Our Mindset Episode 33
A grand fair is held in Akluj during Mahashivratri. My father worked at a factory there, so every year, he would take us to the fair. I had managed to save only a hundred rupees over several days, just ten or twenty rupees at a time, hoping to buy something for the children. But he fought with my parents in the middle of the crowded market. “Where did she get a hundred rupees from?” he demanded. Hearing this, my mother held her head in her hands and sat down in distress. “Should a mother of two children not even have a hundred rupees?” she asked.
Once, he couldn’t find the small oil can for lubricating his bicycle, so he smashed his 24-inch bicycle with a stone. It had cost sixteen hundred rupees at the time. After the bicycle was completely wrecked, my brother-in-law arrived and asked, “Why did you break the bicycle?” He replied, “I couldn’t find the oil can.” My brother-in-law then revealed, “I had taken it that day, but after the oil was used up, I threw it away.” Without thinking, he destroyed a sixteen-hundred-rupee bicycle over a five-rupee oil can. He took great pleasure in breaking things and hurting me in front of people. That morning, too, he had beaten me, just because some women were watching.
Once, we went to the Piliv fair. The whole family was there, but I was unwell. Every time I ate, I would vomit. I was weak. By the time we were ready to leave, it was late at night. The buses were crowded due to the fair. Somehow, I managed to get onto the bus and started looking for a seat. Seeing me standing, he angrily commanded, “Move forward!” and kneed me in the back. He had bags in his hands, and I fell flat on my face. The conductor and passengers had no idea that he was my husband. Enraged, they beat him like a stray dog. My mother-in-law and brother-in-law started yelling. My mother-in-law cried, “She is his wife!” The conductor snapped back, “So what? Does that mean he can knee her inside a bus?”
After my sister-in-law gave birth, she asked for my mattress to sleep on. I hesitated, saying, “The baby might urinate on it and ruin it.” This led to an argument between us. In anger, he grabbed the mattress and tore it apart in front of us. The whole house was filled with cotton stuffing.
There was a water tap near our house that supplied water once every four days during summer. Women gathered there, and fights often broke out over water. One day, he dug a hole and stopped the water supply entirely. The women complained, and the village head came to intervene. He argued, “Too much water is spilling in front of our house.” The women fought for their right, but I was the one who suffered. I had to stand in long lines at the community water tank, and if that didn’t work out, I had to fetch water from a distant well.
One evening, we were walking home from the bus stand when a heavyset woman passed by, carrying a basket of vegetables on her head. As she walked ahead, he muttered, “A woman should have a body like that; otherwise, what’s the fun?” That woman returned with her husband, who was drunk. I stood right there as people gathered, and the man started hurling insults at my husband, saying, “I will do this to your wife, I will do that—doesn’t your wife have anything that excites you?” Hearing those filthy words in front of so many people, I felt humiliated. I started crying, and only then did the man stop.
This was always how it was. Any fight, any argument—his insults were always aimed at a woman. Whether it was someone’s wife, mother, or sister, the abuse always targeted women.