burning.
burning in my stomach is a hunger so deep, so painful, it cannot simply be last night's. i can smell the food from this far away, and yet i know that food alone is not going to take the pain away. my son follows me. when we reach, he asks for two teas and two breakfasts. there is vada today - they serve it with a chutney that is watered, but spicy enough to stay in my stomach. it makes the feeling in my stomach worse, like rubbing salt to a wound. when i leave, the orange sun is in front of me, looking me in my eyes. the ground on which i walk is dry, hot, i need to step faster to keep my feet from burning too. he leaves me, my son, to join his friends at the corner of the road. i know that he is probably hungry too, but not the same hunger of the stomach anymore. i don't know whose hunger bothers me more, mine, his, or the feeling that i am unable to do anything about either.
while i walk to work, i keep my eyes firmly downwards. many men pass by me, and i only have to see the lining of their lungi to know who they are - they are men who live in the houses i am walking around. they know nothing of the thirst of the earth for the heat of the sun - they laugh in their homes while i work in their fields to make their crop reach its harvest. they walk slowly, their feet enjoying the coolth of the leather footwear. i can feel their eyes survey me -i feel the bareness of my legs and the shame of what my upper cloth doesn't cover. i walk at the same pace, not faster though i want to run, because i don't want to let them throw me off the road.
i reach the fields. i like working in paddy fields. the water in the field keeps my feet cool. the mud goes through my toes, and i enjoy it after the walk in the sun. i bend, ignoring the pain that runs down my back, and begin to pull out the weeds. i am lucky this season - i got to work even during the weeding. i sometimes wonder what it would be like, being an upper caste woman, laughing, as i prepare the harvested grains, working in my own house.. i feel that i am made to do this only because they don't want to do their dirty work themselves. it is soon time for tea. i drink it, gossiping with the other women, listening as they tell their tales, of wayward children, of drunken husbands, of someone else running away with other men from different castes.. it is the story of all our lives, shared so simply, told as someone else's tale to make ourselves feel better.
i wonder what they say about my husband. i wonder this everyday, when i wake up in the morning and walk three miles with a bucket of water and a lota in my hand, away from male eyes. i wonder what it is that these women will be saying when i leave the hand pump in the morning with my daughter, one pot of water on her head, and one pot on mine. am i the woman whose husband does nothing but smoke beedis all day? is he too sick, or simply too lazy?
do i ask him, like i ask myself everyday - where is my husband today? is he at the shop, drinking tea, smoking beedis? is he working on our field or someone else's? is he spending his money on himself as usual, not thinking of our daughters sitting at home, or even our sons who are just like him? where is my husband today? when he comes home at night, to eat the food that i will make, will he find a fault in what i cook, or will he eat quietly not even looking at me? will he leave me and go, because i yell at him too much, or will he throw me out because i do? will he protect me when other men eye me, or will he stay back, too powerless to retort? is he even there? is he there for me?
i finish work. i collect my wages, a full forty rupees for my day's work. i know that it would have been nicer if my husband could have done this work instead. he is stronger, and men generally get more done in one day, so they get more money. earlier, when he used to work here, he made atleast fifty rupees everyday. immediately, i start to think of what we can eat tonight. i will have to buy extra flour for the rotis tonight, i'm sure my other son has been working all night. i also need to buy hair oil and soap for me and my daughters. i see my daughter wait for me with a basket on her head. we go together to the market.
i see her eye the glass bangles as we walk past that stall. green bangles, red bangles.. glinting in the light of the evening sun. they call to us, and i look determinedly away. i imagine my daughter wearing green bangles like a married woman, with her own children and her own husband and her own hunger burning her stomach. that day will come soon, and with thinking about it, i also think about the dowry that i will have to give to send her away and make her a marriage. i wonder if my sons will take care of me when i can work no more.. will they be like my husband, too lazy to look after even themselves, to bother looking after an old woman? the bangles remind me of my wedding day. what did i know of what marriage brings to a woman, in the day and at night?
**
as i watch the comb go through my mother's hair, so meticulously parting every stand of oiled hair, i can't help but think how beautiful it is. who is she, my mother? it is not even morning, and i see her thinking of us already.
watch her there.
do you not see her, wrapped in her agony? look, each layer of her worry swathes her, binds into her deeper.
open it up, pull it apart, this swathing, and then probably, i can answer my question.
who is she?
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this was written as a narrative to be presented as a role play in a class on poverty. this one looks at the gendered nature of poverty, talking about hunger to represent the absolute nature of poverty, the simultaneity of caste and gender in oppression, the sex-typing of work and the value ascribed to this sort of division of labour which becomes oppressive to women. it talks about how the family binds the women to it, in a way that men aren't bound.
