Our Mindset Episode 46
Every time I came home, that old lady would show up with a dead chicken, place it on the doorstep, and claim, “Your dogs killed this one.” The chicken would be crawling with ants and would soon get taken over by them. I would pick it up and place it high on a branch of the babool tree in their field. This happened five times — five chickens.
Then one day, the old lady and her daughter-in-law came over. “You killed and ate our chickens,” she accused. “Now pay for them.”
I was stunned. Why were they suddenly acting this way with me? I had no fights or bad blood with them. So why this sudden turn? I told them I hadn’t eaten any chickens. But they were clearly there to pick a fight.
They called Mangu over the phone, and even his older sister — who was visiting the village — came along. The whole group came over in a big vehicle to our farm. Mangu and his aunt started yelling at me, siding with the old woman. But Mangu’s sister asked me calmly, “What actually happened?”
I explained, “Every day this Aaji brings a dead chicken and places it by my door, claiming my dogs killed it. I never touched them — I’ve placed each one on the babool tree over there.”
Then my husband brought the dead chickens in a basket and laid them out in front of Aaji. She immediately switched her story — now saying my dogs had killed the chickens, even if I hadn’t eaten them.
Mangu’s sister stepped in again. “Has anyone ever seen dogs this obedient? Like, so well-trained they take orders from their owner to go kill the neighbor’s chickens? And if the dogs killed them, why didn’t they eat them? Those chickens have been rotting up on that tree for days — the smell alone would’ve drawn them in. But they didn’t even touch them. So what, these dogs just kill for fun now? No way. Your chickens were sick and died on their own. You just dumped them at her door thinking she’d eat them, and then you’d demand money. Well, pick up your chickens and eat them yourselves.”
The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law lowered their heads and walked away in silence.
Mangu’s sister turned to me and said, “Good thing you left the chickens where they were. But I can’t believe the kind of disgusting assumptions her family made about you. Their sick chickens were dying, and they thought you’d eat them? Then had the audacity to try to make you pay for them, blaming your dogs.”
Honestly, someone must have deliberately abandoned those puppies near our house while I was away. Ours was the only house nearby, and I was regularly collecting grass from their field. I still couldn’t understand why they picked a fight with me. First it was Tatya and Bhabi, now the neighbors too were turning against me.
I felt completely alone in the farm. That’s why, no matter what, I would make sure to come into the village. Spending time at the garment shop in Tejaswini’s house was the only peace I got.
By now, Mangu, his aunt, and even my husband realized — I had enrolled my daughter in the local school and was attending garment classes daily. That meant I wasn’t going anywhere. So, they started finding new ways to harass me again.
Even the village leader’s plan fell apart. He should have realized — why would my husband leave his own uncle’s field and go work in theirs? Slowly, they stopped calling him for work altogether.
Mangu told me, “The pomegranate fruits are growing now. The orchard is by the roadside — someone might intentionally ruin it. So from today, Dada will sleep there every night.” They even built a small shelter in the orchard, strong enough to sleep in even if it rained.