Raja’s voice
“Chembi, come tomorrow.”
“Chembi, today evening by five.”
“Chembi, don’t forget.”
Chembi, is the most wanted, the most used, and the most familiar name in my village. Not because more people have the same name. It is because of her, the woman she is.
What doesn’t she know? She knows everything, everything a woman needs to know when she wants to reside in our village.
The land where the Paddy fields in a row welcomes everyone by uniformly dancing to the rhythm of the air as same as a neatly organized parade. It’s a delight to watch. The narrow streams across the fields lead us to the small pond present amid the village. With just a hundred and three homes the beautiful land is united by nature and divided by people.
In Chinna Kulam, the name Chembi is a household name. She is called for everything, from the birth of a child to the death of a person. She will be welcomed in all the homes. She is the only one who is allowed into the nooks and corners of some other’s home. From bathrooms to bedrooms.
I haven’t seen her resting for a while in these twenty-four years of my life. Her day starts before the sun sees this world and ends after the moon starts to pack things up. It’s not because she wanted to, it’s not because she liked it, it is only because she was born into and was married to a family that she doesn’t deserve.
She presents herself in different forms, from a walking tiffin centre in the nearby town to a house help, sometimes a farmer on someone’s farmland, everything and anything she is asked for.
She is the most trustable person, they think. An underpaid woman, who doesn’t ask for more. So obviously she is the first choice for many.
Chembi my mom, I have never seen her body gain weight, is it because she is malnourished or because of the work she does? I don’t have any idea. The woman who has raised me and my family single-handedly for more than a decade.
Whereas her husband stays two streets away as the husband of another woman half his age. But you can neither see him in our home nor neither in his other young wife’s home. He can be seen majorly in the streets in the early morning and as the sun sets his valuable presence spike the profit of the liquor shop. And in the meantime, he works. If someone asks me about his profession, I can’t say one. My memories of him are very limited, all I have seen him is picking up a fight wherever he goes. If he stands in a tea shop it doesn’t mean he is sipping a cup of tea instead he is in the process of provoking someone into a fight. He needs a meal as a fight. A dad of seven children. An alcoholic man an abuser and whatnot. He is a whole package of what a man shouldn’t be.
But he was once my role model, like most kids who believe their father blindly, I too did that, but for a little span of my life. I thought he was powerful and so strong that he effortlessly slapped and kicked my mom. How stupid I have been? How stupid? The stupid me was enlightened by her.
By Chembi, my mom.
Until that day, I didn’t know within that five-foot one-inch forty kg woman, there lived a superhuman. I have seen her squeezing herself into a corner, in the two hundred square feet home whenever there is an argument between them. I have witnessed every brutality against her. In return, I have seen her shouting and yelling at him in his absence. As soon as he leaves the home, the vessel flies as though it has wings. But I witnessed a different mother. She didn’t tolerate it on that Sunday eve.
I have always thought why was it a Sunday, why was it a summer holiday? That day shouldn’t have existed but it did.
we returned from the field earlier. When time permitted, we occupied the streets, which was the place of happiness for me, Valli, and a few neighbouring friends. We started playing hide and seek in the evening and continued even after sunset. My favourite place to hide was the branch of a neem tree. The seed which was sown by a bird once, in the side of the narrow stream of water passing aside my home, was a full-grown tree. My favourite memory of the neem tree was always the stories narrated by my grandfather under its shadows. The neem tree’s history too was part of his story. Easy to climb was the best thing about it. It was kid-friendly tree. We climb on it and taste its fruits; it acts as a swing stand where we trust it completely and it has never disappointed us. But the rope has, as a result, we have practiced swimming in the narrow stream. It too has been a part of my grandfather’s story. His memories of the stream were always pure, he mentions it as a glittering paradise. A glittering paradise that took his last breath and pushed his body to his dream farmland. The form which he aspired to own was his deathbed.
That day as I was sitting on the tree branch hiding in it, I saw my mom running from the start of the street holding the multi-coloured wire bag that she knitted herself. As she neared the home, she threw the bag and entered the home by fetching the broomstick in her hand, and within a fraction of a second, my drunken dad was out in the streets. It was an entertainment show for the neighbors but for me and my sister Valli, it was a painful event that shook our life forever.
The drunken man wasn’t in consciousness, he followed wherever my mom pulled him. She hit him with the broom until the united bundle of straws collapsed. Some tried to pull her off, but she shouted at everyone,
“Have you ever stopped him from hitting me? Look after your lives.” She yelled, wiping the sweat from her face with the saree pallu and then her bald head. She had saved her hair in a temple as a ritual practice. She offered her hair to the deity, in return she asked for her husband’s good health and demanded the deity to change her husband into a good man and a lovable dad. She had her full faith in lord Muruga. She was a fond devotee who used to walk for kilometres to see him every month.
Just 0.5 cm length of hair had sprouted, before that she tried to kill her husband just using the broomstick. I didn’t get down from the tree until the neighbour said to. He assured me nothing would happen, and Mom won’t do anything to me. That’s when I stepped down.
It was that day I turned out to be mom’s child from being dad’s child, not because of love but because of fear, hate, and compulsion. From that day I started believing the narratives about my mom from other people’s perspectives. It was the day my dad permanently disappeared from our home and settled with another woman. The reason for her furiousness towards her husband was silenced and buried in the stories of the people around us. The good Chembi became a bad woman in just a day. People saw me and my sister with a sympathetic lens.
She tolerated the drunk man for years. Till today I don’t know why she endured so much pain with him. But I wasn’t a supportive child back then. I blamed her for everything. From me being insulted by other people to our inability to afford good dresses to the lack of luxury items in the home. I was convinced that my mom was the reason for our broken family. It took me a decade to understand her love for her children. All this happened fourteen years back. The teenage Raja didn’t respect or love Chembi as he should have. My mom’s cry or my sister Valli’s advice nothing changed me. But my Giri did.
Girija. My Giri, once a stranger then my sister’s friend and then to mine. She was the girl who was so excited to see the pond in the village. My first image of her is that of Giri grabbing her yellow silk skirt and raising it to above her knees and dipping her foot into the water and giggling non-stop. She giggled as though someone was tickling her. I didn’t take my eyes off her. As an iron attracted to a magnet, I was pulled towards her by her magic laugh. I went near her and followed the same process as her. We dipped one foot and took it out and laughed and then the other. She giggled for some reason; I giggled looking at her. I played a new dip and laugh game in the pond where I dive effortlessly every day.
“Hey! Fish, Fish, Fish” she shouted over joy.
I spit into the water to bring more fish to the visibility, and as I expected they arrived. But as a crowd, fish too was attracted as me to her. She followed me and by then the game dip and take was replaced by spit and laugh.
We repeated the process several times and were immersed in a different world until a woman came to take her away.
Her mother’s pull indicated how furious she was,
“Why didn’t you tell me? We are searching for you for an hour.” Her mom said to her by lifting her and then kissing her. A mother’s love was in the limelight, and few family members surrounded them. Nine-year-old Giri moved from me into the grip of her mom. She turned several times, I wished it was for me, but it was for the love she had for the waters.
As I was looking at her, a man’s hand tapped my head and switched off my happiness by yelling at me. The eight-year-old me was attacked by a man, whom I didn’t know at all. It was my first experience of the real world around me. He just said two words and pushed me slightly and he went off, his vengeance, his anger everything was shown on his face. I fell on the steps where I was half immersed in the water. That day I encountered discrimination without knowing it would be part of my life forever. I was pointed out by a name that even I didn’t know the meaning of.
My sister the rebel flew to save me, not by lifting me from the water but by throwing a stone at the man who pushed me. The stone travelled for three steps and fell in front of her. I think even a stone knew that a girl from a lower caste would go through a lot if she raised against an upper-caste man. But as a kid, we didn’t know it. The man didn’t see, but his fellow men saw it. I stood from the water and walked towards my sister Valli. Two men walked fiercely towards us. Valli held my hand and we started running, it started there. I started running for my life at eight and still running. Ways might be different, but the pain is the same.
I shouldn’t have asked that question to myself. I should have lived by accepting society as what it is. I should have followed in the footsteps of my dad, grandad everybody. They thought me the same, to accept everything around me as it is. They justified that everything is improving. Some elders advised me “Hey Raja look, we weren’t allowed to enter the pond back then, see you people are diving into it. Things are improving, don’t fight.” An eighty-year-old grandpa advised me once. My answer was I am not fighting, I am telling that I am no less than others.
The rebel in me was growing day by day, Whenever I and my fellow friends were treated as second-class citizens for no reason.
I think that the rebel in me was highlighted in my Giri’s view. When there were so many guys in our village she chose me as her friend.
Giri is an occasional visitor to my village but a person who always stays in my heart, whether she is near to me or not.
Serial Fictions 