Life Less Ordinary, A

lives.

Until the age of four I lived somewhere in Jammu and Kashmir with my father and mother, my brothers and my sister. Baba worked there. It was a beautiful place with tall, high mountains and many different kinds of flowers. From there Baba took us to Murshidabad. After we had been there a while, Baba was transferred to Dalhousie and we went to live there. Dalhousie reminded me a lot of Jammu and Kashmir. Snow would fall from the sky, the snowflakes swirling around like a swarm of bees, and would settle gently on the ground. And when it rained, it was impossible to leave the house, so we would just play inside, or we’d watch the rain falling from our windows. We loved Dalhousie and we stayed there for quite a long time. We’d go out walking every day. We were so happy, just looking at all the flowers on the hillsides. We played all sorts of games among the flowers, and sometimes, a rainbow would arch across the mountains, filling my heart with joy.

We wept when Baba took us to Murshidabad again, where my elder uncle, our Jetha, lived. Baba rented a house for us, and sent us children to school. Then he left us and went off to his job again. Every month he would send money home to cover our household expenses. At first, the money would arrive regularly but then, gradually, there were gaps of several months. Ma found it very difficult to make do: how could she not? After a while, even his letters began to arrive after long gaps. Ma wrote letter upon letter to him but there was never any response. Baba was so far away that Ma could not even go there. She was very worried but despite all her difficulties, she did not let us stop studying.

Several years passed before Baba came home again. We were so happy to see him. But, after a month or two, he was gone again. For a short while, he sent home money regularly, but then the same old pattern started again. Ma was so angry and frustrated that she often took it out on us. She asked our Jetha for help, but he was having a difficult enough time making ends meet for his own family. Meanwhile Didi, my elder sister, was growing up and that was another worry on Ma’s head. Ma asked Baba’s friends for help but none of them was in a position to take on the burden of another family. Ma also thought of taking up a job, but that would have meant going out of the house, which she had never done. And after all, what work could she do? Another of her worries was: what would people say? But worrying about what people will say does not help to fill on empty stomach, does it?

Then, one day, without any warning, Baba turned up. Ma burst into tears when she saw him. And all of us began to cry too. My Jetha and others in the neighbourhood tried hard to explain to Baba that going off like this was not the right thing to do, but he did not seem to be convinced. He just left Ma and went off again. She was in a terrible state. I was a little better off than her because at least I had some friends, especially Tutul and Dolly, who I could always talk to and who loved me a lot.

A short while after Baba left this time, he wrote us a letter to say that he’d soon be retiring and coming back home. We were overjoyed, but when Baba eventually came home, he did not seem at all happy to have retired. He would not speak to us or to Ma properly, and he’d lose his temper at the smallest things. We were a little frightened of him and now we began to keep out of his way – whenever we saw him coming, we would creep away.

Didi was growing up, and Ma could not stop worrying about her. One day my younger uncle from Karimpur wrote to say that he had found a possible match for her. As soon as he read Chacha’s letter, Baba quickly packed a few things, took my sister and, without saying anything to anyone, left for Karimpur. Ma was really upset. She kept saying she couldn’t live like this any more. When, she asked God, would she have peace in her life? Suddenly, it all became too much for her, and one day, with grief in her heart and my little brother in her arms, she just walked away from home.

At first, we thought she’d just gone to the market as usual. But when she didn’t return even after a couple of days, we realized that something was amiss and all of us began to cry. Our Jetha, who lived nearby, tried to reassure us saying that perhaps she had gone to visit her brother, and would be back soon. Baba was in Karimpur when she left and, four days later, when he came back, he asked us what she had said before leaving. We told him she had said she was going to the market. He then went to her brother’s house in search of her but she wasn’t there. He searched every place where she could have possibly gone, but there was no trace of her. He was completely at a loss – he’d looked everywhere and was now really worried because there was nowhere else to look.

Finally, someone suggested that he should consult a gunivaid and see if he could help. And so Baba set off in that direction. He kept doing this: someone would suggest one thing and he’d go off and do that, and someone else would suggest something else and he would turn around and do that. But he must have known – just as all the people in our neighbourhood had perhaps guessed – why she had left. And everyone blamed him, saying she wouldn’t have left if it had just been a question of a little bickering. These things upset us a lot but there was not much we could do. Baba was also unhappy. These nagging worries had changed him a lot. He was also very concerned about Didi. How could a grown girl be kept at home once the mother had gone? Didi wasn’t even that old – just fifteen or so. But Baba wasn’t willing to wait, and he just married her off so that no one would have anything left to say.

It was only after Didi went away, that we realized how difficult things could be without a mother. When the moment had come for Didi to leave, she’d cried, saying that if Ma had not gone, we wouldn’t have had to shoulder this burden. You’re sending me off, she told Baba, but now the responsibility of looking after these young children will be yours. They have no one else to call their own. Didi left and our problems began in earnest. Baba never stayed at home. Sometimes he would give us money and tell us to get ourselves something to eat. But he would still say: whatever you do, don’t forget to study.

That was why, in the midst of all this hardship and trouble we never stopped going to school. I had a good friend in school, whose mother often called me home and gave me something to eat, and even asked me to stay with them. Our school headmaster was also very kind to me. He gave me notebooks and pencils and, after Ma left, and our tuitions stopped, he got his daughter to give me free tuitions.

I loved school as much as I hated home. I never wanted to go home – there was no one there who appreciated my work in the same way as my teachers at school, so there was no incentive for me to go back. The days when there was no school stretched out forever, and I missed Ma and Didi terribly, so whenever I got the chance, I’d run off to play with my friends. I used to love playing games with them! We played kit-kit, lukochuri, rumalchuri and skipped to our hearts’ content and the hours would just melt away.

I never missed a day of school, and often, people did not know that I’d come to school without having eaten a thing. I was too scared of Baba to tell him there was no food. One day a friend of mine came to our house to fetch me so we could go to school together. I quickly got ready to go. My friend told me I should eat something before we left and I blurted out that there was nothing in the house to eat. Baba heard this. I didn’t know he was at home, else I would not have said anything. That day, when I came home from school, he beat me so badly that it was three days before I could get up and many more before I felt able to go back to school again. My teachers and friends came to ask after me.

As soon as my Dada was a little older, he decided he could not live with Baba and so he went to stay with Pishi-ma, my aunt. Once he got there, he realized that she wasn’t too well off either, and was only just managing to scrape by herself. At home now there was only Baba, myself and my younger brother. Our Jetha thought the best way to put our family back together again was to get Baba to remarry. When he first suggested this, Baba resisted, but very soon he came around to the idea.

My stepmother never listened to anything Baba said. She never fed us on time, she often beat us without reason, and she’d cook up tales about us and tell Baba and we’d get beaten by him as well. Baba was not willing to listen to anything we had to say, and there were times when he would refuse even to look at us. There was nothing we could do. When Jetha realized what was going on, he called Baba and explained to him that before he punished the children he should at least try to find out whether they were at fault. After being told this, Baba began to change. He began to realize that not everything our stepmother told him about us was true. But then, the moment he began to question her, things became much worse at home. Whenever things became unbearable, he would take her to her brother’s home and leave her there. There her father and brother often tried to reason with her, but the moment she came back to our home, everything was the same again. She would not feed us properly, nor treat us well. Things got so bad that sometimes we – and even Baba – were forced to try and cook our own meals. Since we were still so small, we would sometimes burn our fingers in the process. While all this was going on, Baba started something – a business perhaps – that took him away from home for two, three days at a stretch, but the moment he returned he’d have to listen to our tales of woe about not being properly fed or looked after.

Days and weeks and months went by like this, and then suddenly one day, Baba announced that he had to go to Dhanbad for an interview for a driver’s job. He told Jetha he was going and he came back only a month later. He was only at home a few days before he was off again, leaving us in Jetha’s care. And this time he was away for many months. He didn’t send us any money either and we were in real difficulty. He turned up out of the blue one day and took us both, and our mother to Dhanbad where he’d been given a place to stay. My brother and I were sent back to school. He did not bother to buy us books and notebooks, but we managed somehow. I loved school and worked hard. Perhaps that is why I had so many well-wishers there. I don’t quite know how Baba spent the money he earned, but I do know that he used to drink, and that this had become much worse after my real Ma left.

We’d been in Dhanbad only a few days when Baba got a job in a factory in Durgapur. So he left us with a friend who was like a sister to him and went off to Durgapur. Even though she wasn’t a blood relation, she was really good to us, but when the money Baba had left with her for our expenses ran out, she became very worried. What would she do now? After a lot of thought she decided it would be best to send my brother and me to her father, and to send my new Ma to her brother. By the time she made this decision, Kali Puja had come round. On Puja night, everyone wore new, colourful clothes to celebrate and there was a general atmosphere of festivity. But not for us. My brother and I sat on our doorstep and watched all this and we cried.

I was really angry with Baba. Because of him we had to listen to all sorts of things from people. They would say things like: even though you have parents, you my as well be orphans; and your father works somewhere far away, and that’s why you are in this state,… and if you don’t have a mother, you have no one!

Baba came back a few days after Kali Puja. It was the middle of the night. We were all asleep but when we heard his voice we woke up with a start. He called us to him and gave us the good news that Ma had returned and it made us so happy. I asked him again and again where she was and he said that if you both want to meet her you will have to come with me now. He then told our new Ma a lie. He said, I am going to your father’s house. Tomorrow morning, take the train and join me there. I don’t want to delay things any further right now. There are also some people I owe money to. He added, if they see me they will demand to be paid and I don’t have any money so it’s best to leave quietly. He lied to her like this and took us with him and left. When we got to Durgapur we found that the woman Baba was calling our mother was another mother altogether. I said to my brother, How much more do you think we will have to bear? and he began to cry. Our third mother could not bear to see him cry so she gathered him in her arms and began to soothe him. That made me think that perhaps we would get love from her, but the reality that unfolded was quite different.

Baba would not let our third mother out of the house: she wasn’t even allowed to go to the tap to fetch water. If water was needed, we were sent out for it. And we were so frightened of Baba that we did not dare say anything. The people in our neighbourhood felt very sorry for us but they too could not do anything. This mother’s sister, that is, our aunt, was a very simple and loving woman. She cared for us a lot. Sometimes she would take us to her home but Baba did not like that. She tried to tell her sister to treat us better, but our third ma said, What can I do? I’m only following their father’s wishes. We used to think that she too did not like her sister taking us away to her home.

Baba brought us to Durgapur but he did not say a word about us starting school again. I had become so used to going to school that once all the household chores were done, I would go off anyway with other children from our neighbourhood. But Baba was not happy about this. One day one of the girls from our neighbourhood saw me standing at the edge of our road and crying. She told Baba. He came and asked me why I was crying and through my sobs I told him that I was really missing Ma and asked why he had lied to us about her having come back. This ma was not our real ma…. Baba’s eye suddenly fell on the coin I was clutching in my hand and he asked me what it was. I had to tell him then that it was the ten paisa coin Ma had pressed into my palm the day she left and every time I saw it I remembered Ma.

Baba felt very bad at this. Gently, he asked me what my brother and I wanted. I said I want to study. A few days after this Baba sent me to Jetha’s house, saying I should stay there and that way I could carry on with my studies as well. But he never once considered that Jetha did not have a lot of money to spare, that his health was not particularly good, and that it would be unfair to impose this burden on him. Once there, I realized there was no way I could carry on studying, so I decided to at least seek out my old school friends. First, I went to see Tutul. She had just come back from school and was really happy to see me. I used to call her mother Kaki-ma and when she saw me, she welcomed me and quickly cooked some food for the two of us. Kaki-ma’s kindness reminded me of my own mother and my hand stilled while eating. When Kaki-ma asked if anything was the matter, I told her that had my mother been there, she too would have fed me with the same care and love. Kaki-ma merely said, ‘Yes, child, but what is to be done? It’s your fate to not have a mother even while you do have one.’

After eating Tutul and I started chatting and then we went off to meet our other friend, Dolly. Dolly was a beautiful Brahmin girl and our fathers knew each other. One day, when Dolly’s father asked me about Baba, I gave him all the news and also told him everything about myself. Dolly’s Baba talked to the school headmaster who knew me because I had been a student in his school. I was really happy when he told me to start coming to school from the next day. And so I started at school again.

But now another problem came up. Because I was now living in Jetha’s house, my third ma found it really difficult to cope with all the household tasks. And one day Baba and she arrived at Jetha’s house to take me away. Jetha refused to let me go, saying, She’s going to school and doing so well, I will not let her go away. But Baba insisted and said all kinds of terrible things to him. In the end, Jetha gave in but he told them that if they made me unhappy there was no way they would get any happiness themselves.

They took me away from Jetha’s house and once again my studies stopped. Now, I thought of only two things: whether I was asleep or awake, my thoughts would constantly turn to my studies and my mother. I had heard that excess of worry makes people ill and, sure enough, that happened to me. Baba took me to a hospital but the doctors were unable to diagnose my illness. This worried Baba and he called in another doctor. I told the doctor everything that had been worrying me and he was very angry with Baba, and scolded him.

Gradually I got better. One day, while I was still in hospital, I woke in the morning to find my bedsheets wet with blood. I was frightened and I began to cry. The nurse heard me and came to find out what was wrong, but I was so scared I could not say anything to her. But then she noticed the sheet and