I started thinking—should I wait another hour, then go get water from there? When would I cook? And when would I get to eat? I was hungry. When there’s nothing in my stomach, I get irritable. I get angry.One man stopped his vehicle and said, “Brother, your kids are out on the road shouting.”Hearing that, I started crying loudly. I have this habit—I endure things every day, but then there comes a day when everything just bursts out. I remember all the bad things, and I cry.And since I hadn’t eaten, I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Mangu said, “The women who work in the sugarcane fields are better than her—they work alongside their husbands and manage their households. They don’t cry just because they’re asked to fetch water.”He compared me to a sugarcane-cutting woman, and that made me cry even more. I covered my face with the end of my sari and kept crying.And once I start crying, I lose all awareness of where I am. I don’t even think about whether people around me are watching.
Mami said, “Hey woman, don’t go bringing your bad luck onto us. Look at her, standing on my boundary and crying—pathetic, such a drama queen! This is how it always is—both husband and wife have to work. Still, we haven’t asked you to do any real work. And here you are, crying just over fetching water! There’s a river down the road—go fill water from there.”So I started working just to get water. Even then, Mangu tells me to go to the tank for water, while his mother tells me to go to the river.Hearing all that, I just couldn’t stop crying.Mangu said, “Hey Dada, shut her up—she’s ruining our reputation.”
Why was his reputation at stake, I wondered, wiping my tears and looking around. About seven or eight vehicles had stopped on the road. Everyone had paused their journey to look at us.And the whole issue? Just one pot of water.If Mangu had just taken fifteen minutes to fetch water for me, there would have been no question of his so-called reputation being ruined. Because everyone who stopped was asking him what had happened.The machine operator said, “I’ll wait—first, get her some water.”His name was Balu. Dark-skinned, with a smiling face, he looked poor.That same Balu later became an informant.Because of him, I found a good friend.And in a few days, someone was about to enter my life.And Balu would be the one to bring that news.
It was my husband’s uncle’s village. I had come there to stay for the first time. And since we arrived in the evening, I didn’t even know which road had brought us there.In those five or six days, I had only moved between the house and the water tank. That’s it.So I had no idea where the school was, where the water tank was, which direction the river was in, when the electricity timing changed… There was no electricity in the house, no clock to check the time, no mobile phone with me, no calendar to even know what day it was.It was my husband’s responsibility to help me understand all this.
Since it was Sunday and a holiday, Mami took him (my husband) away with her for the whole day. So how was I supposed to find out anything?I also wanted to see where the water tank was. I didn’t want to be in the same situation again if there was no water next time, so I picked up a water pot and followed my husband.About half a kilometer from the house, there was a school. There were lots of houses around it. That settlement was called Nal Mala—I got to know that.When I saw the school, it struck me that I should get Aparna enrolled there.