บท 3: Wounds of the Past
The room that was given to Suhasini was a decent one, not very big but good enough. Suhasini scanned it – a small study table with a painted lampshade and a wooden chair with a seating cushion. The single bed with a clean mattress, a cupboard and large windows that overlooked the backyard with pear trees.
‘I hope you liked the room, madam?’ asked Mohan as he stirred the tea cup. Suhasini took the cup and muttered, ‘it is the best room I have ever had!’ Mohan had left as Suhasini once again looked at the room and was taken far back in her sad and lonely past.
‘This is the storeroom, how can you make Suhasini sleep in here?’, her uncle had asked his wife.
‘So? What am I supposed to do? Make my daughters sleep in the storeroom and give your niece their bedroom? She is not some princess, she is just a burden on us and on our pockets’, Suhasini’s aunt had said.
‘Please…be quiet, she will hear you. Can’t you be a little loving? Poor girl has just lost both her parents; she is just twelve.’
‘No! I can’t…it’s not my fault her parents died and why you had to bring her here? Could she not go and live her grandparents?’ her aunt hissed.
Her aunt’s words still echoed in Suhasini’s ears as she walked to the window and looked at the bright winter sun. That memory didn’t make her sad, over the years Suhasini had gotten used to her aunt’s vicious words and cruel actions. Like how she often had to go to sleep with only half stomach full, like how her dolls growing up were always damaged. Dolls with broken eye and burnt hair that were first ruined by her cousins and then handed down to her. Her clothes were no exception; they were always faded and worn out frocks that her cousins rejected that were given to her. And she was always expected to be grateful for them.
Suhasini sipped her tea and sat on the window ledge. It was a quiet winter afternoon and the silence of her room was being constantly interrupted by a ticking sound. She looked at a small golden dial strapped around her wrist. The ‘HMT’ wrist watch, ‘timekeeper to the nation’ – as her uncle would call it.
Suhasini smiled recalling the momentous day when her uncle had surprised her with her very own wrist watch. She still could sense the thrill she had felt when the beautiful wrist watch gleamed, a small golden dial and smooth maroon strap that simply complemented the eloquence. ‘It is your reward for passing intermediate first class first’, her uncle had proudly said. It was the first time Suhasini had felt proud of herself, self-doubt that constantly corroded her confidence was quiet. That day she had been joyous!
But today as she took another sip from her tea cup, rushed back the sour memory of her aunt as she had gone mad with rage and screamed her lungs out at Suhasini’s uncle.
‘Are you out of your mind? Is it not enough that she has been eating our food and living in our house that now you intend to shower her with expensive gifts? I have had enough of this nonsense! I will not take it anymore!’
‘What showering of gifts? In all those years, she has lived with us, this is the first time I have gotten her a gift. Poor girl has never even gotten a birthday present. But today is a big day for her’, her uncle had pleaded.
‘I don’t care! I had told you the day you had brought in that orphan and put her on my head that I will not allow her anything other than food and shelter. I am not going to spoil her with gifts’, she screamed at Suhasini’s uncle.
‘But, I just thought’, the poor man had started to say when she cut him and in a vicious tone said, ‘you thought what? How dare you refuse to buy a new purse for my daughters and here you bring that orphan a watch?’
‘Aunty, your tea’, Suhasini said as she had walked in on them arguing. Suhasini had heard them argue and she was not surprised, neither was she pained to hear her aunt call her orphan. It had become Suhasini’s second name in the house. Suhasini had quietly walked ahead and handed her aunt the teacup. She grudgingly took it and stared at the wrist watch Suhasini was wearing and something sheer evil and cruel took her aunt over as she without any warning threw the scalding tea at Suhasini.
That burning pain brought Suhasini to the instant reality where she sat in a quiet room sipping her tea. The memory made her tea taste bitter and she put it aside. She opened her suitcase to arrange her clothes in the teakwood cupboard that was next to the bathroom door. As she lifted the embroidered shawl from the top her eyes fell on the white envelope and she was visibly upset. She opened it and as she pulled out crisp three hundred rupees’ note she remembered the very last conversation with her uncle.
‘It’s up to you Suhasini, I am not going to stop you. Even though I don’t understand the need of you going to Dehradun for a job? Aren’t their enough jobs in Delhi?’
‘Uncle please! It’s not about the job’, Suhasini had replied sadly. Suhasini’s uncle knew it was about the ill treatment Suhasini had been bearing for years. He had always understood her pain and deciding not to stop Suhasini had simply put the white envelope in her bag and blessed her.
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