The drunken man wasn’t in his 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 person’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.
Original Copyright © Sukanya Pon
Serial Fictions 