Rotten

For as long as Mahi remembered her mother had been a victim of domestic violence. Her father would beat her mother, sometimes fortnightly and if his business was doing well and he was facing financial trouble even three or four times a month. It took Ragini a week to recover after each beating and every time she reminded Mahi that she was not to end up like her. Mahi must study hard and make a life for herself so that she could walk out on her husband at the first hint of disrespect. 

When Mahi read about marital rape, first time at the age of thirteen she realised that it was another reality of her mother's life. Too many nights she had heard her father walk into the room her parents shared with her and her sibling and pretended to be fast asleep even when she would in fact be wide awake. She knew how her father forced himself on her mother even when she had infections - which she had too often - and when just relieving herself was a painful task that she had to cut down her water intake. She knew how her father clamped her mother's mouth when she shrieked in pain. Mahi despised her father and pitied her mother. This woman who had birthed her and her younger brother and who had silently borne such torments just for the sake of her children certainly deserved better. Mahi promised that one day she will earn enough to move her mother and herself out of the constant suffocation and humiliation. 

Mahi was a high school student. Bright and dedicated but when she asked her father to pay for her maths tution he said he had no money to spend on such luxuries. That wasn't true. He was not rich but he wasn't too poor to spare a thousand rupees for Mahi's tution. He did after all spend quiet an amount on his daily drink and smoke - more than five thousand a month, when Mahi calculated. Angry and disappointed Mahi approached her uncle - her mother's brother, for assistance with her tution fee. The brother who would not rescue his sister from the abusive marriage did agree to pay for Mahi's tution and that made the mother and daughter eternally grateful to him. Mahi's tution center was at a distance of two kilometres from her house. She walked to and fro the tution center as she did from her school that was about five kilometres away. At night her mother massaged her aching legs with warm mustard oil. This hour when her younger brother would have slept fast and her father was yet to come home was her favorite time of the day. This is when she talked her heart's talk with her mother. She told her mother of the boys she liked and the boys who liked her. And the those her friends liked. Mahi's mother listened without interrupting and without judging. Mahi sometimes wondered if her mother was a good non judgemental listener by nature or was it the years of subjugation that her left her bereft of opinions or of at least the willingness to express them. Mahi liked to believe the former - that her mother was a good listener, a non judgemental woman, with an ability to understand and empathise.

As far as Mahi was concerned her mother possessed every virtue a human possibly can. If ever she perceived a hint of crassness in her behaviour it was, Mahi believed, because she never got opportunities that refined and honed people's personality. One night as Mahi's mother rubbed the warm mustard oil in her strained calve muscle Mahi asked her if she had ever loved anyone. 'Once, when I was a young girl', her mother replied casually. Mahi hadn't been expecting this. It was hard to imagine her mother - this woman with dark circles under her eyes and dry unhappy skin - as a young girl in love. 'Did he love you too?' Mahi asked. 'Yes,' replied her mother said casually as she swept mustard oil off the curved walls of the steel katori with her chapped fingers. 'So why did you not marry him?' Mahi asked. She felt she had laid hand on a treasure that had been lying untouched within an arms reach all her life. ' He was from another community; your uncles would have killed us both,' Mahi found that difficult to believe. They were incapable of uttering a word to Mahi's father. They knew how he abused their sister.

Once he had slapped her during a family function and none of the two brothers had not said a word to their brother in law. Infact afterwards, the three of them had gone to the terrace and opened the bottle of an expensive wine one of the uncles had brought. They had drunk late into the night and Mahi's father had returned to their room past after midnight and had tried to force himself upon Mahi's mother. Mahi knew because in the process - drunk beyond his senses- her father had fallen flat on his face. His heavy body had created such a thud against the floor that Mahi had woken up startled. 

'Don't you get into any sort of mess,' Mahi's mother said as she pulled down the shalwar over her calve. 

'I shouldn't fall in love you mean,' Mahi said amused. 

'Yes, exactly,' her mother replied looking Mahi in the eye. 

'Aray Amma!' Mahi said throwing her hands around her mother's neck and allowing her head to fall on her lap, 'I don't even have time for all this.' Then she yawned and her mother stroked her to sleep. In the morning Mahi woke up to utter chaos. She could hear wail. Not one or two but many women wailing together. Mahi panicked. Her heart began to beat so hard she felt it would burst out of her rib cage. What had happened? Where was her mother? She ran out of the room, barefoot and followed the earth rendering wail. They were coming from the adjoining house of her maternal uncle - the one who had paid her tution fees. As she approached closer she could distinctly make out her mother shrieking. Has uncle died? Surely that must be the case. For what else would her mother shriek her lungs out? As she stepped into her uncles house clueless neighbours had begun to gather too. The sounds were from the first floor. Mahi rushed, taking two steps at a time and the sight that greeted her upon landing almost threw her back over the stairs. He nineteen year old cousin, Dhruv, her uncle's only son was hanging lifeless by the ceiling fan of his room. 

The police arrived in due time. They cut off the dupatta that Dhruv had used to hang himself and brought down his body. A suicide note was discovered in his pocket. It turned out the Dhruv had loved a girl of a lower caste who despite having a soft corner for Dhruv had refused to carry the relationship further. She had been well aware of her social class. She knew she would never be accepted in Dhruv's family as one of their own. For several months now Dhruv had been convincing her to elope with him but her persistent refusal defeated Dhruv and dejected he taken the extreme step.

 'Same story has repeated itself after two decades, then the boy had been lower caste and the father of this boy had harassed the poor fellow so much he had taken his own life,' said an old neighbour to another. Mahi hooked herself to their conversation and what she came to know once again shook the ground beneath her feet. 

Mahi came to know that the man her mother had loved had been driven to suicide by her uncle. Mahi felt unhinged. All of it was too much for her to take so she went back to her own house even before the police had taken away the dead body of her beloved cousin and closed herself in her room. No one came asking for her. The sun went up then down and the window through which blazing sunlight had poured in during the day was now pitch black. Outside the closed doors of her room there was endless commotion. She could hear snippets of angry conversation - choti jaat, haramzadi, post mortem. She felt terribly guilty for not being by her mother's side in her hour of grief. Dhruv had been like a son to her. His death and more so the manner of his death would leave Mahi's mother scarred for life. 

Mahi knew the girl who was now being held guilty for the great misfortune that had befallen the family. Kirti lived in the same neighbourhood and belonged to a lower caste. She had been right - even if they had eloped and gotten married the family would have never accepted her as one of their own. So why did she let the affair blossom? Didn't she know that from day one? Of course she did. Perhaps it's right what the neighbourhood women said about her. She was greedy - for the expensive gifts that Dhruv showered on her and the fun places - the malls and the parks he took her to. On more than one occassion Dhruv had been caught stealing money from his father's safe. He didn't say what he needed money for but everyone knew where it was going. Kirti's younger sister had recently been admitted to a private school. Kirti had used and disposed Dhruv. Dhruv's mother used to call Kirti a witch. She had been right. Kirti is indeed a witch who has devoured the beloved young son the family. Sixteen year old Mahi felt as if every cell in her body would rapture with the anger that seethed within her. If she could have it her way she would chop Kirti to pieces.

She felt a nausea rise up within her. It made her double over and retch painfully but nothing came out. She hadn't eaten a morsel the entire day. So Mahi broke her self imposed exile and took out a packet of bread from the fridge. She didn't bother to toast or roast it in ghee. Instead she devoured four pieces straight from the packet, easing them down with the help of water. She asked the group of angry haggard looking male relatives if the post mortem had been done. It had been done, the body was on its way back home and the cremation would be done the next afternoon. Mahi went back to her room. Her nausea had subsided and she contemplated if she should go and be with her mother who was in Dhruv's house. She must be hungry too.

So Mahi roasted some bread, made a cup of tea and went to her mother. Her mother's appearance shocked her. Her eyes had become red and swollen with crying. Her hair was scattered around her face which apart from the eyes looked as if it belonged to a dead person. Dhruv's mother on the other hand looked stoic and composed. She was squatting on the floor in a corner of the room resting her hands on her knees in a way that made her look like a meditating sage. The room was full of women - all relatives and neighbours in different stages of grief, wrath and excitement. Surprisingly Mahi no longer felt the kind of anger she had felt a little while ago. Hearing the kind of things women were speaking about Kirti she infact felt pity for her. 

Mahi asked her mother to eat something. Her mother refused, so Mahi broke the bread and dipped it into the tea fed her mother morsel by morsel. Then she settled her hair, retying them with the band that had come loose and applied some moisturiser on her mother's lips that had started to bleed out due to dehydration. Then she placed her mothers head on her shoulders and if it was possible she would have cradled her in her arms and patted her to sleep. She looked at Dhruv's mother and wondered how Dhruv did not think of her before taking such an extreme step. Wasn't it his responsibilty to be there for his mother? To not cause her such unbound grief? Mahi looked at her mother and wondered how much she could be held responsible for the suicide if the man she loved but could not marry. Not at all! Then how was Dhruv's death Kirti's fault? She felt renewed anger within her but this time it was not for Kirti but Dhruv. How could he have been so overtaken by the love of another woman that he did not think of his mother once? Was it Kirti's fault that Dhruv was dead. Had he no sense of right and wrong, did he not realise the impact his step would have on his parents? Did he have no control over his emotions? What an irresponsible fool he has been! Mahi wanted to shut up the women who did not seem to get tired of loading blame and vices upon Kirti. 

The cremation took place the next day. When Mahi met her uncle for the first time after he had lit his son's pyre what she saw in his eyes wasn't grief but rage. And whenever he talked his nostrils quivered. His appearance was so deshelved he looked like a mad man. Mahi was too scared to talk to him and the over all atmosphere was so toxic that once again Mahi went to her house and confined herself to her room. She had spent the previous night looking after Dhruv's and her own mother. Now she felt emotionally and physically exhausted. Also the funeral had brought about a feeling of closure and to her own surprise Mahi now felt less aggrieved than she had felt in the last twenty six hours. She closed her eyes and soon sleep overtook her. When she woke up she couldn't at first tell what time it was or how late ng she had been asleep. There was commotion outside her house but it was different from the kind of commotion that had been ongoing since yesterday. Mahi checked the time, it was late evening. She unlocked the room and stepped outside. And the sight that met her eyes once again turned her world up side down. There was police in the outer room and they were taking away Mahi's mother in cuffs. Mahi rushed to her mother. 

'What is happening here?' she asked feeling giddy. 

'We have done what had to be done. Do not be sorry. Take care of your brother,'

Mahi understood the meaning of 'we' when she stepped outside her house and saw her father, her grown up cousins, her two uncles and three aunts including Dhruv's mother in handcuffs. They were being pushed into police jeeps. Shocked and perplexed Mahi fell on her knees. Her mother tried to rush towards her but the police women forcefully aborted the attempt. Soon the jeeps with Mahi's entire family were gone. There were other relatives and neighbours but no one even pretended to have any concern for Mahi. When she felt a hand on her shoulders and turned around she saw her thirteen year old brother looking at her with tears brimming in his eyes. He helped Mahi to her feet and the two of them walked inside. 

'What is happening Saurav? Tell me this isn't real!'

'This is real Didi. See this,' he handed over his phone to Mahi.

Mahi tapped the play button and a video started to play. In the video she saw Kirti being dragged out of her house. The person who was dragging Kirti by the hair was Mahi's father. 

'When did this happen?' Mahi asked, as her blood curdled.

'In the afternoon today,' Saurav replied.

Mahi saw her father drag out Kirti from her humble dewelling even as Kirti's pleading parents appeared in the background. The next shot showed Kirti in a room that looked familiar to Mahi. When Mahi racked her brain she remembered that it was the store room of her second uncle's house. Here Mahi's mother and Dhruv's mother could be seen chopping off Kirti's hair with a trimmer. Mahi froze. She couldn't believe her mother had indulged in such a disgraceful act. But what came next altered Mahi forever. She saw her father and her two uncles rape Kirti one by one while her mother and her aunts looked on as if their men folk were performing a most ordinary daily task. Not once did a shadow came over her mother's expressions. Once the men were done with Kirti the women of the household took the reins Kirti's humiliation in their own hands. They beat Kirti up with whatever they could lay their hands on, including a rubber tyre, slippers and a hose pipe. At last a garland of shoes was put around Kirti's neck, her face was blackened with ink and she was paraded in the main street of their locality. The reel ended with her mother throwing a nasty smile at Dhruv's mother. 

Mahi fainted. 

Saurav sprinkled water on her face and brought her back to consciousness. 

'Don't worry didi. Everyone will get bail,' he said.

'Saurav, would you have done the same in Daddy's place,' Mahi asked her brother.

'I think this is what anyone would do to the person responsible for the death of a close relative. How else do you keep these lowly people in their place?' Saurav replied matter of factly.

Without a word Mahi went into the kitchen and fixed herself a meal. She ate the food and opened her books.

'You are studying, even in this kind of situation,' Saurav asked angrily. 

'I am, if you have a problem with that you go and join the rest of our family behind bars,' Mahi replied angrily.

Mahi's anger knew no bounds. She uncapped a pen a started doing a maths problem, even as her heart hit against her rib cage and her eyes welled up with tears. She wasn't crying forher mother, or Dhruv or even Kirti. She was crying over her own helplessness. 'One day', she said to herself, 'one day very soon, I will leave this place and go to a place where my family will never be able to find me.' 

And unlike her previous determination to take her mother with her, Mahi would now go alone. Her mother had become an integral part of the very rot that Mahi had wanted to take her away from. It was no longer possible to save her.