A Life Less Ordinary

by Baby Halder

  The escalating tension at home almost made me forget that not so long ago I had been a young girl who loved going to school. There were times when I felt that, like my own mother, I should also leave home and go away. But then, I would ask myself, where would I go? I had no place to call my own. I was consumed by such thoughts as the days somehow passed. Baba’s attitude to me began to change visibly. I was no longer the apple of his eye, but more like a thorn in his flesh. The smallest things would irritate him, and somehow this just destroyed my confidence. I began to wonder and worry whether others too found me irritating.

  I had stopped listening to the never-ending squabbles between Baba and Ma, but the lingering tension in the home affected me deeply. Every time I heard them complain about me, or about how they could get rid of me, I would go out of the house and cry. Then one day, when I could bear it no longer, I told Baba that I wanted to go to Aunt’s house again. “You’ve only just been there,” he said, “how can you go again? What will they think?” Baba and Ma joined forces against me, but I insisted. I wasn’t going to give up that easily. I just dug in my heels, and in the end they had to agree. Perhaps Baba thought that this was the only way to ease the tension. I must have been right, because Baba then told me to go and tell Aunt everything about myself. “Perhaps she can do something for you,” he said.

  THE VERY NEXT DAY BABA BOUGHT ME A TICKET AND PUT me on the bus to my aunt’s house. A few hours later I got off the bus and went straight to her son’s shop, which was just by the bus stand. When I got there, I said to him, “Dada, I’m very hungry. Please give me something to eat.” He looked a little worried when he saw me and said, “What’s going on? Why are you here alone? Is everything all right at home?” He sounded really anxious. “Let me eat first,” I said, “and then I’ll tell you. I am really hungry.” So he took me to a sweet shop where he sat me down on a bench and I ate my fill.

  After that he took me home, and there I learned that the cousin to whom I had recounted the story of the jackal and the farmer, and who was to have been married, was still single. As she and I were talking, Aunt came in and she was shocked to see me. When she asked what I was doing there, I poured out the whole story about the constant bickering between Baba and my stepmother and the tension at home. She listened and her eyes filled with tears. “You did right to come,” she told me, “and now you must stay here. In a couple of days some people are coming to see your Didi with a view to marriage, and your sister-in-law will have to cook for them. You can stay and help her.”

  That night my Didi and I talked long into the night. When I told her that the boy she was marrying was very good, she said, “How do you know?” I said that I’d overheard Aunt and Sandhya’s mother talking and they were saying what a lovely pair they would make. At this, Didi blushed and said, “Okay, that’s enough! Now go to sleep, it’s late.”

  Now, if you go to bed late, you wake up late. But who was going to explain this to Aunt? She was in the habit of waking early and roasting the flat rice we call mudi, and it was our job to put together everything she needed for this. She would call us to wake up but we’d continue to sleep; then after several attempts, we’d get up, do her work, and go right back to bed. But she’d keep calling out to us while roasting the mudi, just to make sure that we didn’t go back to sleep. If we didn’t answer, she’d get angry and shout at us, saying, “These good-for-nothing girls have gone back to sleep again!” Then we’d quickly jump out of bed and go and do her bidding!

  But even if she managed to wake us up, Aunt never told us what we were expected to do all day long. Didi was used to this, but I had spent a few years in school and I found it very difficult to hang around doing nothing. Visitors to Aunt’s house would ask her about me if they saw me hanging around, and when she told them I was my father’s daughter they found it difficult to believe that someone so young could have grown up so much. “Oh, Ma!” they’d cry, “that little girl? She’s really grown up! She used to be such a child.” I liked to hear them talk, particularly those who were from Murshidabad, because their way of speaking was very nice.

  The people who came to see Didi were also from Murshidabad and had the same sweet way of speaking, and perhaps because of that we were very hospitable to them. I helped to look after them. Aunt’s daughter-in-law cooked for them, and it was my job to serve them tea and food. This I did enthusiastically, running around here and there in my dress, and I heard some people ask who this young and energetic girl was who was working so hard. Aunt immediately understood what lay behind that seemingly innocent question, and she told them that I was the daughter of a man who had a good job and it wasn’t likely that he would give his daughter away to any old fellow.

  After the visitors left, I realized how tired I was. I went outside the house, leaned against the wall, and sank to the ground with my legs spread in front of me. I liked sitting like that. I thought of all those people who had praised my work—what would they have said if they had known that ever since she was a small child, Baby had known little other than the hard drudgery of household chores?

  Poor Baby! What else could one say of her? Imagine a childhood so brief, so ephemeral, that you could sit down and the whole thing would unravel in front of you in barely half an hour! And yet her childhood fascinates Baby. Perhaps everyone is fascinated by the things they’ve been deprived of, the things they long for. Baby remembers her childhood, she savors every moment of it, she licks it as a cow would her newborn calf, tasting every part. She remembers her Ma and Baba with their stories of Jammu and Kashmir where she was born, and how, when she arrived in the world, her eyes would not open easily because she’d come two months before her time. How, just a day before she was born, her father had left her mother in the hospital and gone to join the war, and there a bullet had hit him. And why would it not? With his wife lying in hospital, waiting to give birth, he could hardly have been expected to concentrate on anything else!

  And there wasn’t only Kashmir, but Dalhousie, too. Here, Baba would sometimes take the children for a walk in the evenings. The roads were so dark that they could not see a thing. They couldn’t even hear the sound of approaching cars, and it wasn’t until they saw their headlights that they were aware that there was a car on those dark roads. They’d walk along and come home frozen, where they would sit down in front of the one heater they had, crowding around it to try and get warm. Ma would tell them to make sure they put some mustard oil on their hands before going to bed, and then she’d do it for them and they’d fall asleep. When they awoke, it would still be dark and cold and it was difficult to know how late it was.

  The house was quite high up, and from there they could see the mountains above them. From their house, the mountain roads looked like small and narrow strips and the cars going along them seemed like toy cars. Where would one find such a beautiful place? Baby remembered those days and wondered if Fate would ever allow her to go back there.

  I know well what lay in store for Baby. Baba had told her to ask Aunt to make some “arrangement” for her, but after she had left, he must have talked to her stepmother about how difficult it was for them to manage without Baby around and they must have decided to get her to come back. Baby wondered what was so important that she had to be there. After all, there was nothing in the household tasks that someone else could not do. And then she remembered the one thing for which her presence was essential, and it made her smile. Baby’s stepmother kept her head covered night and day, and she would never go out into the fields alone to relieve herself. Baba would not let her and it was Baby’s job to accompany her into the fields! I’m embarrassed to even talk about it, but whatever it was, they had decided that they wanted to take Baby back and one day, they came to Aunt’s house and did just that.

  I MUST HAVE BEEN BACK FROM AUNT’S PLACE A COUPLE of months when, one day, my stepmother’s brother came to our house and brought another man with him. My stepmother asked me to make tea for them and then came into the kitchen and asked me to serv
e the tea. I took the tea in and did as I was told, and my stepmother’s brother, my uncle, asked me to sit down. I did so, and the man with him began to ask me questions. “What is your name? What is your father’s name? Do you know how to sew? Can you cook? Can you read and write…?” I was so nervous I could barely answer and I kept thinking, naively, that there must be some reason why he was asking me so many questions. At the time I could not have imagined that I would be married off to a man like him. I was a little over twelve years old and he was twenty-six!

  After they’d eaten and drunk, Uncle took that man away. I went out to play and a friend of mine joined me. She was laughing and making fun of me. “So,” she said, “they came to see you, didn’t they?” I was taken aback. Then I laughed and said, “So what if they did? It will be a good thing to get married! At least I will get to have a feast.” “Is that what you think?” she laughed, “that you yourself will get married and you will have a feast?” So I said, “Why not? Haven’t you noticed how well people eat at weddings?” My friend gave me a funny look and burst out laughing. I didn’t think this was out of the ordinary. After all, lots of people thought me a bit odd, because, apart from a few, I did not talk to many people and they did not talk to me. So often they used to think I was a bit strange.

  A few days later the man who had come with my uncle returned with two others. At the time, I was playing outside dressed in my dress. My stepmother asked me to come inside. I thought, Why have these people turned up again? What do they want now? Then my brother pointed to one of them and said, “Look, this man will be our son-in-law.” I turned to my stepmother and asked, “Ma, is this right? Will one of them be our son-in-law?” At this my father, my stepmother, and my brother all burst out laughing. “You will always remain a buddhu, a fool,” my father exclaimed, “I don’t know what the future holds for you. When will you get some sense?” I felt that Baba was not happy with me.

  I could never bear to see Baba unhappy. Whenever he was unhappy, whenever he shed tears, I would also weep. I remember one day my Didi beat up my brother and Baba stopped her, saying, “Don’t beat him, child. Now you are the only one he has.” He began to weep and my Didi and I had also burst into tears.

  I suppose it was not wrong of Baba to call me foolish and mad in front of those people. I had not been able to say a word to them in response to all the questions that had been put to me. I felt too scared and tongue-tied. So Baba had answered them all—or rather, he had given them all sorts of evasive answers. When they asked about my brothers and sister, for example, Baba did not even mention the brother Ma took away with her when she left.

  After they left, I thought of all the questions Baba had left unanswered. I thought, If he had not even mentioned my little brother, why should he have told them about the scar he’d gotten on his forehead while playing? One day, when I was still in class two, my brother had insisted on coming to school with me and Ma said, “Take him with you, if he wants to go.” So I did. On the way we came across a water tap and he said he wanted a drink of water, so we went over to it. Suddenly, he slipped and fell and cut his forehead. He was bleeding profusely. I was so frightened I began to cry loudly. I covered his wound with my headscarf and we staggered home. Baba was not at home, but my mother quickly took my brother to the hospital. I did not even stop to wash my hands and rushed off to school as I was. But when everyone saw my bloody hands, they told the teacher and he sent me home. On the way back I met my Baba’s friend Dhananjay Kaku, who knew what had happened—he must have met Ma on the way. Dhananjay Kaku was a good man—he was a potter by caste—and he always had a kind word for us. His home was close to our school and we often went there during break to watch his father at the potter’s wheel—the movement of that wheel, and the way his father so deftly shaped the clay, fascinated us. We couldn’t understand how, almost in the blink of an eye, a bit of mud could turn into a beautifully shaped pot.

  The same visitors who had come to see me had also asked questions about my Didi. And all Baba had told them was that she was now married and at her in-laws’ home. Had I not been so frightened to speak, imagine the things I would have told them! At her wedding, I’d brought my friends Dolly and Tutul over and we had spent our time eating and drinking until Dolly’s grandfather came to fetch her and Tutul, who lived close by. Dolly’s father was a friend of my father’s and they often spent a lot of time together, so when he came Baba invited him in to share some sweets with him. There was also a band at Didi’s wedding, and her husband had brought nearly seven hundred people with the baraat, the wedding party. We didn’t expect so many people, but somehow we managed because Baba still had the pension he had gotten from his job and this money came in handy to feed all the wedding guests. Whatever was left he frittered away on drinking and on searching for my mother. He’d also had some jewelry made for Didi, and I remember that she had asked him why he was spending so much money. “How will my sister feel if you spend all your money on me?” she had asked. “Why not get some made for her as well?” In fact, she told him that if he did not do so, she wouldn’t wear any jewelry herself. So he made some small things for me, too—little earrings, and things like that. And Didi made me put them on—everyone thought I looked so beautiful!

  One day, shortly after Didi’s wedding, I’d gone to visit my aunt and while combing my hair there, one of my earrings got caught in my hair and broke. My stepmother asked me to give her all my ornaments, saying she would have them properly made again, so I handed them over. For a long time after that there was no sign of them at all. No one said a word, and even when I asked about them there was no response. But soon afterward I noticed my stepmother was wearing new earrings…while the disappearance of my jewels still remained a mystery. If I ever asked about my things I was told they were at the repair shop, and after that I heard no more about them.

  My stepmother and my father had had a love marriage, and that, too, in a Kali temple! Baba and she both drank. At first they would drink when we were not around, but as time passed, they lost that discretion and were often drunk and boisterous in front of us. We did not like this, but no matter what we said to try and embarrass them, it made no difference. They just drank if they wished to, and heard what they wanted to hear. Strangely, we were the ones who ended up feeling ashamed, and we’d then make ourselves scarce and get out of their way! We were at a loss to understand what we could do. Baba and my stepmother continued to be in love even after their marriage. Every day at mealtimes, they would argue: if one did not eat, the other refused to do so, too. They had special names for each other. She would say, “Mana, you eat first.” And he would say, “No, Rani, you eat first.” And if sometimes Baba lost his temper and refused to eat, he’d stomp off to work and then she would refuse to eat as well.

  All this went on, and before I knew it I was twelve years and eleven months old. One day I saw Baba and my maternal aunt coming back from the bazaar with bags full of vegetables. They gave the bags to me to empty out and I did that carefully. As I came out, I noticed a suitcase lying nearby. I asked Baba about it and he told me it had things for my wedding. My stepmother and aunt opened the suitcase and showed me what was inside. I was so happy to see all those wonderful things! The next day, Baba brought me a new quilt, a mattress, and a pillow and I was beside myself with joy! Outside the house, some people had put up a sort of awning, and beneath it sat a large chulah mounted on bricks. The whole neighborhood was filled with music. I was watching all this and playing with the children outside when my aunt called me inside and asked me to be seated on a pidi. My stepmother then began to smear turmeric paste on my body, and then others came and joined in. I was told that I could not eat that day, that I had to fast. I was surprised: as far as I knew, fasts were kept on religious days, but there was no festival then…

  Now, when she thinks back, Baby wonders how she spent that day of sorrow in such merriment. Little did Baby know that this was the beginning of her days of grief and pain, little did she know what the fu
ture held for her. On the seventeenth day, a Wednesday in the month of Agrahayan, Baby was married.

  ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT, I WAS MARRIED. BUT I SPENT THAT entire night chatting with my friends, some local girls and an older woman from the area. The next day was a Thursday, and Ma said she would not send me away on such an inauspicious day. Before I knew it, the day became like every other and I quickly lost myself in household tasks. Every now and again, I’d sing and jump about and play. There were no tears in anyone’s eyes that day: not in my mother’s, not in mine. I was carefree and happy. And I laughed a lot that day. In the afternoon, after I’d bathed, I got dressed. I pulled out a dress and when my aunt saw me she laughed and said, “No, no, not that! You should wear a sari.” I did not know how to—my wedding day was the first time I’d actually worn one. So I asked my aunt if she could help me to tie it, and so she did.

  On Friday, one of the women from the neighborhood came and helped me dress. She’d done that for me and my husband on the wedding day, too. Then a taxi was called and my husband and I were seated inside. My mother’s brother and sister and my own brother also sat with us. I had no idea where we were going or why. As we sat down, my aunt came up to me and put a handful of rice and dal in my aanchal and whispered to me that I should give these to my mother, and say: “Ma, with these I pay you back for all the days you have fed and clothed me, and looked after me.” I did as she asked, but I noticed that as I said this, Baba began to cry. I looked at him and I also burst into tears. At this, he cried even harder. With tears running down his face, he clutched my husband’s hand and said, “Son, I’ve given you my daughter: now it’s up to you to look after her. She’s a motherless child.”