Prakriti Shrestha
“Excuse me, Ma’am! A journalist is waiting for your interview. I told her that you are busy, but she insisted on meeting you.” The manager standing at her door said, “She says that she’s ready to wait until tomorrow.”
It was already dusk and Maya had to rush home, but she decided to give the journalist some time.
“OK,” she commanded, “Send her in.”
The journalist came in with a small handbag. She took her pen and diary out of the bag and started conversation. She looked smart in navy blue kurta and orange salwar. She asked, “What was your motive behind opening this Girls’ House, Ma’am?”
“To protect and support the girls who have experienced violence in their family,” Maya replied, “So that they can live cheerfully.”
“Could you please tell me about your source of inspiration for this?” she asked again.
Maya smiled and said, “A girl is the source of my inspiration.”
***
“Maya get up. It’s already 7 o’clock, dear.”
Aama’s voice woke her up. She was there cleaning shelves of her room. The weather was cool as it was raining. The combination of pitter-patter of the rain, the cool weather, and the blanket on her bed was making Maya feel sleepy. She just turned to the other side, ignoring her mother’s call.
After a while, Maya again heard her scream, “You lazy girl! Get up. For how long will you sleep? I don’t know what you will do in the future.”
Maya opened her eyes, trying to find in her mind the connection between getting up at 7 o’clock and being able to do something in future. Unwillingly, she pushed her hands up her body in a gesture of sleepiness.
The school was 30 minutes away from home. Every day she had to spend one hour walking to school and back home.
“BOOM!!!”
Someone pushed her from back. She was scared. Then she heard someone laughing. There was Ramesh whom she used to call ‘Dai’ (elder brother). He was the only son of Kaji Sahu, the richest man in the village. He was the apple of his father’s eyes, so was pampered and wicked. Maya tried to ignore him and walked as fast as she could.
Ramesh grabbed her wrist. “You look more beautiful when you are angry.” He said, “See, I have brought some bangles for you.”
He took out a pouch of colorful bangles from his pocket and forced her to wear them round her wrists. Maya managed to free her wrist from his grip and, in aggression, slapped him.
Furiously, Ramesh grabbed Maya’s hair and was about to slap her when he saw other girls, her friends, coming. He immediately freed her. “You will pay for it.” He ground his teeth, but he smiled at her friends and talked to them as if nothing had happened just a while ago.
“Ramesh Dai is so handsome, isn’t he?” Dipa, one of Maya’s friends, said, “I think he loves you, and he is the son of a rich man. I wish he loved me the way he loves you.” Ramesh was already gone.
“Are you mad, Dipa?” answered Rama, “Do only money and a man’s look matter to you? His father’s riches have spoiled him. He has already been to the prison many times. He listens to no one, and does anything he wants.”
Maya was scared hearing what Rama said. Actually, whenever she heard Ramesh’s deep voice she felt as if she was suffocating. She used to feel cringy because he knew her very closely. He used to follow her everywhere.
The whole day she could not concentrate on the topic her teacher was teaching. After tiffin time, there was handwriting competition’s prize distribution progranm. As usual, she had stood first in her class, but she could not be happy as her mind was occupied by Ramesh. That day, when she returned home, she couldn’t help herself but cry. After dinner, she finally gathered some courage to tell Aama about what had happened.
“Shhh!” Mom looked worried as she said, “You haven’t told it to anyone, right?”
Maya shook her head to indicate “NO”. “Don’t tell anyone about it. Talk with him with respect. Don’t even dare to make him angry. He is the only son of our village chief.” Mom said in shaking voice, “Apologize with him tomorrow for what you have done today.” Maya was left speechless. She took her trophy out of her school bag and put it in a corner of the room.
Maya was not going to study further after her SEE exam. Buwa said they didn’t have money enough to send her and her brother to school. As the elder child and being a girl, she had to discontinue her study, her father said. For him, the amount of money spent on his daughter’s education was wastage. Girls run house, and for it they don’t need education. He thought. The skills for cooking, washing and sweeping are enough for girls, he used to say.
Maya was tired of avoiding Ramesh. He was always chasing her like a hyena does to its prey. She spent the whole week without any concentration on her study. One day in tiffin time, she had a stomachache. She saw some blood stain in her skirt and was afraid. Therefore, she asked her teacher for permission to go home early.
Did he poison me? She thought as she remembered one of Ramesh’s friends had forced her to eat a candy. Horrified, she started crying. Hearing her cry came Aama hurriedly and asked her what had happened. Maya told her mother that perhaps she might be going to die.
“Dhat laati (Same on you dumb girl!), you have become a woman now.” Aama said. But Maya had a new cause to worry that she was going to have to live alone in that small devilish shed called chhau goth (menstrual shed) near the jungle for a week. It was going to be her lifelong fate now. Like all other women in the village, including her mother, she would have to stay there for a week every month, to avoid seeing the face of men, and to save herself from committing sin, throughout her life. When she thought about it, she got goose-bumps on her skin all over her body.
“During your period you should not see a man. So, let’s hurry to the shed before Buwa and Bhai return.” Aama said. She packed some clothes, a blanket, some food, and a sickle in a bundle. Maya knew that many wild animals roamed around the shed.
“Don’t sleep without putting the fire out properly. If you feel cold, wrap yourself in this blanket, but do not put on fire. Do you remember that Sita, one of the village women they knew, died few months ago due to suffocation?”
Maya nodded her head. She was trembling inside. The shed was so small that it did not have enough space even for lying prostrate. There was no window, only a small hole to her go inside. It was a thatched hut made of bamboo sticks.
It was already dusk when Aama left her there and returned home. At night she ate the food her Aama had packed for her and lay down to sleep. “How am I going to pass these seven days here? Will I be able to save myself?” thought Maya.
It had already been four days since Maya came to the shed. She was now a little habituated to her new fate. She used to go to work during the day. There was no rest though she was in a new situation. She felt much weak and tired. When night came, then she had to come back to the shed as if she was a domesticated animal, not a human being. Many a time she became depressed. Sometimes she used to pray to God that she would like to be born as a male in her next life because her brother never had to live in the shed. For him, there was no possibility of committing sin.
It was her fifth night in the shed. She was very happy now that just two more days were left before she could go back to her house. She ate roti with tarkaari that Aama had brought for her. The night was dark and desolate. She could hear only the shrill scream of the crickets. She was shivering with cold. She wrapped herself in her blanket and looked at the sky through the small hole of the shed’s roof. She was about to sleep when she heard someone’s footsteps near the shed. She grabbed the sickle and went out to look out what it was. That was a mistake she made. The moment she came out of the shed she was grabbed by someone from behind. It was a strong man’s hold. She tried to free herself pushing that person away with her elbow, but against his huge and strong body she could not even move him a little. She was pushed down to the ground. In the moonlight, she could see his face. It was Ramesh. Her eyes were wide open. Her biggest fear was in front of her. She was more hurt when her own cousin brother was also there to support him. Though he was not her own brother, he was the one whom she worshipped every Tihar on Bhaitika.
Within a while, he grabbed her both hands and made her helpless. The only thing she could do was cry, or scream, which was useless as nobody could hear her in that remote place. Before leaving Ramesh said, “I told you that day that you would pay for the slap.” She was left alone crying with pain in the puddle of her own blood.
Maya was woken up by the sound of her mother’s crying. Her mother was there with food, but when she reached the shed she saw something she could not believe her eyes. She wrapped her daughter with her blanket. She was so shocked that she did not know how to react or what to say. Maya’s whole body was shaking with fear.
After two days, Maya was able to go back her home. But as soon as she was there, her father made an unpleasant remark. He said, “Though we are not rich enough, we have prestige in the society. You’d better not say anything about the incident to anyone.” Her world fell apart. Her father treated her in a very different way than before.
After some days, she started going to school. The change in her behavior and her low performance at her study surprised her teachers. She had become so lonely and helpless that she cried when her teacher showed his concern to her and asked why she had changed so suddenly. She told him very thing. He told her that he knew a child activist in the town who could help her. She was ready to go to the town with him. She was feeling so suffocated that without thinking twice she agreed to leave the village. When she reached the town, she came to know that she had been sold by her teacher. Somehow she managed to run away from the house.
After a lot of this trouble, she managed for a livelihood. But the criminals were never punished. And she is still fighting for that.
***
“So much problem for a little fifteen years old girl! Such a pity! Where’s she now?” the reporter asked.
“She is sitting in front of you, now,” she replied.
(Prakriti Shrestha, 2004, is an eleventh grader (commerce) at Vishwa Adarsha Academy, Itahari, Sunsari.)