A Life Less Ordinary

by Baby Halder

  The taxi started off. My husband’s home was not far from ours—the bus fare was only three rupees. When the taxi pulled up a woman from the neighborhood came up and took my hand to help me out. She then led me into my new home. People crowded around, offering me sweets, urging me to eat, but I was so terrified, I could not even open my mouth! Even when my uncle and aunt pressed me to eat, I refused. All I could do was to stare at all the people collected there.

  Later, in the afternoon, one of the women came and dressed me up, sprinkling fistfuls of vermilion powder on my head. I just sat quietly in a corner. People had gathered there to get a glimpse of the new bride, and I had covered my hair according to my aunt’s instructions. They came to see me and they gave me money and utensils or other gifts. Then they sat down to eat. When they’d finished, someone from outside called for the new bride to be sent out. A woman caught hold of my hand and pulled me outside to where everyone was sitting. She handed me a handi full of sweets and said, “Now take this and serve everyone. Put two pieces on everyone’s pattal leaf.” I was so nervous and my hands were shaking so much that every time I put a piece on someone’s plate it would end up somewhere else! I didn’t know what to do, whether to make sure my head was covered because the pallu kept slipping off, or to serve the sweets.

  All the time my aunt’s instructions to keep my head covered were buzzing around in my head. Frustrated, I angrily put the handi down and started to set my sari pallu right on my head when everyone started to laugh. I was mortified. I wished the ground would open and just swallow me up! I left the handi right there and fled into the house, where I cried and cried. Meanwhile people started to tease my husband. “So, Shankar,” they said to him, “you’ve brought home a mere child! What are you going to do with such a young wife?” Then the woman who had taken me out came back and again took me by the hand, saying, “Come along, today is the bahu bhaat. The new bahu has to serve everyone.” So I went out again and this time, somehow, I managed to serve everyone. I felt as if every part of me was trembling as I did this. When everyone had finished eating, it was my husband’s turn. And then, when he had finished, my aunt said I should eat from his plate.

  I began to insist that I wanted to eat with her and my uncle, but my uncle scolded me, saying, “We’re not going to be here forever, you know. You’re the one who has to be here. Just be quiet and eat.” And as soon as they finished eating, my uncle, aunt, and my brother left.

  Now I was alone with my husband. I kept looking at him and wondering what he would do now, but he did not utter a word. I kept watching him quietly. For a little while, he did this and that, all sorts of little chores in the room, then he spread a mat on the chowki and indicated to me that I should sleep there. I lay down on the chowki and fell asleep immediately. In the night, I woke up with a start and found him lying next to me! I sat up, frightened, then I moved away and spread a small mat on the floor and went to sleep there.

  In the morning when I woke up, I noticed that my husband’s house was by a pukka road, and it had a tiled roof. The rent for the house was one hundred rupees—this I found out from the woman who had helped me out of the taxi. She was called Sandhya. My husband addressed her husband as Dada, elder brother. Sandhya called me “sister” and I referred to her as Didi, elder sister. They lived across the road from us. They had a tap in their house from where I would get water. We even had to go there to use the toilet, since we didn’t have one in our own home. Sandhya-di told me I should look upon her husband as my elder brother-in-law. “Your husband calls him Dada,” she said, “and whenever you are in his presence, you should cover your head.” Her husband had a lot of regard for me and whenever I was around someplace, he would quickly move away. He had a machine for cutting fodder, which he would buy in the market, cut at home, and then sell. Talking to Sandhya-di, watching chara being cut, the days passed well enough, but no sooner would evening come than I would be filled with fear and dread. My heart would start beating frantically. I used to sleep on the same mat as my husband, but I’d turn my head the other way. Three or four days passed like this and then, suddenly, one night, he caught hold of me and pulled me roughly toward him. He put his hand on my breast and told me in a gentle voice that he did not like living like this and he no longer wanted to do so. And so saying, he began to press his body against mine. I started to cry out in fear. But then, I thought, what’s the point? I’ll just wake everyone by shouting like this, so I shut my eyes and my mouth tightly and let him do what he wanted. I just endured everything.

  The next morning when I went to see Sandhya-di, she took one look at my face and asked me what was wrong. “What happened?” she said. After a short while, I told her I wanted to go back to my father’s home. Then I came back home and began to prepare the fire to cook. It was then that I looked up and saw my brother walking down the road toward our house. The moment he stepped through the door I announced, “I’m coming back with you.”

  “Why? Where’s brother-in-law?”

  I told him he was inside, so my brother went into the room and asked my husband, “Whatever’s the matter, brother-in-law? Why is Baby so upset?”

  Shankar laughed and said, “Nothing’s the matter. Your sister still thinks she’s a little girl.” When he heard this, my brother just turned around and went home alone. When he got there, Baba asked him, “You’d gone to see your Didi, hadn’t you?” And he said, “Yes, and she’s very unhappy. She burst into tears when she saw me.”

  Ma and Baba were so disturbed that they didn’t waste a moment. The very same day they rushed to our house. Baba asked Shankar, “I heard Baby was crying, son. What happened?” But Shankar did not say anything. I said, “Baba, I don’t want to stay here.”

  “All right,” he replied. “Why don’t both of you come back with us for a while?” And so we went back with them. As the new son-in-law, my husband was given a lot of importance in Baba’s house. All sorts of delicious dishes were prepared for him. And as for me, everyone kept explaining that I must understand that I wasn’t a child anymore.

  Two days passed and it was time to return. But I began to throw tantrums again, saying I wouldn’t go back. Ma got angry with me. Then I began to think: perhaps it was better to be in my own house after all. In Baba’s house I still had to do all the work and got no appreciation at all. At least my husband’s house wasn’t like that. There, I could work as I wished, when I wished, and there was nobody getting at me all the time. I could cook what I wanted, when I wanted, and if I needed anything for the house, I simply asked him and he would bring it. Whenever I had a little free time, I went across to Sandhya-di’s. She had three sons and sometimes, watching them play, I was sorely tempted to join in. There were times when I did—I’d become the old Baby then, and we’d laugh and play and I’d join in their fun and games. Sandhya-di and her husband watched us, and they often laughed when they saw me like this. I could never understand why they found this so amusing. When I asked, Sandhya-di said to me, “We’re laughing because you are still such a child.” I felt very embarrassed when I heard this—it was true, I thought. I’m no longer a child. I’m a woman now, and I haven’t seen any women jumping and playing like this.

  About two months after I’d come back from Baba’s house, I suddenly began to feel quite ill. I wanted to throw up, and this feeling persisted for a few days. I couldn’t eat properly: nothing would stay down. One day Sandhya-di asked me whether I’d had my period that month. I told her that I’d only had it once since my marriage, so she talked to my husband and told him he should take me for a checkup. But he didn’t listen to her, so she decided to take me herself and we went together to the government hospital. We ran from one person to another, and in the end we learned that the examination for pregnancies was only done on Fridays and Tuesdays. That day we came back, frustrated, and on Friday, we went again. Once there, I had to fill in a form, and then when my name was announced, I went in to be examined by a lady doctor. I stood in front of her like a deaf-mute. She ask
ed me many things, but no words came out of my mouth. Then she asked if anyone had come with me and I told her my Didi had, so she asked me to call her in.

  She asked Sandhya-di a lot of questions about me and then she turned to me and told me to lie down on the bed. I did as she asked and then she began to examine me. She put her hand between my legs and felt around inside. Then she turned to Sandhya-di and announced: “She is pregnant.” I sat up with a start, speechless with fear, but Sandhya-di only laughed. When we got home I could find nothing to say to my husband, but Sandhya-di said to him, “Listen, it’s as I thought. What I was imagining has happened.”

  “What’s happened?” he asked.

  “Well, the first thing you should do is to distribute sweets to everyone,” she said. Then she told him and her husband what the doctor had said. I felt from their laughter that they were all happy. Two days later, when Baba and Ma came to see me, Sandhya-di gave them the news as well. Ma laughingly said to Baba, “Did you hear that? We’re going to have a small visitor in the house!” But I thought Baba did not look too happy. Two days later, when they were going back to their home, I overheard Baba talking to Ma. “Rani,” he said, “having a child at such a young age, won’t that be dangerous?” My stepmother had no children of her own, but she knew things from here and there and she reassured him, “No, no. She’ll be fine.”

  After Baba and Ma left, I went to fetch water. Suddenly I saw Sandhya-di’s husband in front of me. I did not take any notice until I heard Sandhya-di calling out to me and that’s when I realized my mistake. I’d forgotten to cover my head! She was signaling to me frantically, pointing to him and then to my head, and I quickly put my pot down and covered my head. Just then I saw a number of Baba’s friends coming down that road—they were on their way to work. It’s a good thing my head was covered, because if they had recognized me they would have started up on the same things they used to say every day: “Look, there’s Halder-da’s daughter!” one would say. Another would ask his friend in surprise, “So this is where Halder has got his daughter married off?” And another would chip in: “Didn’t he check out anything at all? Why did he do this?”

  Whenever I saw them coming down the road I would run into the house and hide. I was terribly ashamed. Sometimes they would call out to me and say, “Hey, girl. So this is where you live, eh?” But I would not answer. I’d just turn my face away and stay silent. I don’t know what effect these things had on Baba, but it was true that he hardly visited me these days. He took the same route to go to work but often when he saw me he pretended not to, and would look away. Even if he was with a friend or someone else and that person said, “Look, isn’t that your daughter?” he still would not acknowledge me. At such times, I understood that he was doing this deliberately, and it would upset me a lot. Sometimes I would go home and weep: sometimes I would go and talk to Sandhya-di. But gradually I began to realize that Baba now wanted to be free of me: he had sent me away and that was that. He no longer wanted to be burdened with my problems.

  There was another reason why I often fled to Sandhya-di’s house. Our home was between a large house and a restaurant, at the edge of a road. I felt ashamed to be living in this little hut we called home. When my husband was not home, all sorts of people walking by on the road would peer into the house, so I felt much better when I was at her house. One day, as we were chatting about this and that, I said to her, “Sandhya-di, why don’t we go to see a film?” Normally, her husband did not allow her to leave the home but this time round, he agreed because I was there, and he used to treat me like his own daughter. He gave her a little money and said, “Go ahead, go to the cinema.” Now it was my turn to ask my husband—but he never really talked to me. In the morning, when we woke, I would make him tea and some roti and sabzi, and he’d eat and then leave for work. In the afternoon, he’d return and go straight to the tap outside, have a wash, then come back and lie down. Even if I asked him anything, he would not reply. Whether he was in the house or not didn’t seem to make much difference: even when he was, it was as though he were absent. When I mentioned to him that Sandhya-di and I wanted go to the cinema, he merely laughed and said nothing. But I kept on at him and finally he gave me some money. I thought then that if it were up to him, he would never take me anywhere nor let me go anywhere myself. When I came back from the cinema he was sitting with his face puffed up in anger. He would not talk to me properly and when I put his food in front of him, he just gulped it down and moved away. Given his behavior, I had little hope that he would bother to come to the hospital with me when my time came.

  My stomach was growing bigger by the day and I was a little concerned. When I told Sandhya-di, she said I should get Shankar to take me to the hospital. But I told her it was no use: he would not take me. In the end, when no one was willing to come with me yet everyone kept saying that I should show myself to the doctor, I decided one day to go by myself, alone. First no one would believe I was with child, but after the examination, when they realized I was seven months pregnant, the nurse gave me an injection. Then I came home. I was a little less worried now, because I had understood that what was happening to me was the same thing that happened to every girl.

  Now people began to say to my father, Halder-da, your daughter is seven months pregnant, you have to feed her the sadh. I had no idea what sadh was or how it should be eaten, but I was happy because Baba and Ma came to fetch us to their home and they went to the market and bought vegetables, meat, fish, and all sorts of nice things. They also bought me a sari and a blouse. On that occasion Ma’s sister, whom we called Badi-ma, and her three daughters also came. Badi-ma cooked all the food and Ma prepared the kheer. Then, as they talked, Ma put some kheer in a bowl and then looked around for a basket to cover it with. She took the vegetable basket and turned the vegetables out on the floor, covering the kheer with the upturned basket.

  Ma told Baba that he should go and bathe but he said, “First let us finish with Baby and then we will see.” Ma put seven types of vegetables and kheer into a thali and then sent me off to wear the sari. I came back dressed in the sari and bent to touch Baba’s feet, but as I did so, he recoiled. Shocked, I stood up. Baba said, looking at Ma, “If a girl is pregnant, it is not good to receive her greetings. You don’t know whether she is carrying a snake or a frog or god in her womb.” When she heard this, Badi-ma also refused to accept my greetings and she said, “Go and sit down, today you will eat first and all of us will eat afterward.” As I sat down to eat, Ma came and uncovered the kheer to see if it had curdled or not. If it curdles it is believed that the child will be a girl and if it does not, it is assumed the child will be a boy. The kheer had not curdled and Ma was overjoyed. “It will be a boy! It will be a boy,” she cried to Baba. Baba was also very happy, and all the neighbors milling around sounded overjoyed at the prospect of a son.

  After I had eaten, Baba, Ma, Badi-ma, and her daughters sat down to eat. Baba said to Badi-ma, “Didi, I am very frightened. I hope it will not be dangerous to bring a child into the world at a time like this.” Badi-ma rubbished this, saying, “Don’t be silly, nothing will happen.” In the midst of all these celebrations, my husband suddenly decided that he wanted to go home. What a strange thing to do! Everyone tried to dissuade him: “Let it be for today,” they said, “She’s just had the sadh, how can you take her home on the same day? She can’t leave today.” He finally agreed, but said that he would go anyway. “You can bring her home later,” he told them. He was odd, my husband. He had no social graces and did not know how to talk to his elders or how to offer them respect, and if I ever told him that he should try to be respectful, he would just glower at me.

  The next day Badi-ma and Baba took me back to my home. On the way Badi-ma explained to me that I should not step out of the house in the evenings, and if I had to do so, it should be in my husband’s company. After they left, I went into the house. The filthy state of the place made me want to turn right round and run back. I’d only been away a da
y and the house was a real mess. My husband was also very unclean personally. He never cleaned his teeth or washed his face properly. I hated having to eat from his used plate. If I told him to clean his teeth properly, he would ignore me. And somehow he managed to mess up that tiny house so easily. He would never lift up the broom to sweep, and if I was out for a few days, all the dishes and utensils would remain piled up in a dirty heap, waiting to be washed. Often I had no desire to enter the house but forced myself to do so, telling myself that it was only by being a man that you could have such privileges. And it was no use trying to say anything to this man, since my words fell on deaf ears.

  One day, when I was eight months pregnant and could stand this no more, I went to Baba’s house. I had imagined I would get some peace there, but the moment I arrived I heard that my mother’s brother was very sick: he had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. As soon as they heard this, my Ma began to cry and Grandmother began to shout abuses, cursing her, as if this were all her fault. Baba took Uncle to see the best possible doctors in Durgapur and my aunt would bring the money from her own home to pay for whatever medicines they prescribed.

  My aunt was my uncle’s second wife. Despite many years of being married, she had no children of her own. His first wife went away one day to visit her parents and when she did not come back for a long time, my uncle took a second wife. His first wife left behind a young daughter who was with her father for a while but then, when she insisted that she wanted to go back to her mother, my aunt took her back and left her there. My uncle’s health began to decline soon after that, which is why Dadi-ma was cursing her.

  That night, my brother and I finished our meal and went to sleep. Ma and Baba always fed us first before they ate themselves. I was nodding off when I heard Baba say to Ma, “Call Baby and ask her to come and eat a little more.” Ma said, “Why don’t you call her yourself?” He called out to me and I told him I was not hungry, but still he insisted: “Come, child, come and sit with me for a while.” Whenever I went to Baba’s house, it was always like that. Some days they would be so kind to me, they would treat me really well, and feed me all kinds of good things. If Baba saw that I was hesitating to eat, he would leave a little food in his plate and tell me to eat it whenever I felt hungry. Ma did not lag behind, either; whatever she cooked, she would put aside a little for me. One day as I sat down to eat, Ma asked me if my husband ever brought fish or meat home. I said he did but very rarely. At this, Ma called him a miser and put an extra piece of fish on my plate, saying, “Here, eat this. And if you are still hungry, just let me know.” It was odd. On the one hand they looked after me and fed me with such love and care, but on the other, they quarreled about me over all sorts of minor matters. When Ma was angry she had no real control over her tongue and she would say all sorts of things. Finally, when I could bear it no more, I said: “Ma, I have no desire to eat fish or meat, and if my presence is causing you such problems, I had better just go.” I started to put my things together to leave but she stopped me, saying, “Don’t go just now. If you must go, at least wait till the afternoon.”