अनकही #08

A noisy Sunday evening: cars honking, passer-bys shouting, music blaring from somewhere far away. In the middle of all the noise sat Anita on her rocking chair, diligently listening to the spiritual guide giving a sermon on her phone screen. His voice was muffled, but it was enough to be the only thing she was really concentrating on. The video was titled, ‘Violence and Spirituality: How they are intertwined’. Anita laughed. Who else would know this if not her? She let the video play on. 

Anita did not remember how old she was when she got married, only that she was extremely young, she did not even remember the function itself—that’s how early on in her life she had been given away. And it was not only her who opposed the match, it was also her mother. But, like all things in Anita’s life, the men she knew made the decision for her: the groom, the dress, the dowry. An entire life wrapped and lost, by her father and her uncle. All of this was because her family did not have the money to let Anita live with them. 

As a young girl, Anita had told me, she saw children of her age attending school, receiving education. “I really wanted that too. To wear a uniform and go to school and learn. It was my dream. But it was overpowered by my family’s needs. They needed money, not knowledge. So I started working to get money in, and not waste my time receiving education,” she had shared, a nonchalant shrug accompanying her last words. Now, along with her son, she spends her days working anywhere she can—cleaning, dusting, washing, ironing—only to earn around 4000 rupees every month. This, she needs to divide between the four family members living in their old, forgotten house.  

When I first asked Anita if she had experienced any form of violence against her, she confidently declared, “No.” Admittedly, I had been disappointed, more and more respondents were now not fitting the strata profile. But then, once my drive wore off, a smile emerged on my face. For Anita, I was happy. I was about to end the interview there when she had spoken up, “No, nobody from outside has ever hit me before. Only my husband, but that doesn’t count.” She chuckled after finishing her sentences, and the stoic expression on my face returned. Noticing the shift, she too had mirrored my features. I approached her slowly, asking her if she knew whether or not her husband hitting her, was, in fact, not okay and that it does count. “But that is normal, frequent. Keeps happening. Well, kept happening. It doesn’t happen anymore.”

Anita and I, under the fading tint of the setting sun, discussed what she thought was the cause of her violence. I was not surprised when she said that her husband was a drunk. “Intoxication makes you a different person; it controls your mind. Your body is not in your control anymore. This was my husband’s hamartia. Every night he would finish dinner, drink more liquor than he can handle, and turn into something else. A wild, insatiable beast. Or an animal.” Anita continued to tell me that when in the state of intoxication, her husband would often forget the family of the house, quite literally. He would not remember that he had a son, or a daughter-in-law or grandchildren—no memory of it, no recollection. If he were asked questions, he would be confused and grow more angry. It was only the morning after, when the effect of the substance wore off, that his senses would come back to him. Only then would he realise that the house he inhabits was also inhabited by others, others he knew, maybe even loved. 

“Of course he hit me. Slapping was the most common. If he was angrier than usual, then I would get punched and kicked. The most I have ever seen is getting pushed off from the bed,” Anita told me then, not in sorrow or anger, but as factually and as plainly as someone were to recite the preamble of a constitution. These were things that had once happened to her, but even though her face didn’t betray emotion during our conversation, it does not mean she didn’t suffer back then. 

When asked if she ever told either her parents or the police that this was happening to her, her answer came once again as though she had practised it before, logically and well thought-out. “No, I did not tell anyone. I didn’t because I knew that this was it for me, this marriage, this husband. There was nothing else; my father had sent me here. I couldn’t get married again, so whatever it was, I had to make it work. Even if I did leave my husband, there is no guarantee that the next one wouldn’t turn out the same. It was my life, I had to manage it.”

Anita, a rigorous practitioner of spirituality, enlightened me with her views on how domestic violence and Karma are related. “I am an individual, my husband is an individual. Our actions are not connected, neither are the consequences of those actions. If he hits me, it is his soul that is going to get tampered with, his Karma that is going to build up. It will not affect mine, and so I must do whatever I can to live a happy, compassionate life. Despite whatever is happening. If I were to inflict the same pain on to him, I would be no different, my Karma would build up. This is a very hard thing to understand, I know. It is hard to expect women to be happy and live a clean life when they are being tortured. But the universe only understands Karma. Pain does not nullify with more pain, it nullifies with no pain. And so, I am doing everything I can to not build mine.”

Anita does not believe that violence against women is common, but she says that it is because she makes it a point not to interfere in other people’s lives or their Karma. It is also because of this belief that she does not believe any amount of education or financial independence can allow women to escape the cycle of violence. “If it is written for you, it will happen. This is not something anyone would accept, but it is what I believe. All you can do is try to live your life freely.”

It is in pursuit of building a life free of pain and full of freedom that 2 months ago, Anita migrated her family from her village to the outskirts of Noida. But, she has realised over time, it is even harder to survive in the city than it is in the village. “I am poor in both places, but in my village, I am less poor. There, I could afford an education for my daughter because I want her to study. But here, I cannot.” And thus she works day and night, only to put some money together untainted by debt, that she can use to pay for her daughter’s education. She pushes her husband and son to work too, so that together, the three of them can earn a life of their own, a life they want to live in. A life, where she can spend her Sunday evenings listening to the sermons she has preached all her life.