Sans tears...

In the dark times that we go through, she remains with eyes carrying no tears, no words but an expression that is sad and silent. Those eyes are hard to measure, read and they look empty but heavy. Those eyes still giggle so innocently on some topics those happen rarely at her lonely home with some neighbors. She was the youngest of three children of a poor family.

Having lost her mother to death while she was two, she was responsible of two duties. Caring her elder brother and completing the works in the kitchen of a joint family, which ran a copra processing business in their village in Kerala. Her brother, mentally retarded, with a huge head and without much mobility, squeaked and laughed dirtying around the house for he didn’t know he was dirtying when his body expelled the natural waste. He was ever happy; never cried. But she was there or had to be there to keep him clean and eye him on his adventures lest he should fall and hurt himself. He knew no natural laws that we learn after babyhood. But she was there for him protecting…

A poor joint family of 15 during 40’s had all the hardships and household chores that we cannot think possible being conducted daily; besides the toil that ends in packing copra, the dry coconut kernel ready to be pressed at oil mills. When he, her brother, was calm or sleeping she did her second duty. That included attending fire at the hearth, which burnt bundles of firewood before rice for the family got cooked, fetching pitchers of water from the distant well, taking cows back to their stable ‘when cows come home’, guarding copra from crows that darted to the ground to ‘hand in’ drying copra, setting the house for the evening by sweeping cemented and cracked floors and the sandy spread of yard with broom, which left beautiful pattern of rainbow-arch claws of the broom on the sand and many other small tasks like filling kerosene in bottle lamps to light up the house, stitching torn clothes, etc.

She was not allowed to cry. The family, mainly run by her uncle, knew that her crying didn’t make any sense for she had no mother to console.

Her father being out in the village market to trade piglets would come in the fall of dark tying the coins to his lungi at the end of his long trips– often lasted weeks or even months, depending on the market he eyed. On every such trip that he made, he would start off with 10-20 piglets in a pair of wooden baskets hung with coir straps on a bamboo pole on his callous shoulder lumbering miles in the sun, wind and rain to market of villages. When he came back, she would wait for him to call her and give cookies or black glass bangles with the joy that a simple and pure village girl hardly got to enjoy. How could this little girl remember those sorrows when her father came back giving the moments that bloomed her cheeks, patted on her head, voiced the call “mollaey…”? She forgot to cry. She knew her father would soon go for another trip advising her to look after the brother, do the works and be good. If she cried her uncle and others would scold or make fun of her when father was out. Should she cry? Of course, she found no reason to cry.

Her elder sister was given more serious work that included cooking and other works that they both shared. This sister might not find it interesting to spend time in the company of a boy that didn’t sense the world and her sister who was younger, when she had better cousins to chat with during the leisure they earned hard and for short. Sharing a sorrow with her elder sister was not much fruitful, she found. She had to forget how to cry. Neither did she feel crying. She never got to know that there was a better world where kids would be consoled on their sorrow, would entertain some rights, etc.

Was she sharing the little world her brother was in, caring him most of her time? The world that didn’t cry but giggled, laughed and spelled out some babbles? Did she miss out understanding what the intelligent world was? The world that fights for its rights and privileges arguing artfully, angrily, dominantly and diplomatically.

Soon she was to lose her big headed brother. He died, leaving her to the simple world where they, she and her brother, never cried. Her sister was given in marriage. She was young and ripe though always subject to insults, beating from cousins and elders but got no love or consolations. Nor did she complain as it never happened to feel.

Alienated to her own simple world one fine morning she found herself being knotted to an educated man from a similar poor background from another village, a few miles away. Though poor, the man was a learned one with many dreams that sailed over the realms far greater than that of her simple world. After marriage he went to the job far in a city leaving her to his mother and mother’s sister at home. Not being skillful and quick, she was soon to be under the firing of in-laws. They found her not good in cooking, talking sense and “good for nothing” but only useful in slogging. And there were much to be done to eke out for a living, too. Daily she walked with her in-laws two miles to a rich man’s copra processing unit. They separated the kernel from the nutshell, dried, and packed them in gunny bags to a nearby oil mill. At the sunset they would come back home walking the same two miles, she trailing her in-laws silent and listening to the stories that they talked. She had no privilege to interrupt their talk or to raise some doubts but listen. Listen only, else they would lash “potty” on her, a reminder that she was a foolish senseless girl.

She soon gave birth to a girl child that, one day, died in an evening in her hands at an age of one and half year. She didn’t know what disease her baby died of. The previous day she had a fever, but was fine and cheery the day. The “Time” of her had not invented the name of disease that killed such kind of kids in their tender age. They used to call this baby “angel”. Then there were rains, suns, winds and the daily walks to the work and back. She bore three more boys, though the man wanted a baby girl dearly of her.

She held her man always in awe but remained far from him, most often left to be ruled by the in-laws. He took her to the city for some days and showed her the glittering world around. Those were the moments that she still keeps in her cobwebbed rooms of her mind. Rarely did she enter there to show her kids what happened during those days. She smiled and laughed when talking about those to her kids. Apart from a few nights when her man came home from the city for a holiday, she got hardly enough time to be protected by him. Voiceless, she was bogging down to a deeper silence, though her innocence some times broke out the silence when she could not afford sharpness of the abuse by the in-laws.

Was this man not much interested in this simple but beautiful woman? But for her, he was awesome and beyond any criticism. Who was she to criticize anybody, let alone her educated man? She had a world unquestionable around her. Obey and live; whatever life gave meanwhile was to be had without questioning. Simple!

Could she learn more if her man didn’t die of cardiac arrest while playing cards in the market area? He had been home having lost the job he held. He was a private bank clerk, before the nationalization of banks took place. Her man told her that there was threat to his life and escaped it luckily. Finding no any other job suitable in the village, he used to get up very late, smoked, dressed well, talked about Communism, advised his peers explaining the details, which a learned man like him could do and played cards for two years before the final stroke smothered blood pipes of his heart.

Now she, with her three kids between the ages nine and fourteen, was completely under the rule of her callous but caring in-laws. Her voice was never to be raised but suppressed. The utter poverty and hardship timed on them. Soon the Time took away those two in-laws freeing her and kids into the hands of relatives of her man. These relations found these folks much easy to be ruled to their surprise and happiness.

Of course everybody knew she had no voice. But the kids grew with other boys in the pure village and learned more than she could and they felt hatred of these relations and started taking the control of the house, challenging the relations in silence. She reminded them not to raise voice as she could not know what that would take them into. But nature has different plans. Boys grew more rebellious and broke shackles causing the relations to stay away and make fun of them.

With newly attained freedom, the boys of her ran bullish playing football, cricket what more while doing the free education in Kerala. The eldest stopped at primary schooling, the middle one went on taking a graduation and the youngest ended up taking up Engineering in Civil. The run of home was now under the boys. She had to be again silent under the unguided and rebellious boys, who dreamt of a better world avenging the relatives to protect their Mom.

Time played its course perfect. She grew older with graying head, wrinkling face but calm and silent. Little earnings they had working with their mother, or labouring outside her world for the mediocre education they had was never to fetch any dignified job in Kerala, the land with few industries. The eldest became a laborer in the village going daily for his work, the middle left home for then “Bombay” to seek a job and the youngest was into his last years of education. Life looked calm and blooming to her though her work was the backbone that held the family to stand.

Then there ran a time of fifteen years through the family, during which her first two sons got married while struggling to live and the third one went reckless. Partition of her land followed and the third sold his property breaking the house asunder. The world around her started blaming her for allowing the youngest to grow reckless. Reasons were many. She always supported the youngest for the wrong doing he was committing. Did the daughter–in-laws, too, find her dump and foolish? Everyone found the youngest doing wrong but her. Her sons turned up heat on her for growing him wrong. The eldest son lived separately and kept on reminding her of the danger of taking side of the youngest. The second one, while coming home once a year, started seeing red on hearing that she gave the youngest enough money by pawning her very little of gold. The youngest found, to his pleasure, his mother could be made to believe anything he wished her to by easily brainwashing her saying her how the daughters-in-law did not respect her as he did.

Nobody in the world came to rescue her from the volley of blames that got piled on her. Nor could anybody understand why she was supporting her son when he went wayward. The result; a broken family drifting in the winds of waters. Silent and sorrowful she stood the boat sans tears. The reckless went on to hit the bottom with no job, no property, no wife and worst of no hope. All, including brothers, hated him and left the mother and him to their fancy as nobody could affect a normal life to the family. Still she stood the boat as a lonely sailor in the midst of stormy drift.

She knew the second of her loved her so much. But after marriage he could not convince his wife of the behavior his mother, nor could anybody. That shattered the protection the mother used to enjoy from the second. Pushed to the corner, she went on cooking some food for her reckless and for herself, washing their clothes and fetching two small pail of water to run the lonely world of her. The reckless goes out from the hut without much words spoken to her, may or may not come home. If he comes the bad mouth spewed all the abuses and hatred to one and all silencing her to her shabby and shapeless cotton bed spread on a curvy couch made of two planks of mango tree some thirty years ago. Many, including the second, suggested her to turn him away so that he would look for job and become responsible.

On losing all control the second, one day, burst out on her, shouting and using the cruelest of words for the way she is, supporting the sinner, allowing him to enter home drunk and so on. She could not bear this burst from her second for he was her last hope to protect her. She sat on the door step, bending head down listening to the burst. A throb rose to her breast and two drops fell down her eyes… “Please don’t say any more, leave me alone”. The words from the deepest of her sorrowful world brought the second to a halt stopping his railing at her. She didn’t cry. Those two drops were not from the eyes… else there could have been a sliver of sound. She shrank to her world of silence.

I was dabbing my eyes when my teammate patted on my shoulder saying a loud hello. I had just spoken to her over my mobile to feel her heart, her world of silence, her lone world from a far city. I said to myself “Mom, why don’t you cry?, who pushed you so deep that we wouldn’t hear your sorrows?, were you broken-hearted when I saw those two drops falling on to your shrunk breasts? Will you ever forgive me, your second?”