अनकही #06

The hospital’s corridors are dark and quiet, with the exception of the muffled sobs ringing through the rooms. The central air conditioning does not work, and so beads of sweat collect on their forehead and line their backs. When they’re asked to remove their extra coats, they have to practically peel them off themselves. She is scared, but he is steady. When the lady in blue rags calls their names, asking them to come inside, he takes her hand, and squeezes it—a message, “I’m here”. Usha looks at her husband; she does not know how they’ve made it this far. 

Usha does not know how old she is. She does not know when she was born, she did not even know what date our conversation was taking place. She cannot tell apart numbers and alphabets, she cannot even recognize alphabets. When asked about her house’s monthly income, she does not count her own contribution in the answer, only her husband’s, which is a meagre 500 rupees. This is even more surprising because Usha earns 10 times more than her husband earns, monthly. “But I have always been told that the only income that matters is my husband’s, so what is the point even talking about mine?” Usha had asked me, with her eyebrows knitted together and a small smile breaking out against her lips. 

Only a few weeks after her marriage, Usha’s husband’s family had broken the facade of the happy, satisfied family they had presented for Usha’s family. “There were fights every day. Everyone would scream at the top of their voices and abuse and hit, and this would include me. I would get hurt in the middle of their physical altercations because they would drag me in the middle, and force me to withstand the punches and kicks,” Urmila had told me, her voice cracking as she recalled her darkest days. But soon after, Usha’s husband had taken the decision to move them away from the joint family they were living in, and instead start a nuclear family. For her, this was a miracle, a messiah move, a good samaritan taking her away from imminent violence. Little did she know, it would only get worse from there. 

In the 1 bedroom that doubled as a kitchen and a bathroom for Usha and her husband, every night she would endlessly suffer at his hands. Sometimes, he would pull her hair so hard that patches of it would come out. Sometimes, he would push her against the wall so hard that she would cough up blood for the next week. “I could have died in that one room and no one would have cared. No one would have bothered to find me or help me. I had no one to support me or care for me,” Usha had confessed to me, her throat clogged with her grief, her breath stuck somewhere in her chest, a hard knot refusing to move. 

A year into their marriage, Usha was pregnant. And that changed everything for her. When she found out, Usha knew she had to put an end to what she was tolerating because there was no way she would have let her child grow up with that. “Every day after I found out, I gathered courage bit by bit. When I had the child, one look at his face and I had found all the courage in the world. No one could stop me from providing him with the best things in the world,” Usha laughed as she reminisced about the first moments she ever held her son. The day her son was born, Usha sat her husband down and explained to him how what they were living in, what they were living with, was not sustainable. That she will not allow this for their son. That they had to change, he had to change. Since that day, her husband has never so much as raised his voice at Usha, let alone hit her. Of course, she realises that the circumstances might not have been as easy as they were if she had birthed a girl. But with determination, she told me that she would have fought for her child, and her own life, despite the child’s gender.

When asked about why she thought she had been abused, Usha told me about how her mother had passed away when she couldn’t even talk. Soon after, her father also left, and Usha does not know where he is. “My chacha-chachi (uncle-aunt) have raised me because they had pity on me. But they were eager of getting rid of me. So, they married me off with one sari and nothing else for the dowry. This angered my husband’s family who thought they were worth a lot more than what I brought with me. This anger was unleashed on me.” Usha further shared with me how she and her sister were forced into marriage by her uncle who was on his deathbed. “He said to us that we are girls, and should get married as soon as possible, preferably till he was alive to give them away. Their brother could married whenever he wanted because he was a boy. But we were poor, there was nothing we could do.” Usha’s lack of wealth and family protection proved nearly fatal for her in her husband’s house, and for her son, she wants the complete opposite. 

“My husband doesn’t let me work. He does not like it when I go out of the house. He doesn’t even let me go to the market. It took nearly a decade of our marriage to convince him that if I earn too, then we can give better things to our son. I want him to have everything I never had,” Usha had shared eagerly, her posture leaning forward and her eyes mirroring the hope she holds in her heart. But, at the end of the day, Usha was grateful for the life she had gotten, for the change that had happened. Because around her, violence was a common thing, not required to pay much heed to. She told me how every single house that surrounds her own has writhing screams emerging from them every night when husbands get drunk and hit their wives. For her, violence is so unbearably common. “But my husband does not drink, and for that I am blessed. He is a happy man, who loves spending time with our son and doing whatever little he can through his vegetable shop to earn for us. We are okay now.”

Unfortunately, Usha has also been suffering from a terrible Uteral disease that brings her a great amount of pain. Regardless, she is nothing if not a fighter. “My husband and I have been fighting this together, he brings me medicines, takes me to the doctor, cares for me. He does not mind if some days I cannot manage housework, telling me we are not greedy for money or societal validation. He makes sure I get to rest on time and do not over-exert myself. He is in debt because of me. Even now, he is planning to take me to a big hospital in New Dehli so that we can do everything to beat this.”

“Stop alcohol,” is all she had to say when asked about what we could do to eliminate the threat of domestic violence in rural India. In the last minutes of our conversation, Usha told me that she has not visited her home since the day she left it for her husband. “I did not tell anyone about the violence because I had no one at home, and I knew that if I went to the police, they would send me back home. And those were the same people who told me that I should tolerate everything that happens to me, and should produce a boy as soon as I can.” 

Today, Usha has seen examples of women leaving their husbands, earning for themselves, and succeeding in life. It makes her heart smile when she sees independent women walking down the street. They are a beacon of hope for millions like her that had the courage to bring some change, and some stability in their life, even though they have a long way to go. And for her, the support of a steady, ever-present hand, is enough when she dawns the hallways of unknown hospitals.