In the afternoon, it rained, on and off. The light from the cloudy sky dimmed, then faded into darkness, and with that faded the hopes of getting any food. It remained cloudy most of the night, forcing the women to remain inside the rooms. Sometimes one of them would say a few words to another. Banti, Satwant and Durga muttered prayers and chanted in fits and starts. Their voices were growing feeble.
They lay waiting drowsily for the dawn. Despite feeling weak, Banti, Satwant and Durga washed themselves and carried out their customary ritual of praying and chanting. God could become slack in his work, Tara felt, but not these women in their worship of Him. Despite being rejected
by Him, they had no complaints against Him. Despite being ignored by Him, their devotion had not lessened. She felt angry with herself. These women might be simple-minded, but they at least had faith in something. She had nobody to rely on. It was so difficult to survive without someone’s support, one really needed inner strength to be an atheist.
Bright, hot sunshine poured down out of a rain-washed sky. The sunshine intensified the women’s pangs and made them more listless. Some reclined with their backs against a wall, others sat slumped over, on the floor. They all were silent. Banti’s lips moved silently in some prayer.
Amaro seldom uttered a sound. Her mewling, tremulous voice rose, ‘If this butcher wants to sell us off, why is he making us starve? It’s better that he sell us, and so put an end to this torture. If there’s more suffering in store for us, let’s face up to that too. Some people tear your body to pieces, others starve you to death.’
Banti shook her head, deliriously mumbling, ‘I won’t be sold, no I won’t! I won’t leave this place. I’ll die here, I’ll die starving.’
No one else said anything
It was getting past noon. They heard the chain on the main door being unlocked and falling. Each woman craned her neck in anticipation, like fledglings raising their heads and opening their beaks when they see their mother bird returning to the nest. The door opened. The old woman, a bundle on her head, walked to the centre of the aangan. Durga, Satwant and Banti rushed towards her. Tara and Amaro remained sitting where they were.
The old woman opened her bundle of rotis. Tara was watching her, waiting to get her share. Satwant, Durga and Banti had again begun to bicker. Satwant and Durga had picked up two rotis each. Banti was asking them to divide the whole lot equally.
The old woman held her hand to her lips as she told them, ‘Don’t fight, daughters. What can I do? Sadake, rotis are not more important than you all. Do you suppose I want you all to starve? That rotten Gafoora doesn’t give me any money. Gave me just a rupee, after three days, so I bought you eight rotis. What else could I do?’
After grabbing two each, Satwant and Durga sat together, stuffing their mouths with pieces of roti. Banti swore at them, and gave one roti each to Tara, Amaro and Lakkhi, keeping one for herself. As she was going back, the old woman again stopped beside Tara. She stared hard into Tara’s face, and said, ‘Hai, damn me, I forgot about ghee for you. Well, you look better.
Put some spit on your bruises just after you wake up in the morning.’ She muttered under her breath, ‘Why are you starving yourself to death? Come with me.’
Tara looked away without answering.
The women began to feel anxious the next day when the old woman did not come until midday. Satwant started a quarrel with Durga and Banti for no apparent reason. All three kept on grumbling and complaining for a long time. Durga sat weeping on one side. The old woman came late in the afternoon. The three squabbled again over the number of rotis, only five this time. Durga reached out and grabbed two before anyone else could. Satwant cursed Durga that she might eat her own children, and seized her by the hair. Durga clutched the rotis in one hand, gripped Satwant’s kameez at the shoulder with the other, and tore it off. They scuffled, tearing at their hair, hitting out with their elbows and biting. Each hurled curses that the other might get raped, and her children perish. The rotis broke into pieces and fell to the ground.
The old woman held her hand over her mouth in an expression of despair and helplessness as she looked on.
Banti and Tara took the rest of the rotis. The old woman repeated her protestations of sympathy and concern for the women, ‘Sadake, may all your misfortunes fall on me.
Kurban
, may I die to save you. These rotis are nothing compared to you. If I could do it, I’d treat young women like you like queens and massage you with ghee, feed you halwa and other fine food. But I can’t help it when that rotten Gafoora gives me nothing. I had ten annas of my own, so I got you five rotis. That’s all I could manage.’
Banti picked up the pieces from the floor and began dividing them equally. The old woman said quietly to Tara, ‘Beti, may I die to save you! Listen, you’re wasting away here for nothing. I tell you, that badmaash Gafoora is rotten to the core.’
Tara turned away in disgust.
The crumbs and pieces of roti gathered from the ground were mixed with dust and gravel. The women chewed them nevertheless, and swallowed them with some water.
Tara and Banti spoke together with Durga and Satwant, ‘As it is, we just get crumbs and broken bits to eat. Why waste any by fighting over them? One life is as good as another. Our kismet has brought us all here. Let’s not fight when the rotis come.’
Banti suggested, ‘Tara’s educated, and sensible. She’ll divide the food equally in front of us all. Then each one can take her own share. It’s stupid to fight and let it go to waste.’
Tara told the others what the old woman had said to her, and what she suspected, ‘She’s deliberately starving us so that some of us may agree to go away with her. The other day, she was trying to lure Durga. Today she tried her tricks on me.’
Banti confirmed Tara’s suspicion, ‘That’s right. You and Durga are the youngest, and have pretty faces too. She’s been eyeing you both.’
Satwant was piqued, ‘Yes, those two are the heavenly beauties. They’re the ones who are young and firm, and so are you. We’re just old hags.’
Banti shouted back, ‘You can pretend to be a virgin, for all I care. That old slut wants to take us to the city and turn us into whores. Sure, go along with her.’
‘As if anything more was needed to make us whores,’ Durga said gloomily.
Tara looked at her in silence.
Two days passed. The morning sun had not yet reached the aangan. Durga was in the middle of her bathing when the lock chain on the outer door rattled and fell. The old woman had never come this early. The women stared into the vestibule in alarm. The door was opening when they all ran into the rooms that still had doors, shut the doors and peered through the cracks. They saw the moustached Gafoor and two others dragging two girls by the arms. The men went back out, leaving the girls in the aangan.
The girls could not stand up. One slumped to the ground, the other sat hunched over. The outer door slammed shut. When they were certain that the men had left, Banti, Durga, Satwant and Tara went over to the girls. The girls wore no dupattas. Guessing from their wide-sleeved long-flowing kurtas, their lungis and hair done up in thin braids, Durga said in a hushed voice, ‘Looks like they’re from Maghiana or Baar.’
The hunched-over girl was quite slender, and looked to be about fifteen years old. The one who had slumped to the ground appeared to be perhaps twenty. The faces of both were covered in dust and streaked with tears and sweat. The one on the ground was moaning in pain, her head on her arm. Her lungi was soaked in blood. The younger girl had wrapped her arms round her head.
Banti squatted down between the two girls. She put her hand on the head of the younger, and asked, ‘Kudiye, where’re you from?’
Hearing her comforting voice, the girl broke into sobs.
Durga felt that by crying bitterly, the girl was making a big fuss of her own grief and suffering, and was belittling the pain suffered by other women. She said irritably, ‘You think you’re the only one who’s been raped, eh? That others suffered nothing?’ She began recounting her own story angrily, ‘…That’s what they did to me, I don’t know how many of them there were.’
In between her sobs, the girl told the women that they both were from Tobazar. Their family was travelling with a caravan of refugees. They were attacked by a mob, and a large number of people were killed. These two girls were carted off with a group of other women. She was barely able to speak because of her sobs and sniffles. The women, having suffered the same fate, guessed the rest.
Banti put her hand on the shoulder of the girl lying on the floor. ‘Hai Ram, she’s still bleeding. What relation is she to you?’ she asked the younger girl.
‘Sister-in-law.’
‘Was she pregnant?’
‘Yes,’ the girl bent her head and nodded.
‘Those brutes have caused a miscarriage,’ Banti held her head between her hands in concern.
‘You’re a virgin. Go and sit away from us,’ Banti said, looking at Tara, then asked Satwant and Durga. ‘Come on, let’s help her. Or else she’ll die.’
As Satwant moved closer to the moaning girl she said, looking at Tara, ‘Phew, a virgin! At her age! Just look at her! Still a virgin, you say? Those queer city women! You’d think they brought her here to be worshipped as the sacred virgin! As if those,’ and she uttered an expletive, ‘would leave any woman a virgin!’
Tara sat on one side, with her face turned away. Every hair on her body stood on end when she thought of the groaning woman covered in blood.
Banti said, ‘It’s always some woman who ends up as the target of their anger and cruelty. These shameless animals take out all their spite at the same spot. Even when they curse and swear, that’s where they end up. The brutes first want to wallow in the very place they come out of, then foul it up. Their main complaint against a woman is that she gave them birth.’
Satwant too flared up, ‘What’s a woman to do? May Waheguru wipe the earth clean of these shameless beasts. They have only one use for us women. They fight and kill for it, and all their love and anger is pushed into that one spot. They revel in it and enjoy it, and then try to destroy it. Those,’ and she again used an obscenity, ‘are always crawling around after it like mad maggots. We wouldn’t go through such tortures if they didn’t treat us like animals.’
Murmuring in sympathy and fuming alternately, Banti, Durga and Satwant used their simple knowledge and rustic methods to tend to the bleeding girl. Soon it became difficult to sit in the aangan in the blazing sun. Banti called to Tara and Amaro, and the five of them helped the new arrivals Bisni and Kesaro to a room.
The sound of the main door opening again came just after noon. The women looked in anticipation towards the vestibule, hoping to see the old woman, but Gafoor, with his upturned moustache, came in. He was carrying a large bundle. Seeing him approach, the women shrank back to the far side of the room.
Gafoor called out sternly, ‘Where is everybody?’ He looked into the rooms, counting the women.
The women’s hearts had risen into their throats.
After counting them, he dumped the bundle on the floor, and without opening it, said, ‘These are rotis. Take them.’ He went out.
Satwant got to the bundle before anyone else. She opened it, and said, holding on to the rag in which the rotis were wrapped, ‘I want this cloth.’
Durga cried in protest, ‘Give it to me. I don’t have a kameez. I’ll have it for a dupatta.’ The two began to curse and swear at each other when Satwant refused to give in. The rest of the women kept out of this senseless squabble. Getting no support from anyone for this injustice, Durga began to hurl curses all around.
The women were surprised and happy at getting such a large pile of rotis. Tara counted them; twenty-five. She said, ‘See! What did I tell you? That crummy old woman was deliberately starving us so that one or other of us would go away with her.’
They all ate to their hearts’ content, and all felt some discomfort afterwards. Lakkhi’s condition worsened, caused by her recurring cramps. She repeatedly had to go and sit over the drain. She moaned and groaned continually, holding her stomach.
When the old woman came with the rotis just before noon the next day, she brought only twelve. Satwant could not hold back. She swore at her, ‘You cheat us women in our suffering by taking away our share of food. Waheguru will punish you.’
At first the old woman played the innocent, then she too began to swear back at the women for accusing her of thievery, and then called them ungrateful for all the good she had done for them. She left in a huff. But when she returned the next day, she brought eighteen rotis, and the sugary tone was back in her voice.
Later in the day, when the sun was its fiercest and the aangan was giving off waves of heat, the outer door opened. The old woman had left after delivering the rotis, so the women quickly went indoors in alarm, and peeped out from behind the doors. Gafoor came into the aangan, wearing his high fur hat, a clean shirt and a new multicoloured lungi. From one shoulder hung a belt, with a holster attached to it. Two men followed him. One was middle-aged, with a henna-dyed beard, the other a young man, whose beard was neatly trimmed. This father and son appeared to be artisans of some kind, perhaps bricklayers or tinsmiths. Gafoora looked into the rooms. He stood in front where the women were huddling together, and called out to the men, ‘Come on, have a look.’
The man and his son came forward hesitantly, and the three men entered the room. Only Lakkhi was lying alone, by herself in another room. The cowering women went and sat by the wall or in a corner, their heads lowered. The man and his son went around, giving them casual glances.
‘Take a good look. Check them out by making them stand up,’ Gafoor tried to encourage them.
The young man pointed at Durga.
Gafoor grabbed her plait, pulled her upright and raised her face.
The young man said nothing. He looked at Amaro.
Gafoor made Amaro stand up for him.
Amaro stared at the young man with wide, terrified eyes. Next came Bisni’s turn. The young man looked away, dissatisfied, and asked, ‘Don’t you have any virgins?’