...she had spent the day tilling the soil, something she has done for yonks. And she was on her way back home. She dreaded the journey. She dreaded her home. Especially her home. The sodden heat was warm on her face. Her hopelessly sad eyes sparkled in the evening glow as her wailing son gripped tightly on her back with his tiny little fists. Her face was sun-burnt. A sign that she works from dawn-to-dusk, a sign that if there was an option, her face would be peppered with make up, but her only option is to lay her bare self in the beating sun to see her children through school, to feed her tyrant husband. She delicately put her foot in front of another, slowly. Her cracked feet slapping dust on her ankles. Beads of sweat crawling down her face. One hand clutching a cluster of bananas with a bundle of dried sticks balancing off her head. Her son, that was tied by a tattered piece of cloth on her back, belched incessantly, loud enough to send the birds chirping off trees. She was alone in that path she braved daily. Her sons wailing was the only sound she heard. She was nearing her home. She could see it take shape, from a distance. It sat shyly across the plains. It is not a mansion. It is not a storeyed piece of architecture. It is a simple house. A patch of dried glass is now fully visible, at least to her. It feels like a graveyard, always. Soundless. And from where she had reached, she could see a burly of a figure planted in the doorway. Her husband. Her domestic tyrant. A little plume of smoke escaped from his mouth. He smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish. And as she neared, a little wind blowing through dried grass like a playful ghost, she knew what lay before her. She knew what that smoking chimney will do to her, what he has always done to her. She knew that he will follow her in that little rat hole and he will till and plough her like she has been doing the whole day; beating her. He has always beaten her. Her face harboured an ugly scar that cuts across her left cheek. Thanks to his hands. All this collected at the base of her heart and a slight whimper escaped her throat. The wailing on her back had eased off. And a new wailing awaited her, in that grass-thatched tattered thing. Her daily dose of beating. But tomorrow, when the sun rolls up in the sky, when a smell of a new day is fresh and crisp, when she collects her materials to use in the garden, when she had thrown her son over her back, when she had limped away from her home and fully out of sight, she will never come back.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 17:43:06 +0000
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