It was the fourteenth day since the sudden death of that childless, ‘barren’ woman’s thirty-eight year old husband.
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After her bath as she wiped herself with her wrung petticoat she glanced at the mirror. She wiped its dust off with her moist hands.
She started at the sight of this stranger. Probably weeks, months, years had passed since she saw herself in the mirror.
When was the last time ? Before her marriage, maybe, in the fifth standard, when she would tie a ribbon in her hair for school. Today, it was like looking in the mirror for the first time. When she braided her hair, her eyes would see only the fingers working at her hair; while wearing ear-rings she would only see her ears. Today, she pieced together all these scattered images and recognized her face, for the first time. After a long period .
The mirror was dusty and small. She lifted herself on her toes and slowly removed the cloth from her wet body. She had never seen herself naked below the neck in the mirror before. Suddenly, she felt the ground beneath her turning into quicksand, pulling her in by the feet. She held her head in her hands and shut her eyes slowly giving in to the sand. She let herself sink… further and further down, until the grains of sand touched her lips, and her heart leapt out of her body. Finally, she collected herself, took a deep breath, and felt her heart beating under her left breast. She pulled out of the quicksand, felt the ground firm beneath her feet once more, and released her breast. Her quivering fingertips were now caressing the various old and new wounds on both sides of her breasts. There were dark, black scars and the dried flakes of skin leaving behind tiny pits on its tender skin. The newest wound was fifteen days old, when her husband, as was his habit after sex, had taken the last drag of his bidi and stubbed it out on her left breast. She had screamed in pain, while he showed his tobacco-stained teeth in a grotesque smile. Before she
could wrench herself away the stub had burned itself into her skin. She whimpered in pain and twisted his right arm, but he only laughed louder. To scar her with his bidi or cigarette when and where he pleased was his favourite passtime.
“Let leprosy strike your body; let no one offer you water in your dying breath” the curses would rain from her mouth but he would have turned his back on her, already snoring. The whole room would echo his snores. Tears would well up her eyes. There was no difference between his laughter and his snores.
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And on the day of the Byculla local train disaster, when his mangled body was brought home she couldn’t believe her eyes. The raindrops seeping through the ceiling were splattering on his lifeless body. His frayed, colourless shirt was hanging on a peg in one corner of the room. His booming snores were still trapped in the walls. Last night’s fresh burn on her breast was now throbbing with pain. All the wounds in her body seemed to come to life now. She started bawling violently not knowing whether she was crying for her wounds or at the death of her husband.
Amidst the dripping rain and her flowing tears she didn’t know when the body was taken away. She took off her thin one liner black mangalsutra and kept it aside. After four days she started going for work.
On returning from work, the room seemed vast and empty. The dreams which had populated it in the past, the sound of tiny knees crawling along the rough floor, the memories attached to the things scattered around the room, now hid in its corners and made it appear possessed. This very room had sometimes felt too small for the two of them, when they would collide into each other like a crowd or shun each other. Now even her days felt longer. She would return from work and swab the floor incessantly but a peculiar smell seemed to have stuck to it like eternity and would not let go. Exhausted, she would lie on the cot at night, and the trapped snores would descend from the walls and the ceiling and lie down beside her, her husband’s merciless laughter would seep through the roof like pouring raindrops. A fresh wound would burn her breast like a jet of boiling water, and she would wake up with a start.
She started keeping aside all her husband’s things out of her sight. The bottle of cheap country liqour was put outside the door and the shirt hanging on the peg was thrown under the cot with all the other clothes. The old mirror which had been put away in a corner of the room, was taken out and hung on the peg. Now she would frequently catch herself in it, even if she did not intend to.
She looked in the mirror as she felt the wound on her breast . Slowly she peeled off the black dried skin. Glistening drops of blood started brimming from the wound. She had mistakenly thought that her old wounds had dried, but in fact they had still not healed. She soaked the blood into the wet petticoat, covered the mirror with it and moved away.
Now fully clothed, she saw tiny cockroaches crawling on to his toothbrush, which had been lying on a crevice of the broken window for fourteen days. Close to it was the empty packet of cigarettes. As she was crumpling it to throw away she noticed the last cigarette in the box.
She lit the cigarette and took one drag of it, imitating her husband. One more drag. And then another. Like a woman possessed, she stubbed the dwindling piece of cigarette into her stomach. As the burning ashes touched the soft skin of her stomach she let out a sharp cry that filled the room and reached the ceiling. Tears were brimming in her eyes. Suddenly the sorrow welled up in her and she burst into hopeless tears.
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After a while, when she had cried out her pain, she grew silent. She glanced at the cot through blurred eyes. The foggy image of her husband was sitting there, shaking his legs, the grotesque smile on his face clear as a shiny mirror…
Translated by -- menaka rao & garima bhatia
( Published in '' Hindi '' : January - March 2009 )
( Published in '' Hindi '' : January - March 2009 )
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