Nandini, a ‘Chamar,’ and part of a community of untouchables of low caste in northern India, lived from hand to mouth with her sick husband and his old parents in a hut built out of dry hay, tightly tied on an A-wood-frame and thatched inside-out with mud.
People as destitute as her family in similar huts surrounded her hut. They clung to extreme poverty, generally on the fringe of starvation.
On her way to the village where she worked as home-help, Nandini stood outside her hut.
Twenty-year-old Nandini, brown eyes, prominent cheeks, a chin with a black dot tattooed on it was clad in a red choli and a colorful ghagra. A red dupatta covered her head.
She stood befuddled by the sickness of her husband.
When she saw him for the first time after their arranged marriage only eight months ago, her husband glowed with good health.
She was struck by the tickling defiance of his face, a flaming hope in his eyes, and a teasing smile that never left his handsome features.
She loved to comb her fingers through his dense black hair as she lay in his arms.
He’d stare at her with an intense longing that filled her with ecstasy.
For the first few months of her marriage, Nandini carried a twinkle in her brown eyes and an easy smile that spread on her plump cheeks at the least provocation.
Her husband staked a claim on her heart. She yielded to him like a pliable sapling bending in the wind.
Thinking of those idyllic days, Nandini’s lively face became creased with deep furrows of anguish.
Her husband was taken ill after a couple of months of her wedding.
And now he was bedded for over six months with a low fever that stayed with him with the tenacity of her poverty.
With tears in her brown eyes, Nandini thought of the several visits to the village doctor.
The loose-limbed doctor wore a brown English-hat on his bald head and walked with giant steps.
He was a transplant from the city, mostly his services free for the villagers.
Nandini smiled whenever she saw the kind doctor treading the village streets. Kids playing in the dirt would stop and ask him, ”Doctor Sahib, what’s the time?”
And the doctor would smile benignly and answer, ”Same as at this time yesterday,” and move on.
In his small dispensary smelling of ammonia, iodine, essences, and salts, the kind doctor shook his head in despair, unable to define her husband’s sickness.
Additionally, her in-laws were chronic worry.
Her father-in-law squatted on his haunches on the dirt floor of the hut peering at the straw walls. He dragged his bony frame around, unable to stand without help. Or he scrounged around in the yard with the cooking hearth and a couple of jute-cots.
Her mother-in-law was partially blind and no help to Nandini in the chores around the crowded space of the hut.
A corner was taken up by the sick husband in the tiny sleeping section.
Nandini cooked all the meals indoors, especially during the intense winters or the thunderous monsoons.
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The scanty space barely accommodated them.
Headed to the village through the rustling golden wheat-fields, Nandini wrestled the back-breaking work waiting for her. She took tentative steps towards the village. The rising heat indicated another sweltering day ahead.
Nandini held up the ghagra with one hand that swirled around her shapely legs as she walked. The other hand went up to her unwieldy brown hair, locks dancing around her face in the breeze. With the index finger, she flicked the beads of sweat from her creased brow.
With both hands, she felt her belly, now protruding out of her bare midriff. The baby bounced around under her hand. At times the sudden kicks caused her extreme panic.
Her harassed mind kept going back to her husband. Only two months of conjugal rapture! There was barely any bliss to store or to hug in that short period. And then the magical world of love started to fall apart.
Day by day, hopeless and dreary tiredness gripped her with the burden of her grinding poverty.
Nandini was weary to the bone. Her feet felt heavy like lead, hard to drag towards the village.
The cooking, cleaning, and washing fed her ill-husband and the old in-laws.
The compensation for her work was in lumps of wheat or corn or other produce. Sometimes discarded clothing and sundry gifts were her meager reward.
Nandini Very rarely got any cash.
She wanted to get her sick husband checked at the city hospital. She’d been to the hospital. It was always crowded, and the wait to see the doctor was interminable.
There was no choice now because there was no cash.
Having walked a short distance, Nandini stopped again in the shade of a sapling and breathed hard.
She scanned the golden wheat fields as far as the eye could see. Villages dotted the vast landscape.
Nandini was breathless and out of energy, because of lack of sleep and adequate food. Usually, she ate the leftovers, not enough to supply vigor in her current condition.
She was already late!
Nandini resented the village rich, including the headman, Tara Singh and the families basking in the warmth of lands and property.
Nandini and other chamars worked raw labor in homes and fields that the wealthy considered too low for their status and dignity.
The chamars were paid starvation wages and had remained indigent for centuries. Over the years, the poor chamars were physically moved away from the village into the tenements of impoverished mud-huts.
Her pregnancy showing clearly, Nandini hustled towards the village to the house of Tara Singh, past the primary school on the edge of a pond.
The children recited the multiplication tables in sing-song voices that rang like music in Nandini’d ears.
One day she’d have her child. He or she would go to school, get a good education, and break the cycle of poverty for her. That was her favorite dream.
Nandini approached the Hindu temple facing the pond.
The steepled structure had a circular base. Originally of white stone, now looked aged, dark and moldy. Hindu statuettes of deities clung to the layered sides of the temple. Vines hugged the exterior like clinging thoughts.
Morning worshippers beelined the temple door on the marble platform. A rotund ‘Pujari’ blessed the gathering and gave ‘Parsad.’ He chanted hymns. The villagers rang bells. The crowd sang in sonorous voices.
Nandini wanted to pray for her husband, but, as an untouchable, she was barred from the temple.
Nandini hurried up the dusty road, shaking her head to dislodge the venom of resentment coursing in her blood.
To her left in a walled yard of a large brick building, a row of buffaloes chomped on the fodder from a tub along the wall. Flies stormed their slick black bodies.
Headman Tara Singh owned the building, called Haveli.
A bullock-drawn trolley emerged out of the yard through the steel gate. It was loaded with chamar-workers headed to the fields.
As Nandini went past the trolley, all the male heads with wide eyes turned, boring holes in her back.
Nandini was fully aware of the deviousness of the male-world.
From an empty lot sandwiched between two homes, a bitch in heat emerged and hustled past Nandini, chased by a bevy of horny stray dogs.
As a servant, Nandini had no real enemies except men.
Hidden behind curtains and closed doors, hands extended to grab her beauty and charm.
A group of boys and girls ran down the street headed to school.
The boys wore khaki shorts and white collar-shirts, their unruly hair defying the wet comb.
Girls were in blue and white frocks, their greasy hair in braids folded into rings.
The kids rushed past Nandini, yelling and screaming with the raw energy.
Nandini watched after them.
One day her child would run to school. Her eyes brimmed with rustling dreams.
Up the street, several women pulled water from the well to haul full pitchers to their homes along the side streets.
The women stopped envying Nandini for her grace and beauty, regretfully wasted on a chamar woman. They knew the men of the village lusted after Nandini.
A worry furrowed their faces.
Nandini went past several houses until she arrived at the house of the headman, Tara Singh.