No more

The woman looking back at Raya was not the woman she knew. 

​No, this woman was someone else entirely. She was weak and unworthy. She was tired. She was broken. As she stared into the mirror with her deep brown eyes with hints of bronze around the corner, all Raya could see was a defeated woman. With thin, gaudy arms dangling at her side, covering up a bony exterior covered up with skin so loose and rough and uneven legs with bendy knees, she could not recognize herself anymore. Her clothes were stained splashes of oil with the spices of the kitchen– haldi daag, like her mother would say. Sniffing herself from under her arms, all she could catch was the whiff of stinking sweat and the buttery fumes of ghee. 

Because at the end of the day, that’s what her life was narrowed down to, cooking. 

​For most of her 20 years, Raya had cooked dinner for the family members. First in her own house, spending hours in the kitchen daily with her mother, rolling grape leaves on warm afternoons, or stuffing masala in the bitter gourds, or simmering pots of lentil soup when the air became crisp and the trees outside their home went empty. Now, she did the same at the house of her husband, but without any help. 

She stared deeper still, into the mirror, to find a familiar spark in her tired, sleep ridden eyes with dark circles going down until her nose. But all that managed to make an appearance were the blobs of bruises covering her breakable body. Colours ranging from light to dark, there were some still purplish-black and others that had already toned down to a greenish tint. Regardless of their colour, all of them hurt.

She was taught from a very young age to keep quiet about these things. “Har pati ka hak hota hai”– every husband has the right, her mother used to say. 

So she kept quiet because she thought silence would save her. But in this moment, hiding in the bathroom of a 2 bedroom hut, at the mercy of a man drunk out his mind, she didn’t think that was true. 

Suddenly, there was a loud bang. The old wooden door, seeped with dirty rain water from the relentless monsoon, creaked under the pressure of the forceful push. With rusted hinges and splinted endings, the shield protecting Raya from another wave of pain wasn’t capable of withholding the force that was being applied to it. 

“Open the door.” he shouted from outside, his voice nothing less than a wolf howling on a full moon night. A shiver went down her spine, goosebumps covering every part of her skin. 

Raya had done this so many time now that it had become a part of her routine, like washing clothes in the morning or giving her mother-in-law her diabetes medecines. And yet, every single time, she lay whispering on the cold granite floor, begging god to make it stop. 

When it initially started happening, she sought comfort in the thought that he wouldn’t do it anymore. That somehow, she would make him love her so that he would just stop. They were newly married after all, there was so much time for them to get to know each other and for them to break this cycle of abuse their mothers had been subjected to. But she figured out soon enough that that would never happen. She had left an oppressive household for another one. 

​When months of constant sharaab and hookah consumption had passed by, Raya had slowly learnt to accept her fate. She still tried to escape it– spending most of her time in the kitchen or in service of her mother-in-law, busying herself with cleaning every corner of the house in the evening and if time permitted, buying the daily rashaan from the kiranawala bhaiya. Alas, it was never enough. Night still fell every day, everyone in the house still went to sleep with their locked doors and closed windows- as if by not hearing it they ignore the fact that it happened daily, Raya still had to retreat to her four walls and learn to survive in the company of the man she feared the most. 

Tonight was like no other and like she would do any other night, Raya wiped her tears and tied her messy hair into a bun. She took a deep breath and as her trembling hands touched the cool rim of the metal handle, she chanted the name of god and stepped out to meet her predator. 

“What do you think you were doing inside? Trying to be smart with me?” he wrapped his rough, paper cut hands around her arm and pulled her out of the bathroom. 

“I was just washing my face. It’s very hot these days.” Raya replied, fidgeting with the dead skin coming off her finger tips and staring at the floor. 

“What, are the cooling conditions of the house not good enough for you mem saab?” he had that lisp and cruelty in his voice, the one he had whenever he lost money. 

“No, no. I didn’t say that. They are fine.” she amended her previous statement, mentally scolding herself for saying something that he would disapprove of. 

“Fine? Are they just fine?” he slowly twisted her arm with his steel grip, causing her entire hand to spasm up. 

“No, no I’m sorry. I- I’m sorry. They are perfect. I– Please. They are– perfect.” she quiety pleaded, tears clouding her view of the paan masala packet thrown on the ground. 

“That’s more like it,” he smiled, his eyes fluttering due to the intoxication but managed to continue, “I heard that you went to the mela today. Is that true?”

This is what he had been scared of, what she hoped he wouldn’t find out. This was her downfall. “I–I did. But I went with all the other ladies of the complex and I told saasu ma. I thought I could–” tears dropped down her cheeks as she lost any bit of courage she had gathered before walking out the bathroom. 

“You thought what? What? I didn’t bring you here to do the thinking. I brought you here to work, not to spend your time roaming around awaara. I don’t keep you clothed and fed to waste my money on stupid children rides and entertainment. Do you understand?” he now held both her arms, his nails digging inside the soft flesh of her form. 

As the blood trickled down her bare hands, she lost the resolve to reply and just gave herself in. 

“Maybe this will help you remember.” was all she remembered hearing before she felt a sharp sensation, combining pain and a sense of percussive force, just below her neck. When her skull met the granite of the ground, a pool of warmth collected below her head. Blood. 

Before her eyes could adjust to the sensation of the blunt force, Raya’s hair was grabbed by him and she in turn forced to stand up when her knees had already buckled on her. She took another blow to her abdomen, making her want to gag all that was inside of her, out. 

“Let this serve as a clear reminder of how you’re meant to act in my house.” he had a finality to his tone, making Raya think that the worst was over but she was nothing but wrong. 

It wasn’t until the shining metal rod was in front of her eyes, did she see it coming. 

It seemed as if hours had passed by the time Raya had scuttle-rappled to the bottom, though she knew the elapsed time was closer to 2 minutes. Her muscles were shuddering, spasming in agony as she tried to get back on her feet. She felt like she was digging herself out of a grave just as she took another kick to her face. Every fiber of her musculature was screaming for rest, yet she could not afford it. Clawing, wriggling, forcing herself to regain her composture, it wasn’t until then that Raya realised that this was all her fault. She didn’t know the precise moment the fear overcame her so completely, but once it had hit her with a force so strong she could see everything clearly now. She had surrendered herself to this endless cycle of torture. She was only as weak as she made herself to be. She may not have the power to stand up to her husband, but she could certainly harbour the will. 

As she heard the door shut behind her, Raya made up her mind. In the solitude of hell, she would forge a path out. 

—

“You just need a child, a beautiful boy. That will fix everything.” Varsha, Raya’s mother-in-law explained to her as both of them sat on the footsteps of their house, peeling fresh pees for dinner. The sun was high up in the sky, shining like Titan’s fury– right down on their faces, making it hard to full open their eyes. Beside the two women lay a spread of papad, achar and laal mirchi drying up under the heat. 

Varsha seemed somewhere far away, not quite in the moment as she was talking. Almost like she was relieving a memory herself. Although always appearing hard on the exterior, Raya recognized a softness in Varsha, who had lived as a widow for most of her adult life. 

Varsha saw the bruises and scars on Raya everyday but in vain, she wasn’t to do anything. Everyone had to go through it. 

“It is hard at first,” Varsha recalled, “but once you have baalaks, you will both have more responsibility. More to divert the mind.”

This was not the first time Raya was hearing this. Even before she came to this house as a new bride– clad in a bright red sari and gold jewellery, even before she learnt how children were made from a conversation she eavesdropped on in the street, even before she knew how to cook or clean, Raya had been informed about her duty to give birth, birth to a baby boy. The first time she heard it, she wasn’t supposed to. 

​It was on a cold December night where her father had just come home, upset about something at work. Raya’s mother had fallen asleep on the floor after finishing her chores and when her dad saw that, he got even more upset. Raya was seven years old when she first saw her father beat her mother,  all the while shouting about how she had only disappointed him all his life, especially when she gave him a daughter. Every day since then Raya has been explained that her purpose in life was to get married and to birth a boy. Failure to fulfill this was a failure in life. 

“Are you listening to me?” her mother-in-law asked her now, “This is important.”

“Yes, ma. I understand.” a line she had mastered how to say, coming out effortlessly now. 

“A boy, that’s what we need. He will help us. Not a girl, we cannot afford more liability.” she straightened her back then, a groan of pain echoing from her mouth. 

“Not a girl,” Raya repeated, “Not a girl.” 

—

“The house should be clean. If I see even a speck of dirt, I will throw you out.”

“The daal has no salt, what nonsense is this?”’

“Do you not know how to dress? You look like a bai.”

Her husband’s voice took up the space around her, even when he was not here. Every now and then, her mind would flash a memory of the day he broke her hand, or the day he locked her in the room without food, or the way he would find any opportunity to take his anger out on her. 

She closed her eyelids shut, she wouldn’t think about him when he wasn’t around. Her breath came uneven, stuck somewhere in her throat– like a hard-knot, refusing to move. 

Resolving to keep herself busy at work, she picked up the newspaper from the doorstep, along with the packet of the ripe nimbu-mirchi and fresh genda phool for the mandir. The kitchen was out of adrak, she made a mental note of buying that in the evening. 

She skimmed through the paper, nothing unusual happening in the country. Her gaze caught on the second the page, filled with obituaries. Recognizing one of the faces, she squinted her eyes to read the cursive text. Sunil Sharma from a nearby neighbourhood had passed away some nights ago. 

How tragic, she thought to herself, he wasn’t even that old. 

After she finished reading the entire paper, she carefully folded it and put in the drawer full of rough paper she had, for the raddi wala bhaiya. 

Before getting back to making sabzi pulao and salaan for lunch, she chanted a prayer for Sunil Sharma. 

—

He had gotten tired earlier than usual than today, losing his strength after bashing her head only twice. The chaach for dinner tasted disgusting, he had said when he dragged her into the room and locked the door. She squeezed her eyes shut for another blow but he had taken a step back, staggering on his two feet. 

As her blurry vision slowly cleared, Raya could see the creases on his forehead and the sweat forming a line above his lips. “Are you okay?” she had the nerve to ask, forcing the words out of her mouth. 

“You– Shut up. I’m– I’m going to bed.” he responded, stumbling over his words. Rotating his head and then his shoulders, he took off his blue chequered shirt and black pants and then reaching his hand out to the side, switched the light off. 

“Don’t make any noises, my head is aching. Or I will kill you.” he said nonchalantly, covering his body with the maroon blanket kept on the edge of the bed. 

“I won’t.” she whispered back but she doubted he heard her. 

She too, proceeded to lay on the bed beside him, deciding to clean up her wounds early in the morning. She knew she wouldn’t get any sleep, so she started counting in her mind– an old habit her mother had taught her when she would awaken with nightmares as a child. 

Eyes still open and studying the cracked ceiling above her, Raya was broken out of her trance when she hit the number 100. Her husband had gotten restless beside her, coughing and groaning, mindlessly twisting from side to side. And then all of a sudden, his eyes flew open and his hand clasped his chest, right above his rib cage. He started trembling beside her, painfull moans spilling out from his mouth. 

“R– Raya, Raya…Listen– Listen to me. Are you– Are…Are you here?” he managed to spit out in between bouts of tremors. 

She would have helped him, responded, said something but after all, she had promised to not make a sound. All her adult life he had forced her to be silent and so she was. 

The man tried in vain. Eventually managing to sit up straight, he ended up falling to the ground. A few struggling breaths later, he finally gave up. 

Then, silence. 

Raya got out of bed and slipped on her shoes. She dawned herself in a polyester grey jacket over her orange kameez and a brown wool cap she had knit for herself last winter. As she picked up the packed bag she had hit under the bed frame, she took the name of god once again, to fill her up with courage. Looking over at the dead man laying on the ground, she whispered to him, “It ends with us. No more.”

When she tried to make her way out of the small window in the bedroom, a paper slipped and fell out of her bag. She didn’t look back to retrieve it. 

The next morning when the body would be found by Varsha, she would sob for her son. She would notice the paper lying beside him and pick it up. She would read the patient’s name as Raya Sharma, wife of Sunil Sharma. She would notice the sonogram attached. She would realise that her daughter-in-law was five months pregnant. And when she would read the sex of the child that had been determined a girl, she would carefully fold the paper and put it in the back of her sari. She would call the cremation house and ask them to collect her son and she would tell them that he had a bad heart and was taken by a heart attack. She would tell every wellwisher and passerby that her daughter-in-law had gone to work as a 24 hour maid for a family and that she was fine. 

But never would Varsha ever tell anybody that her daughter-in-law had the courage to do what she never could. Never would she ever tell anybody that Raya had realised that it was always going to be her or him and that after generations of wrong choices, she had made the right one. No, she would never admit that. 

​Varsha would see Raya carefully planning it out, she had always known Raya was too smart to end up like her.  She would see her lie about going to a mela and travelling to obtain whatever it was that killed her son. She would see her waiting for days, patiently, to find the right time to execute it. She would see her mixing it in his chaach one day and preparing for her new life. Raya’s over eating made sense now, her unusual cravings for masala papad or lehsoon achar. She would see Raya making that choice for her. 

​She would see and to herself, she would smile.