He went to the field after giving sour water to the buffalo. Anger and thoughts filled my mind. My heart was upset. So what if we were hired labor? They too needed people, right? The sugarcane fields had patches drying up due to lack of water. The pomegranate orchard remained as it was without any spraying. The maize crop was starting to break down before harvest. The buffalo didn’t even get sour water on time. Many fields were lying fallow without workers. So who really needed the work? Them or us? But the one I felt sorry for had even pawned away his self-respect to them. Then what good was feeling bad? I would have to bear the consequences of enduring and staying silent.
At ten o’clock, the women arrived. They took the water pot and the copper vessel from me and left. Lost in my thoughts, I finished the cooking and served the children their meal. I had no appetite; my mind was full of worries. After a while, my husband came back to bring tea for the women. By the time the tea was ready, they had finished eating. He said, “Once you finish all your work, bring the account book from the house and come to the field. Note down the women’s names and their wages.” After tea, they left. I finished washing the clothes and filling water for the utensils.
I was used to taking a nap every afternoon, but that day I couldn’t sleep at all. There was no electricity in the house, so I had to finish the evening cooking while there was still daylight. I gathered some wood for the stove and by four o’clock, I took my notebook and pen and went to the field. My husband was cutting maize with a sickle. The women were breaking the maize cobs, and my aunt-in-law was in the pomegranate orchard. Everyone introduced themselves. The topic of my mother-in-law came up, and after talking about me, the women said, “Living on the farmstead like this isn’t easy. You should get some goats, chickens, or maybe a big animal. You need to clear the weeds from the fodder for the animals.” I have always loved animals since childhood — my mother’s home had goats, chickens, and buffaloes.
After the chatting was over, I wrote down the women’s names and next to them, the day of the week. Mangu came to arrange the women’s day off. From a distance, he saw me smiling and writing the names. He didn’t like it. He snatched the notebook from my hands and said, “Let’s see if you can write properly?” He wrote his mother’s name at the very top. I stood watching. Then he loudly told all the women, “Who told her to write names? She’s made mistakes in the word for ‘shadow,’ changed ‘Kamala’ to ‘Kamle,’ doesn’t even understand simple vowels, and she even wrote our mother’s name—does that mean she thinks she owns everything? Your husband is a worker, not the owner.”
All the women were watching me with narrowed eyes. They realized that he was deliberately insulting me. I looked at my husband, but he didn’t seem to care at all. He knew very well that I could read and write well—that’s why he had asked me to write down the women’s names.