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, welcome 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 which 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; he was so strong because he effortlessly slapped and kicked my mom. How stupid I have been? How stupid? The stupid me was enlightened by her.
Original Copyright © Sukanya Pon
Serial Fictions 