Our Mindset Episode 7
He fed the buffalo and left for the fields. My mind was clouded with anger and thoughts. I was upset. Just because I worked for them, did that mean I had no worth? They needed people like me, didn’t they?
The sugarcane fields had cracked in the absence of water. The pomegranate orchard remained untouched, without any spraying. The maize crop, left unharvested, had started to fall apart. Even the buffalo wasn’t getting fodder and water on time. So much land lay barren, lacking human hands to tend to it.
So, who needed the work more? Them or us?
Yet, the one I felt bad for had surrendered not just himself but also his self-respect to them. What was the use of me feeling bad? In the end, it was I who had to bear the consequences of his silence and endurance.
At ten o’clock, the women arrived. They took the water pot and tumbler from me and left. I finished cooking while lost in thought. I fed the children, but I had no appetite. My mind was already full of thoughts.
A little later, my husband came to take tea for the women. He ate his meal while waiting for the tea and then said, “Once you’re done with all your work, bring the account book from home to the fields and write down the women’s names and their days of work.” He took the tea and left.
I finished washing the utensils, filling the water, and other chores. I usually napped in the afternoon, but that day, I couldn’t sleep. There was no electricity in the house, so I always finished cooking before sunset. I chopped some wood for the stove and, at four o’clock, took the notebook and pen to the fields.
My husband was cutting maize with a sickle. The women were plucking the corn cobs. Aunt was in the pomegranate orchard. They all introduced themselves. The conversation soon drifted to my mother-in-law, and then to me.
The women advised, “It’s hard to survive on farm wages alone. You should raise goats, chickens, or maybe a bigger animal. You can feed them with the grass from the fields.”
I had always loved animals. My mother’s house had goats, chickens, and a buffalo.
After some chatting, I noted down the women’s names and their respective workdays. Mangu, the farmhand, arrived to dismiss them. He noticed me writing from a distance and didn’t like it.
He snatched the notebook from my hands. “Let’s see if you even know how to write!”
At the top of the list, he wrote his mother’s name. I stood and watched.
Then, in front of everyone, he started mocking me loudly. “Who told her to write names? She has written ‘Chayade’ instead of ‘Chaya,’ ‘Kamale’ instead of ‘Kamala.’ She doesn’t even know how to write simple words properly! And you even wrote my mother’s name in it—so do you think you are the mistress here? Your husband works here; he is a laborer, not the owner!”
All the women looked at me, their faces uneasy. They understood what was happening—he was deliberately humiliating me. I looked at my husband, but he remained indifferent. He knew very well that I could read and write properly. That’s why he had asked me to note down the names.