On that rainy day

I remember it like yesterday. It was drizzling the same as today. I could hear the raindrops splattering against the rooftop shade. I spoke to her the morning, she wanted a change of room as she said one of the children got a needle prick. I suddenly helped her in it, as I was a novice at reception and this was never my profession, I was at this motel helping out my friend.

 It is that young woman that comes to mind who had three children and nowhere to go when mothers day is being celebrated. 

Her room had the deep stench of weed or some kind of cigarette she smoked. She was anxious and kept pacing when she reached the reception desk. Motel or its life is not my business to quote. I have always witnessed life in many forms in this journey of 46 years...

The women I have met in my life are not great personnel with accolades and not celebrities, but women living in strange situations, but outliving the death or destruction.

I have spent days in a rescue shelter attending to people as part of my training schedules, almost naked with sunken eyes deprived of sleep hair entangled, and covered in flies. They must be abused, raped, or just discarded by their own.

I have been with women who drank their hearts out not knowing they are in tears or laughter burying their pain of rejection, violence or loss. They were affluent, eloquent part of the intellectual community.

This woman who smoked making waves of it around me was no different. I remember the girl who shouted to me in a treatment team "whether east or west, they treat women as pigs . Miss, do you understand, does it make sense "...I sat before that 20-year-old in a startle .'They want us to cook, clean, and produce children".

I knew I am in the world's most modern circumstance, but I found if it was along the coastal regions of my country where I used to conduct research on domestic violence or any other so-called developed nations where I have spent my career, woman Is a commodity and it never changed with time.

I remember the soldier's wife in her 50 years struggling with her plastic surgery wounds. She wanted to be beautiful before her husband. She wanted to be his queen. She feared abandonment. Her muffled crying echoes in my ears.

Have I not cared for women who were trying to act as suicide bombers. They were women too, women different but of course oppressed and forced.

I looked at this woman each time she walked around me. She was in shaggy outfits but she was beautiful. Life must have tormented her shaking every branch of her existence.

Under the roof, on the road, in great glory, and even in religious mansions women are never safe.No amount of revolution could cure the lust and overpowering masculine aggression that existed overtly or covertly.

I never saw any man with this woman. She has been traveling from Newyork this far into this small town of ours. My life, if it is a story there would be characters like this coming and going doing certain roles.

It was past 11.30 am and I had to close the checkouts. I wanted my friend to come back and myself to leave but I reached her room and kept knocking. It took her time to open the room.

The children were just around Her. One latching onto her chest, two playing around. I asked her if she is extending the stay, and she replied yes but she asked me for time.

Was I not kind enough when I told her it can't wait, no I was repeating the same set of words, It took me again half an hour to knock her up again...She came to reception told "give me an hour, I will get the money" and rushed out .she barged in an hour and a naive me collected the money and gave her another few days of stay.

She was no junky no harmful person, she seemed a woman, simple. Even when the system is so diligent in taking care of people she was one of the many exceptions. 

The guard told me in a whisper ..she just did a blow job ...is it that costly. Her voice cracked into laughter that pierced me.

I felt the dagger of social civicness cutting me through. 

To me, that rainy day remains special. I spent time chatting with her in the car park. It was not befriending but woman-to-woman talk. I just saw a mother there ...

Between right and wrong, dark and light, normal and abnormal the line is very thin. Who is right in this world. Who is wrong. Who or what defines it.

The woman, I saw, the deep stench of her cigar, her children, and that one hour ...she took from me ....Beyond judgemental eyes, I looked at it with respect. That was all I could do ...on that rainy day. I wished it washed away ...the inflictions on people, on women...