The Persistence of Peace.

I stare at his face while he hits me. He slaps me on my cheek, twists my arms
behind my back and throws me on the bed. My forehead hits the bedpost and
starts bleeding but he does not stop. Five more minutes of this, I think, and I am
right. He walks away sweating. For some reason our fights are conducted in
silence. He expresses himself physically, not verbally, and I am always too
frightened to scream.

I take less time now, to recover from these attacks. It is time to get dinner
ready; he will be furious if a meal is late. I get up and walk in to my kitchen, look
at the counters with pleasure. The gleaming brass and the shining crystal are
arranged in neat rows. My mother has selected nothing but the best for me and I
spend a lot of time here, arranging, rearranging. I polish a speck of dust off a
copper pan and glance at my reflection in it's shiny surface. I serve him dinner; he eats it in silence. "Go to sleep" he says.

He is angry again; I know it by the sound of his footfall as he enters the house.
He slams the door, looks at me without speaking and walks in to his room. I am
relieved, maybe he will not beat me up today. I pick up a magazine and I am
turning the pages without really seeing them when he comes up behind me,
grabs my hair and says "You slut" . He rips off his leather belt and lashes me.
"Please let him tire, I can not really take this much longer." I pray silently. Not
wanting to scream, not able to.
 "I am in a hurry, make some tea." he says.

I walk in to the kitchen to make his tea, and the order and precision of the arrangement of the room gives me peace. He never comes in here, and I look upon it as my sanctuary. The stainless surfaces, the neat jars of spices, the aromas; they all give my bruised body a measure of comfort. My back hurts where he has whipped me with the leather strap and I lean for a moment on the shelf approaching, but not giving in to tears.

I am arranging the tray. Best quality bone china with a delicate design of lilacs
and heather etched on them. I trace the design, smiling. 
"I told you I was in a
hurry. Didn't you hear me?" He yells and shoves me with force.
 I fall to the marble floor and shield my face. He whisks the tea tray off the counter and I
watch, disbelieving, as my lovely crockery shatters on the floor. 
For the first time in these five months I utter softly "Don't" 
"Are you telling me what to do?" He yells and kicks me in my belly. Then he pushes the shelf with its glassware on to the ground. The glass splinters, and he laughs. 
"Don't tell me what to do." He says and slaps me. 
He hurls my shelf with it's miniature spice bottles on to the
wall and leaves the room.

I can not believe it. I look around at the ruins of my kitchen and I just can not
believe it. All my treasures, all of them - gone, destroyed. I try to find something
that is salvageable from this mess. There is nothing, really. I am trembling, and
moaning softly, and I curl in to myself on the floor, unable to move. Something
pricks my back and I look below me to find a knife.

I walk in to the bedroom and watch him sleeping. Looking at his face, so gentle
in repose, it is difficult to believe that he would be capable of the kind of
mindless violence that he inflicts on me. I feel sorry for a moment. After all he is
my husband, and we are supposedly united through many lifetimes. I think again
of the shards of glass and china dirtying my shiny kitchen floor and with a swift
neat movement, like slicing a tomato, I kill him.

"We won't let you go to jail. Don't worry." my papa says. 
My mother looks out of place here; her silks and diamonds do not go well with the peeling plaster and
the paan chewing policemen. She is sobbing quietly, she hugs me and says 
"Do not worry, we will take care of you."
 All this is superfluous. I am not really concerned much about what will happen to me, I am just tired, and if some one would give me a place to put my head down and sleep I would be content, even if that place were a prison cell.

There is not much argument about the verdict. The doctor who has sutured my
cuts innumerable times, who has set my broken bones on more than one
occasion, testifies in court, and I am declared innocent .
I am remanded to a shelter for abused women where I will be given medical care, counseling and vocational training.

I go there calmly, with no curiosity or fear. Perhaps other people would have
found this place deadening, but it soothes me. I am permitted no visitors for the
first few weeks. I sit in a green painted room with innocuous decor and padded
walls. This surprises me. Do they honestly think that I will harm myself? My body
is resting in its first respite after the hurting began on my wedding night, and I
am giving it time to heal. I am content to postpone all thinking and decision
making. Here, in this place which requires no volition from me, it is easy.

I am brought my meals by a smiling old lady, and there is a young doctor who
binds up my wounds, crying sometimes. We are the same age, but I feel much
older than this girl who is so moved by the sight of wounds which have become
a matter of course for me.
"How could you stand it?" she asks me.
"I do not know. I am not thinking about it now. It is over."

This is true. I am not angry with him anymore. That one slash of my knife has
cancelled all the days of incredible cruelty. I do not want to think about it. It is
past, and the past is an invalidated check. There is no profit in ruminating about
it.

A new doctor meets me on the tenth day of my stay. He is elderly, grey haired,
but he is the first male that I am meeting since I have come here and I am a
little disturbed. He senses my fear and sits at a safe distance from me.
"Do you remember what happened?" He asks.
"I do."
"Can we talk about it?"
"Sure. I killed him." I say.
"Do you remember why?" He asks.
"He used to hit me, whip me, cut me. I couldn't take it anymore."
"Why did you not go home to your parents?"
"I wanted to but they said that a woman should be with her husband. They
wanted me to see if I could compromise, make things work out." I stop
speaking, thinking about it. Perhaps I am not being fair to my folks. If they had
known the extent of my injuries, they probably would have come to take me
home. I really do not know.

My parents are permitted to visit me now. Our conversations are stilted.
“Have you decided what you want to do after you get out of here, beta?” Papa
asks. 
"She does not have to do anything." Ma says tenderly. 
"I will take her home, feed her, make her well” She runs her fingers along the scar on my arm
where he has hit me, and I look at her sorrowful face, trying not to say the
words that come to mind. 
Like “Where were you when I needed you?" and "I am already broken beyond fixing." I bite my lip and remain silent. I have been hurt so much – I do not want to be the cause of pain myself.

Dr. Chandrasekhar visits me everyday now.
"Are you feeling better?" he asks me. "Is there any change?"
"I really do not know. I am sleeping better. I have nightmares less often.”
"You will get better, trust me. Then you can leave this place."
I look at him with fear. The thought that I have to leave and enter the real world
is frightening. Dr Chandrasekhar sees this.
 "Only when you are ready to.” he says. “This is your home. We will take care of you, Veeksha. We will get you back on your feet, trust me.” 
I see the compassion in his face and for the first time I begin crying, sobbing, utterly lost to the flood of sadness, of surrender, of laying my worries in another person's hands.

I am beginning to feel better. The strength is flowing in to me like sap in to a
tree. I have begun to notice small details that have escaped my eye before. A
nest with two blue eggs in the tree outside my window, the mole on the neck of
the man who brings my tea, the quaver in the voice of the singer who guides us
in our evening prayers. I am no longer confined to my room and I take to
wandering around the shelter at night. The dimly lit corridors and quiet
staircases enclose me like a womb, and I savour the feeling of oblivion this
mindless walking gives me.

They decide that I am well enough to work now. They give me bunches of reed
which I fashion in to crude broomsticks. One, two, three ..thirty-five, forty, tie.
The need to think does not arise and I am calmed, anesthetized by the
mechanical routine. Also , the stack of broomsticks that I have made gives me a
feeling of worth. I begin to look forward to the task, I try to do it faster, try to
have more and more sticks ready at the end of the day.

I spend my afternoons reading and one day I find an article about the survivors
of the atom bomb in Japan, they are called 'Hibakusha.' and the article talks
about what they had to go through before they could pick up the pieces and live
again. I feel a kinship with these people. I wonder how it feels, experiencing an
almost unimaginable cruelty. It is worse that there is no single person who is
responsible, who you can look at while vowing that nothing will remain
unavenged. I think of them, blown to bits, wounded, but with the will to get back
on track again. And I, who am destroyed almost completely, is there any hope
for me?

We have counseling sessions every week, where we are given talks which they
hope will make us feel better.
"You are responsible for everything that happens in your life." Mrs.Joshi says.
I raise my hand. 
"Yes, Veeksha?"
"I disagree. I am not responsible for being married to a maniac. My parents are.
They decided that some one with a good background and a good job had to be a
decent human being."
"You agreed to their decision, didn't you? Veeksha, you will realise as you grow
older that it is often wiser to trust your own judgment more than that of anyone
else, however much they might love you."

I think about what she says as I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. Perhaps she is
right, but I was, I am, so used to having my choices made for me. The home
science course I took, the car I drove, the man I married were all chosen by my parents. Will I ever be able to choose for myself?

Time is passing, it is monsoon now and the world looks brand new and washed
clean. The fragrance of the rain sends a rush straight to my brain, and I spend
more and more time outdoors, heedless of my soaked clothes and wet hair. Dr
Chandrasekhar looks at me fondly and says
 "Veeksha, I think you are almost ready to leave." 
I smile back and say "I think so too." We both laugh at the sheer unexpectedness of my reply, at the miracle that I am almost healed, at the almost unbearable beauty of rain and thunder and lightning and living.

My parents want to help me build my new life, but this time I want to see if I can
do it by myself. Frankly, I am tired of love and all the pain it brings. I want to be
alone, and being alone frightens me only a little. I walk away from the shelter
with no money; no one knows where I am going. It feels interesting. I do not
want to be hurt again, to be betrayed by those who love me, wounded by those
who don't. No one can tell me what to do, where to go or what to say anymore.
We are born alone and we die alone. Is it not right that we should live alone? Is
it not less painful? If nothing else, at least you are spared the agony of
disappointment and defeat.

I spend my days on the roadside beside a railway crossing, threading jasmine
together, selling the fragrant garlands to people who stop here. Heat rises from
the straight lines of the black track and fills the air. Urchins scream and dance
and wave whenever a train passes by. I smile; their joy is an affirmation that
little people matter, that small joys count.

I think about my life as I sit here, watch the trains and cars and trucks go by,
watch people moving, always moving. I have killed another human being and I
pray that God forgives me. Sometimes I have nightmares of being beaten, of the
smell of blood, the stench of fear. I think about the years that I have lived, the
miles that I have traveled to reach this place. I believe that we will be judged at
the end of our lives and I am worried that I will be found wanting.
I am terrified sometimes.

A woman walks by with a pot on her head, her hips swaying. She trips on a
stone and a spray of water falls to the ground, catching the sunlight, exploding
in to colour. The coconut vendor falls asleep, leaning against his cart, unaware of
the graceful curves of the coconuts, the ripeness of their green. A buffalo yawns.
The morning puja is on at the village temple, and the sound of the bells reaches
me on a summer breeze.

……Peace.
Peace persists.