1-A Marriage in Haste

Today’s generation goes on dates, multiple dates, many times; they think over, before finalizing a suitable partner for themselves. But, my father was in a hurry to get married. He as a young government officer was getting offers for marriage from various well-to-do families. He says he wanted a simple wife who would take care of him, but I interpret this as that he wanted a not-so-clever wife who would not breed troubles from him and stop him from his licentious and mean acts; who would not be a dominant figure in his life because he is in a habit to dominate and not be dominated by any.

He can speak but not listen to anyone. I became the first person in the family to whom he actually had to listen and he doesn’t like that. Due to his position of power as a government officer, and the jolly decorum that he maintained while talking to his would-be in-laws, my maternal grandfather was transfixed to marry his daughter, my mother, to my father. There were indications of his dubious ways even before marriage, which ma’s family had identified, but my nana altogether ignored them to finally marry her to him. And in December ’96 they were married which was twenty days after they first met. 

What soon followed was abuse. Mother told me that he started beating her two months into their marriage. She was shy, innocent as a doe, and kept tolerating him. She was brave as well, for she didn’t tell her parents until much later how he was treating her. She thought he’ll change. All this while, he was in his usual stint of extramarital affairs even after I was born, and my mother got to know about one of those through their house helper Munna, how when she was away, he brought along a lady and closed the door on Munna’s face. Clearly, he was not afraid of my mother getting to know about this. He considered her harmless and that she was.

I remember events of my life from back when I was 2 years old. I had this intricate idea of ‘goodness’. I think being good is a good thing and for me good was being kind, compassionate, and everything that touches the heart, things I had forgotten, and re-learned later in life with the advent of Swami. So, I used to think as a child studying in nursery class that ours’ is a good family, we as a family are good people, and when once when my father stepped inside the mandir with his slippers on, I thought ‘how after being a good person, he can do this?’

Anyway, I was used to being beaten as a child since I was in nursery class, and just because that was done for being “naughty” I still have the memories of them and I do not like them. I remember the exact events which happened for which I used to be slapped or hit with a stick and I find none of them valid. For instance, I remember two times I was beaten properly for roaming at parties and not sitting still.

In one of them, my father was very tolerant while at the party, but when we came back home, drunk as he was, he sat in his red wooden chair and brought out his wooden stick, and beat me up. On the other, he coaxed me and took me to the bathroom while still at the party and beat me up. This is when I was three. As fate would have it, I had to bear his beatings for the next twenty years of my life.

In those years, my mother left for her parents’ home once, to be away from my father and my father didn’t like or allow me to go with her to my maternal grandparents’ home. Every time the summer vacations came, it was a topic of hot argument whether he would allow her and especially me to go to my maternal grandparents’ home. And this time I am talking of, I was three or four years old when I was forced to be with him, and his ways were so obtuse that I remember, once while he was drinking at late night, he made me study while I was sleepy, occasionally scolding me for not learning fast enough while all I wanted was to sleep because I was missing ma and was in a habit to go to sleep much earlier. This was all when I was in Khatima, Uttarakhand. At night my room used to be bolted from outside and I was made to sleep alone, while sometimes I used to hear crying, wailing sounds of my mother being beaten by my father.

One early morning, my mother fled from the house, taking me along with her to the bus station while he was asleep, and left for her parents’ home determined never to come back.

TO BE CONTINUED…