya,” another neighbour said, laughing. “So many years, and she still doesn’t know how to pick the best ones.”
If her years of widowhood had taught Jaya anything, it was that all commentary and advice—solicited or otherwise—must be silently borne. She smiled politely.
“Don’t let them get to you,” Paavani aunty said softly, as she paid for her purchases. With a smile of support, she left.
Around them, the cacophony of life continued. Honking scooters—balancing entire families—swerved around them, on their way to school and office. Three-wheeler auto-rickshaws careened past, tilting at alarming angles, even as school children in ill-stitched, mass-produced uniforms spilled out from the open sides, resigned to another day at school. Other kids grinned, waving cheekily at strangers.
Jaya waved back, causing the startled kids to giggle.
Meanwhile, the vegetable seller leaned against his rickety wooden pushcart, muscular arms crossed at his chest. His lungi—chequered the saffron, white and green colours of the Indian flag—was wrapped around his waist and folded up at his knees, exposing muscular calves. The skin that peeked through tiny holes in his once-white undershirt spoke of a garment of many washes.
“Blackie came late today,” a lady mock-whispered in a tone that was meant to encourage laughter, and most obliged.
The vegetable seller gave no indication he’d heard.
Jaya winced.
As on any given day, a few of the ladies gossiped, disparaging each other, the people they worked for, and the people who worked for them. Yet the man remained unaffected, like nonreactive material against a barrage of acid. Did poverty render a person stoic?
Around the man’s rolling wooden platform, with its four repurposed bicycle wheels, the ladies continued chatting, unconcerned. Some, like Jaya, were dressed formally in saris, the others in salwar kurtas, on their way to offices. Many were in nighties.
Originally intended to be nighttime attire, the nightie had become the daytime outfit of choice, travelling all the way from the bustling, dusty lanes of North India to the bustling, dusty lanes of southern India. It owed its continued popularity to its modesty, covering from neck down, revealing neither shape nor form. This lack of thought to its design was intentional, with self-taught, mostly male tailors setting up shop under corrugated-tin roofs, and offering one-size-fits-all.
Many ladies shopped in their localities in these same garments, changing into saris just before their husbands’ return from work, and in time to light the evening lamp at the altar. Jaya chose not to wear nighties, opting, instead, for salwar-kurtas, which also doubled as daywear. With her in-laws living with her and no husband in the picture, a nightie didn’t seem proper.
Widowhood did that to you: it imposed decorum.
“What’s this I hear?” asked Jaya’s next-door neighbour on the other side, the one she couldn’t see from her house because the wall between their two houses went up all the way to the ceiling of her veranda. The only time the two met was at the vegetable cart.
Next-door aunty was almost always dressed in wrinkled cotton saris, one grandchild or the other attached at the hip. At her feet were three more, between the ages of two and five. She had a total of nine and never had the time to involve herself in Jaya’s life, for which Jaya remained profoundly grateful. This was unlike the rest of the village, which felt entitled to both her time and her life.
“Hear what?” Jaya said.
“You’re still giving your maid one holiday a week?”
The child in Next-door aunty’s arms put three of his fingers in her mouth, trying to drag her lower lip down. She smacked his arm, and he opened his mouth to wail. One look at his grandmother’s face, and his mouth snapped shut.
Jaya said nothing.
“What next?” Next-door aunty enquired. “You’ll set up a pension fund for her?” She picked up a couple of potatoes and tossed some coins into the vegetable seller’s basket. “This isn’t a big-city locality, you know. It’s still a village, even though the traffic is getting rather crazy.”
Jaya suppressed a sigh. She had started giving her maid paid holidays years ago, but complaints found their way to her each time one of her neighbours’ maids demanded a raise or a holiday. Maybe it was time to take on the anonymity the supermarket in town offered. At the very least, she would be spared the inquisition.
Next-door aunty wasn’t finished. “I thought you’d stop with the foolishness once that older one was gone. But you’re doing the same thing with the new one? You know what a headache it is for the rest of us, dealing with these people’s constant demands?” The lady readjusted the weight of the child at her hip. She was exhausted, and it showed. The bags under her eyes hung heavy. “Now they are demanding frequent holidays. I already give mine one holiday each month. Think about it. My house is crawling with grandkids. It’s a zoo. Do you think it is fair for her to expect more?”
With no response forthcoming from Jaya, Next-door aunty picked her basket up. With a rough “hmm” at the children, she got them moving.
The other ladies finished their transactions and left, some giving her the look, others carefully averting their eyes. One didn’t come between a lady and her maid. It just wasn’t done.
Jaya held open the handles of her plastic basket, and the vegetable seller transferred produce from his wicker basket to her plastic one. She handed him money for the vegetables and he reached for his money pouch.
“What did you think of that lady, Amma?” he asked.
Amma was this beautiful, crazy word in the Telugu language, one that meant whatever you wanted it to mean: mother, an affectionate term for a female child or as a sign of respect for a lady. Context mattered.
Jaya nodded, encouraging him to go on.
“The one saying that people from big houses should not be giving people like us holidays?”
She wouldn’t call her house big, but she knew what he meant. He was referring to her higher status in society. All said, she did have a roof over her head. She hoped this man did, too.
It occurr
ed to her that she’d been buying vegetables from him for six years. Seven days a week he showed up, rain or shine. Almost every day, she did, too. But they had not exchanged a word beyond the fluctuating cost of vegetables.
“I’ve been doing it for years,” Jaya said. “Giving my maids a holiday each week.”
“Why?” He stood silent, stolid, waiting for a response.
“When I shifted to this house,” Jaya said slowly, trying to gather her thoughts, “I had a different maid. She was my age, mid-twenties, but life had taken its toll. She looked old enough to be my mother. She had a husband but might as well not have had one, for all he was worth, the drunkard. Didn’t do an honest day’s work. He would be gone for days, doing goodness knows what. But when he came back, she knew exactly why. He beat her and took all her money.” He also forced himself on his wife, often brutally, but that wasn’t something that could be mentioned around menfolk. “I did ask her why she did not leave him.”