“She herself ended the pregnancy because she didn’t want the baby. They say you shouldn’t terminate a pregnancy when it’s already five months along because it can be dangerous to the mother. She could have thought about it a little more. What can I say?”
A week or two passed.
This time, Sugandhi’s eyes rested compassionately on the woman sitting weakly near the guava tree on the other side of the wall, so thin that she was barely recognizable.
“How are you, dear? Are you feeling any better?”
Perhaps Selvi had been waiting all this time for someone to ask what had really happened to her.
“I didn’t terminate the pregnancy, aunty. That day, he caught hold of me and pushed me into the grinding stone. I was hit in the stomach.” Her tears poured out uncontrollably. She too had seen Sugandhi at the hospital.
“I kept thinking that Maria’s son would be a good man, just like her. I never imagined he would be like this.” There was deep sorrow in Sugandhi’s voice.
“He is a good man, aunty. But that drinking… once he drinks, I don’t know what kind of devil comes over him. He changes completely.”
“If you ask me, drinking is not merely a person’s private habit, aunty. It is a destructive evil that sets fire to an entire family. Families of drinkers cannot go anywhere on festivals or important occasions or even to relatives’ weddings in peace. The drinker will humiliate them there too. No one in the family respects the people living with him. People hesitate even to marry their daughters into or take brides from a drinker’s family. If that is the suffering the family experiences in the outside world, then living inside one room with a drunkard, aunty… that is hell. You never know when he will laugh, when he will cry, or what he will do. You have to live in fear, slowly dying inside.”
“From the time I was little, our home was always filled with tension. What will happen today? What problem will come? Will we be able to eat peacefully? Will we be able to sleep? Every day these questions had no answers, and we lived in constant fear.”
“If, just once in a while, Appa came home without drinking, he would be affectionate towards us. He would tell us to smile, play with us, buy something and insist that we eat it. But after tormenting us for an entire year, if he spoke kindly for one day, could we immediately talk normally, aunty? Could we suddenly smile?”
“We couldn’t, aunty. But we would talk and smile anyway, because only then would Appa not beat Amma that day. Amma’s body had become exhausted from being beaten by him every day. Then, when Appa finally died, there was peace.”
“No one is happy when someone dies, aunty. But ask people in the home of a drunkard—especially a drunkard who never lets his family live in peace. On the day he dies, even though they cry on one side, there is also a quiet relief in their hearts because they know there will be no more trouble from him.”
“First Appa left me, and now Amma has gone too. Because of Appa’s cruelty, my only younger brother—though he is still alive—is as good as absent. His mental health has been affected, and he is an inpatient in a hospital. I endured all that cruelty in my parents’ home because of the drinking… and now, here too…” She wept, while Sugandhi could only stand and look at her.
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