By Maya Thakuri
Half of the night had slipped off. Yet his eyes hadn’t got even a wink of sleep. She was willing to switch on the light in his room, but he knew that it would wake up his wife and like as always, she would puke some words of dissatisfaction and force him to put out the light again.
‘On how trivial a thing these womenfolk air their grudge,’ he said to himself.
He was internally quite jealous on seeing his wife sleep so soundly. Not only jealous, he was also amazed by his wife’s behavior. How casually she took every issue! The wife often said, “Why should we be bothered by trivial issues? It’s me that should be more worried. I’m always under compulsion to think on a myriad of issues, yet I let them go in from one ear and out the other. Let others say whatever they want to.”
He was astonished on hearing his wife. He had not been able to take those things lightly, though his wife considered them a trifle.
No matter how much his wife counseled him, he was not ready to pose himself as a eunuch in front of his parents, friends and relatives.
Every day, he was tickled by an intense desire to become a father. His wife said, “I don’t consider myself sterile, what if others think me one! Such a bogus thing hasn’t bothered me to the slightest measure, and can never do.”
Very often, his wife poured her sympathies on him: “Why do you worry about a thing that’s impossible? Let’s accept life as we received it and do our duties honestly. I don’t have any complaint with you, nor do I have any dissatisfaction with my present life. You have already told me you didn’t know this fact. So, it’s unwise for you to stay dejected, considering yourself guilty.”
Oh, how happy he was in the initial few days of their marriage! Everyone in his family—his parents, siblings and all—praised his wife’s looks and manners. There was no reason why they shouldn’t. His wife had made a special place in the heart of each of them by dint of her manners, skills and education.
Time rolled on. They passed the first two years of their life like a pair of shelducks committed in their love for each other. After the second year, his mother started mentioning her desire to a grandchild occasionally during their casual talks.
Even the third years slipped by, but his wife showed no symptoms of expectation. This became an issue of discussion in the family.
Finally, the couple discussed between themselves and decided to consult a gynecologist.
After examining his wife, the gynecologist said, “There’s no issue. You have time. Just wait.”
Relieved, the couple returned home. The third year passed, and so did the fourth. The woman did not conceive.
Not only his family members but also his neighbors started whispering about his wife. Seeds of dissatisfaction were bred inside his mind. Even by urging his wife several times, he took her to various other doctors, but none of them could point any weakness in her. Instead, some of them advised him to examine his conditions once. On hearing the same, he was cross with indignation.
In her attempt to counsel him, the wife at last said, “There’s no harm in getting checked once. If there’s an issue that can be sorted out with medicines. Why shouldn’t we go for that?”
He considered many a thing and ultimately got ready to see a doctor.
After a thorough examination, the doctor gave a piece of information, which made him crestfallen. He felt, all his dreams and ambitions he had cherished hitherto had been crushed to pieces.
“There are numerous people in the world who cannot have children. Yet they are living, and are carrying on their duties. You have no reason to worry,” his wife often said, reading his emotions. At such moments, her words pounded on his heart like a hammer.
He was drowned in a sea of disturbance every second, every moment.
Finally, to get his wish granted, he went into the refuge of saints and hermits, and those who professed tantra.
This evening too, before falling asleep, he convinced his wife about visiting a Sadhu Maharaj the following evening. On hearing his proposal, the wife did not utter a single word. After all, she too had the desire to see her child’s face.
After placing such a proposal before his wife, he slept till late the next morning.
“I’ll return from the office early today. You stay ready,” he said to his wife, before leaving for office.
In the afternoon, upon reaching home back from the office, he went straight into his mother’s room and said, “Mother, today as well, I am going out with Ashmita to visit a friend. It’s his daughter’s birthday and we have been invited. We might be late in returning. So we’ll come back only in the morning.”
“Do whatever you like. But your wife hasn’t come back from school yet. God knows where she went. A lot of work stays piling at home.” His mother had a lot of complaints.
He rushed into his room and reclined on the bed. Soon after, he left the bedroom and entered the drawing room. He was upset with his wife for making it late in returning. He was quite angry too.
Suddenly, his eyes fell on a bit of paper kept on the dressing table slightly held in place by a flower vase. It had something written on it.
He took the paper in hand and sat on the sofa, reading. The paper read:
I accept that according to the structure of our religion and society, I am your wife. It obviously is my duty, therefore, to share all of your joys and sorrows. But the complex of superiority you had as a husband placed your desires on top of everything else. I know, as my husband, you have the social license to use your wife as you will, but in reality, you are a psychopath infected by a complex of superiority as a man. You foisted your will upon me, and wanted to use me like yoked bulls to follow all your instructions. But then, you should have considered that I am not a beast, but a human being—a living one.
You are always frightened by the feeling that society may call you a eunuch, an impotent man. But, if you ask me, you have no reason to be afraid of the society, because it’s we who constitute the society and it reflects our own mentalities.
In the past few years, I looked everything around us from your eyes, from the position of your wife. I listened to every single voice with your ears. I considered your happiness my joy.
I assimilated all your weaknesses and incompleteness into myself. Like the earth, I tolerated every single allegation and acrid word others threw upon me.
And I did all this only for you. For, you were the vermillion on my hair. You accepted me as your wife ritually with votive fire as the witness of our matrimony. And I did all these only for you.
I had considered you the entire sun inside my hands, but you were naturally inclined to subdue the women and keep them under your dominion all the time. So you always tried to use me to prove your masculinity. How long can you deceive yourself with such a mean mentality and delinquent inclination?
In which terms should I consider you a true man? Think it yourself.
In fact, you didn’t have the potency to beget a child. We both knew it. But I kept this fact concealed merely for your sake. The more you writhed in restlessness, more did I sympathize with you. It could even be my love for you, but as I think of it today, I think you were not worthy even of sympathies, let alone love. Maybe you had imagined that enchanted by your seductive words, I would allow myself to be tangled in your snares, but I am not a fool, you know. I am an educated woman.
Sense of inferiority rising out of your inability to become a father had given rise to a terrible crisis within you. It’s possible that you had started considering yourself defeated even in the face of your wife. For that, you had started your initiatives to fulfill your desire at any cost, even through deception and intrigue.
Once, with a dejected face, when you proposed me to go together with you to meet a sadhu for some sort of sorcery, I had categorically told you that I have no faith in such sadhus and monks. But you didn’t listen. You made such a modest request that you seemed to be crying outright in front of me.
Just to respect your sentiments, I went to the residence of the sadhu with you. For two consecutive days, you took me to that young recluse whom you called Swami Maharaj.
In the room where he stayed, three cotton wick lamps had been lit on earthen palas. Sitting in the dim light of the same, he took some rice grains and flowers in his hand, and ran them upon my body, from head to feet many a time. You sat on one corner, and meekly observed whatever the recluse did.
On one occasion, the sadhu smeared some red vermillion on my soles, and started massaging my feet, chanting some mantras. Cross at such a behavior, I pulled back my feet, covered them with my sari, and looked at him in derision. Frankly, that very moment, I saw a capricious smile trying to escape from his lips, and lust rippling manifestly on his eyes.
That evening, while returning home, I had told you very clearly that I didn’t have even a trace of faith in such hypocritical sadhus and recluses. I had also told you that the sadhu had evil intentions toward me. In response, you showed me your anger, telling that I was a woman of suspicious nature.
On the third night too, you asked me to go with you to the same sadhu, but I declined your request. You pleaded in different ways to get me ready. At last you said, “Let’s go for the last time today. After this, lets’ think and decide.”
I was thus compelled to accompany you in visiting him. You had cited me innumerable examples of that sadhu bestowing his blessings upon several childless parents, enabling them to have children. You had added, “I have full faith in Sadhu Maharaj. If he blesses, we’ll surely have a child.”
I really wanted to break your superstitious belief. I was fully confident that a bogus chanting by such a fraud sadhu would not bless any parent with a child. Still, I decided to accompany you, and we both went to visit him.
By the time we reached his residence, it was dusk. He was waiting for us in the same dim light of the diya, keeping some incense, rice grains, vermillion and flowers ready.
As soon as we stepped into his doorsteps, he asked you to go to the market and buy some fruits, milk and sweets. Seeing you get ready to go leaving me behind, I had urged, “I will also come with you.”
“No, no. You stay here with Swami Maharaj. I will come back in a while,” you said and went out, leaving me alone in his room.
As soon as you were out, the sadhu said to me, “You come here; sit on this cushion. I will perform the puja.”
A wick-lamp was burning on the earthen pala. The room was reeking with the smell of incense.
The sadhu placed some flowers and rice grains in his hand, chanted some mantras and turned to me. With the same insidious smile on his lips, he extended his hand toward my body, and ran it from my head to feet repeatedly.
I did not at all like his proximity and his touch.
“You want a child, don’t you? It’s true that everyone derides a childless woman. But you don’t need to worry. Everything will be alright,” he said, making his voice as modest as possible. I sat without a word, waiting for you.
“Come on, drink this arak in one gulp,” he said, extending a glass bowl toward me.
As soon as the sadhu extended that extract toward me, I caught a sense of devastation, and so, I hit forcefully on his hand. The bowl fell off his hand and bumped on the floor, and reverberated for some time.
“You witch! You flung Devi’s prasad on the floor and defiled Her honor. Wait…what I will do…” said the enraged sadhu, advancing toward myself. I ran toward the door to escape his catch. But to my dismay, the door had been locked from without.
Suddenly, I heard the sound of the door being unlatched and it opened. You walked in with milk and fruits in your hand.
“Counsel your wife properly. If she is really intent on getting a child, all this drama is of no use. For now, you go back. If you strike a decision together, come back tomorrow. There are many like you, who come to me for begetting children,” he said to you in an enraged voice.
That night, I told you everything about the evil intention of that hypocrite all along our way back home. But you walked beside me, without uttering a word in response.
I had been shocked on hearing the disgraceful proposal you placed before me that night. In fact, you had wanted me to share bed with a stranger in order to prove your masculinity in front of the society and fulfill your repressed craving.
I have told you earlier as well, that as my husband, you have the socially sanctioned right to use me as your wife. Be it your wife or anyone else, you hold no right to force a woman to sleep with a stranger. If you say you do, you are a broker trading on women’s bodies. And to get his wish fulfilled, a broker doesn’t hesitate to throw not only his wife, but also his mother, into the clutch of other men.
The disgraceful thing you were prepared to do with your own wife is enough to show how low you can drag yourself. Fie on you! You are a disgrace in the name of a man.
Oh, how joyful you appeared before leaving for office this morning! Maybe you had thought I would fully approve of the shameful plan you had plotted. But you were in a big illusion, man!
This evening, when you shall return home with full excitement to take me to the sadhu, this very letter of mine will be there to devastate all your designs.
I know this behavior of mine will hurt you deeply. It’s possible that you will vow to avenge. You may curse me the way you like. But that shall make no difference to me. I shall tear the mask you have put on, and show your real face to the society.
I am confident that I will not lose this war I have initiated.
***
(Translated from Nepali by Mahesh Paudyal)