Our Mindset Episode 50
Each day, I would finish my housework, exhausted, my hands and face scratched from the corn. My face looked as if a cat had clawed it. Then, suddenly, my husband started limping. When I asked him about it, he showed me his foot. Before his toe wound could heal, new dry cracks had formed beneath it. He couldn’t put weight on his foot, so he hobbled around on his toes.
“This won’t heal with medicine,” he said. “It’s something beyond that.” He believed it was a divine test, so he decided to visit my sister-in-law in Lodhawade. She was known for going into spiritual trances. Her name was Kanta, and she was Shivaji’s sister.
He rode to Lodhawade with Mangu. My youngest sister, Vaishali, had married Kanta’s son. Kanta told him he needed to go to Tuljapur and, until then, perform a ritual at home. “Set a stone on Tuesday evening, offer food and a coconut, and pray—tell the goddess that once you are healed, you will visit Tuljapur.” Ten days passed in this process. On Tuesday evening, he followed the instructions. I simply stood and watched, thinking, If this works, at least his wound will heal.
Despite this, he continued applying the ointment from the clinic and dressing the wound himself. Two weeks had passed since the cattle had been washed. He said, “I’ll hold the rope, and you wash the buffalo and the calf.” I was already exhausted from irrigating the fields, and now this task fell on me, too.
I was afraid of the buffalo, so I started with the calf. The buffalo’s horns were longer than my arms, so I hesitated, washing it cautiously. Meanwhile, my husband got a phone call and loosened his grip on the rope. As soon as he did, the buffalo turned towards me. Panicked, I lost my balance and fell into the water trough.
The icy water soaked me completely. I was already sick, overworked, and stressed about his unhealed wound. Now, after falling into the water, I feared I would become even sicker. Overwhelmed with anger, I started shouting curses at everyone—my husband, his parents, Mangu, even my aunt. I was furious at all of them. I even yelled at my husband in frustration.
In response, he tied the buffalo to a coconut tree, grabbed a bundle of corn stalks from the neighboring field, and started hitting me. I screamed at the top of my lungs. People from the road gathered and broke up our fight.
But by then, the damage was done. The entire village was talking about how he had beaten me while being sick himself. Some suggested hospitals, while others recommended spiritual healers. For the next nine years, this cycle of hospital visits and faith-based rituals continued—until he finally passed away.
Falling into the water and the beating made my illness worse. Cooking two meals a day, washing clothes and dishes, fetching water, bathing the children, working in the fields—I had no time even to comb my hair. And now, he couldn’t even ride a bicycle anymore. Mangu delivered the milk, but who would bring home groceries?
Grinding grains for flour became my responsibility too. Our daily fights became inevitable.