Read Part I here: https://www.pagalguy.com/discussions/an-anecdote-from-my-life-16898153/17826864
“Ab bataa rahaa hoon na, madam. Kyon baat ko bevajah bigaadne par tuli hui hain! Aapke liye kaunsi badi baat hai!”
Expectant, secretive smile.
“Main half-return doongi…aap hi ke association dwaara banaye gaye rules ke mutaabik. Aap…aap zabardasti nahi kar sakte…”
The next minute witnessed the cabbie pulling up his vehicle to a screech, pulling the helpless woman and her kids out mercilessly, and driving away, malice in his eyes and ice in his voice.
“Paregaon se aake akadh dikhaati hai, saali!”
Classic! She’d forgotten. Misery begets itself more than hope does. Much, much more. Fate seemed to take heavenly delight in tossing her around. Picking up her own words and transforming them into double-edged tools. Now she didn’t even have a name for the ground she ventured an uncertain step forth. The girl clung on tighter, and she felt like clinging back….
AS THE WOMAN SAW IT…
The pitch dark alleyway loomed in front of her like Satan. Derelict structures bordered the lane; occasional void shrieks and dog howls punctured the pristine silence of the night, sending shivers down her spine. The kid looked ready to rustle up a bigger racket, but the girl was unusually quiet. She felt her mom crumbling, else she’d never lean on her like now. Little as she was, her tummy ached for nourishment, and her body for the soft fluffy bed at home. But she bit her lip, and hung on closer to the trembling arm.
The lady responded almost involuntarily. Unshed tears burned her eyes as the bitterness she held towards the city came crashing down upon her, all over again. The injustice she’d suffered as a newly-wed bride at the hands of the town; the coldness of the society residents when they inducted her into the apartment, the curt, jeering, so-called welcome-to-a-new-home function; the long, lone periods she suffered when her husband went out of town, the piercing back-bitching the fellow moms of her daughters’ friends did, the demeaning way in which the local bhandiwala tried to take advantage of her incompetence in Marathi. How the next-door Mrs. Something had turned up with a card and a box of parsnips in the first week of her 8th month into pregnancy.
At least, she bothered to come, bit back her mind.
True, she agreed. No one else did.
Oh! How many times she’d wished she could throw up everything then and there and rush back to…home. To friends, to dad. Even Bombay was better. At least, the people there appreciated the fact that you existed; existed as a human being not devoid of emotions. They called it the Oxford of the East. Rechristened it as the Maharashtrian Capital of Culture and Education. Is this the manner in which “cultured” and “educated” people behaved? Does development, improvisation, progress, civilization..ah! civilization warrant, or rather, imply this?
Ignorance? Or arrogance?
To be continued…