Namaskar Saheb. My name is Dhurpatabai Nagapure from Jergaon, fifty-five years old. Yes Sir, this is the third time I am coming before you. The first time was four years back when my son was beaten up and you had listened patiently to my woes. I told you how my son refused to go to the doctor and lay in bed moaning and groaning. I wept and tended to his swollen face and back and arms and feet. What can a mother do? He spat at me and pushed me to the wall. ‘It is your fault,’ he growled at me, tears rolling down his face. ‘Everything is your fault,’ he kept on repeating. But how is it my fault, Sir? Which woman will give up what is hers?
My nephews had come looking for me that day. They snarled out my name and my heart thumped as I rushed from the kitchen. It was the way they called me by my name. ‘Hey Dhurpate, nigh baher, come out!’ – not ‘aunt’ but by my name, I immediately knew they meant trouble.
‘Today is the day to settle this,’ shouted Mahendra, my eldest nephew, his words slurring.
‘Settle what my son?’ I mumbled.
‘Are you acting innocent, you whore!’ shouted Malindra, the second eldest one, spitting on the floor.
‘You have to get that Golkar out of your field. How dare you allow this other-caste man to plough it? Get him out and hand over the land to us!’
‘Listen son,’ I replied, ‘the three acres of dry land is my husband’s share. Your fathers have four acres of wet land each and I do not complain. My husband was ill and so you gave us the worst land which I understand, but why do you want to take that away too? How will we live without land?’
‘How dare you give it on batai to that other-caste Golkar? Is it your father’s land that you can give it to any bastard who catches your fancy?!’
‘He may be from another caste, but he is a good man. He has agreed to pay me four khandi paddy – more than what anybody else would give,’ I tried to explain.
‘Oh really, he is giving you four khandi? Why is he giving you four when the rate is three?’ they sniggered. I felt hot with anger at their indecent questions.
‘Is it because you are warming his bed?’ my youngest nephew sneered.
My son who was quiet till then jumped at him with a shout. I agree with you that he should not have jumped and uttered the foul curses which he did. I wanted to stop him but before I could do anything, the three of them attacked my son, banged his head against the wall and left him black and blue.
Next day the Police Patil knocked early in the morning to announce that the Inspector wanted to see me at eleven o’clock. The thought of the police terrified me. I begged my son to come along but he turned his face to the wall and closed his eyes. With trembling legs I climbed the steps of the police station for the first time.
‘Look here aunty,’ said the Inspector, ‘your nephew’s wife has complained against you. It seems you beat her and cursed her.’
I sat on the floor of the police station weeping my eyes out. Then I mustered courage and said, ‘It is about my land…’
‘Yes, yes aunty, we know … the thing is whether land or water, you should not beat your nephew’s wife,’ explained the Inspector patiently. ‘See aunty, the government has set up Dispute Resolution Committees in every village. If you have any problem you should contact them immediately.’
I looked at him and kept quiet. How could I tell him that the government’s Dispute Resolution Committee in Jergaon was chaired by my middle nephew’s friend?
‘I am a fair-minded man,’ continued the Inspector, ‘You are a widow and so I will not arrest you. You have to come next Wednesday with a surety and sign the bond for good behavior, do you understand? We have to ensure peace in the village, don’t we?’
Where could a woman like me find a guarantor? Every person I approached to stand surety on my behalf made this or that excuse. Finally, I paid the Police Patil five hundred rupees to help me out. I thought that would be the end of the matter, but peace does not come easily to sinners like me. Each day is worse than yesterday. At night my nephews throw stones on my roof and break the tiles. One evening they kicked my door till the hinges gave away. They steal the grass I cut for my cow. They call me a hussy and shout out curses at me. My own nephews ...
My son stopped talking to me after the beating incident and left home the day he could limp out of bed. That was four years ago and I have not seen his face since that day. I cried for him day and night but that did not do any good. When the paddy season came, I decided to plough the land myself. My nephews tried to encroach into my paddy bunds but with my own hands I cut thorny bushes and fenced my land. ‘We will block the stream,’ they threatened me, ‘we will burn your harvest.’ Every morning I woke up with a feeling of dread, waiting for something terrible to happen.
Last year, just after the mrug nakshatra brought the first rains of June, I fell ill. The fever did not subside for days and left me weaker than a lame roadside puppy. The kharif season was under way and every day I worried about my land, lying fallow. One day Golkar approached me. ‘Sister, you are not well,’ he said, ‘Give me your land to plough. I will give you four and half khandi paddy.’
I could barely sit straight or open my eyes. ‘Yes, brother, take my land and bring me four khandi paddy at the end of the season. You keep the half khandi paddy and bring me some tablets instead,’ I said.
My fever increased in spite of the medicines and I carried the weight of apprehension like a stone constantly tied to my neck. As soon as the Golkar entered the field with his plough and bullocks my nephews came bellowing into my house, cursing in filthy language.
‘Why have you given out your land again? You whore! You husband-killer!’ They shouted and pushed me.
I was too weak to answer them. I gathered whatever little strength was left in me and ran out of the hut to escape their wrath, but they came after me – my three nephews.
That was the time I sat before you the second time sir, as you rightly recall. I remember you wrote down every word I narrated – how they ran after me and they pulled my saree till I was in my blouse and naked from the waist down, how they pushed me down and kicked me unconscious in the village chowk, how I lay there in the village chowk for all to see. I no longer have shame in saying this, sir, having repeated the details so many times.
When I woke up in the hospital the Inspector was waiting with two women constables. The excruciating pain in my head felt as if someone was splitting it with an axe. ‘You have to give your statement,’ the Inspector said sternly, ‘This is a serious matter, it is on tv and in the newspapers … so don’t make matters difficult for me.’
What was there to tell the Inspector or the crowds who came? Those who pulled my saree and tore at my blouse were my own nephews, born before my eyes – literally before my eyes, because there was no better suin in the village than Dhurpatabai. I delivered every baby in the family and in the neighbourhood including those three. I held them in my palms naked and soaked in blood as they drew their first breaths and let out their first wails.
I was discharged from the hospital after four days and came home alone, burning with fever, nursing a broken finger and an aching body. Even as I stepped off the bus I heard people whispering. The sun was low in the west and I was hungry. The nephews were in prison but now their fathers were waiting at my door. Writhing in anger and hatred they spat at me and hissed and threatened.
‘You could have settled this at home,’ my husband’s elder brother thundered, ‘What is wrong if our sons ask for the land?’
‘What is wrong if I rent it out? Is it not my land? Is that land not my dead husband’s share?’ I replied bitterly, ‘And how can I settle anything when your sons beat me in the chowk in front of the whole village to see?’
‘You are a disgrace to our dead brother’s name,’ said my younger brother-in-law. He smashed every earthen pot in the kitchen and kicked in my earthen stove. I collapsed with fever, hunger and exhaustion. Sundarabai, my younger sister-in-law crept into my hut late at night and woke me with her touch. ‘Eat this gruel sister,’ she said to me. She fed me and we both wept bitterly, hugging each other.
In less than two months all those who were in jail were back in the village on bail. They gathered their friends and drank outside my house and shouted out curses. In panic I ran to the temple and crouched on the verandah whispering ‘Mahadeva, Mahadeva’. At dawn I stole back home like a thief.
Since that day, my daughter calls me every day and begs me to leave the village. ‘Mother, please leave Jergaon,’ she implores weeping on the phone.
‘Where can I go, daughter? And why should I go? I have already suffered the worst. What more can happen?’ I try to reason with her. The only one who cares for me is my daughter, that soft, gentle child. I wish we had allowed her to study. But when her father fell ill we had to marry her off. She was four months short of eighteen at that time. The Sarpanch and the Police Patil took us aside during the ceremony and threatened to take action against us for child marriage. We bowed down and touched their feet and pleaded with them. Only after taking two thousand rupees each did they bless the couple. I have nothing against them – they are the village elders after all.
It was my daughter who bought me this phone, sent it through Nandu who was visiting her village for some work. There was a time when I used to go and meet her and my grandchildren, but now I have stopped. How can I go to my daughter’s home empty-handed? With the case going on, I have no money left even to buy a packet of Parle-G. One day I asked her to come to Jergaon with her two little daughters but her husband refused saying that Jergaon was too dangerous; he would not allow his girls to set foot there. He is a good man and I can understand he is ashamed of me. Which man wants a mother-in-law whose face is on the tv and papers, entangled with the police and court cases? I understand his shame but I also understand that when I am dead he will not refuse my daughter’s claim to the land, however small and dry it may be.
Our grandmothers used to say that the death of the husband is like living death for a woman. A man – it does not matter whether he is old, blind, lame or even mental – is important. My husband was sick for a long time but I did not mind. I tended to all his needs and looked after the fields and the children and the house besides. I prayed every evening for his long life but the gods never listen to the prayers of sinners like me. When he died I thought I would die too but now I don’t know whether I am dead or alive.
I come to court whenever the vakeel informs me. I get up before sunrise, fetch the water, feed the cow and leave my two goats with Sundarabai and then after bathing and eating a little I take the bus. I have never missed a single court date. Who would have thought a poor village woman like me would see the insides of the police station and the court and talk to learned people like you! My life started as the eldest of six children – four brothers after me in a row and then a baby sister. I took care of them all while my parents were away for wage labour. My brothers all went to school one by one. And my sister too went with them. My parents married me off when I was fourteen or fifteen. Within a year after my marriage, I was pregnant but I lost that baby. I lost four babies – two died in my womb, one died at birth and one barely a month old. I am a sinner, Sir, what more can I say?
For a long time, I was sought after as the midwife who brought good fortune to other women and yet could not bear a child herself. And then after many prayers and pilgrimages I had two children. The lady doctor in our health centre stitched me from the inside and warned my husband against making me do any hard work or lifting heavy things. If it were not for my sisters-in-law – yes, yes, the same ones whose sons are treating me like a cur today – if it were not for their help, I would never have seen the faces of my children. They were like my sisters – made me lie down, cooked and cleaned and swept the courtyard – they did everything for me. Those were different days, not like today. We were sisters, our children played together. We fed all of them without thinking which child belonged to whom, just like the great Mother Earth feeds every creature. I remember those days and I wonder whether the men who torture me today are the same babies who crawled on my lap.
Last week my eldest nephew Mahindra was elected the President of our caste committee. He collected two hundred rupees from every house for the caste fund, but refused to accept my money. It terrifies me to think about the future. Nobody will call me for the caste functions and celebrations. No one will invite me to their grandchildren’s naming ceremony. I will be shunned at marriages and funerals. It is not as if people have suddenly turned into poisonous snakes, not as if they are my enemies. But who wants to get into trouble with the caste committee President for the sake of an old widow? A village is not like your city, or perhaps it is the same everywhere – people don’t want to get embroiled in family matters. Today morning I went to his house and said, ‘Mahindra, take this money from me. I belong to the caste community as much as your mother.’ I even tried putting a couple of notes in his hand.
‘The police have asked me not to trouble you. So keep your money and get lost. You are not part of our community,’ he said in a cold voice. Neither his wife nor his mother offered me a cup of tea.
My mind has stopped working Sir. My husband is dead, my son has deserted me, my daughter does not visit me, my nephews want to kill me and now my community will make me an outcaste. Why? Not because I own a bit of land Sir, but because I behave as if I own it. Isn’t that the truth? I have wasted much of your time with my long sad story and now I must hurry to catch the last bus. But before I leave Sir, please do note that Dhurpatabai Nagapure of Jergaon has rented out her three-acre dry land for the next paddy season to Golkar, in exchange for four khandi paddy and five hundred rupees cash.
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Paromita Goswami is an activist working on issues of land, labour and forest. She lives in Chandrapur with her husband and daughter. She has published in academic journals like Economic and Political Weekly, NUJS Law Review, Community Development Journal and Indian Journal of Social Work.
Her stories have appeared in Jaggery Lit, Out of Print, Muse India, The Himal Southasian, Meanpepper Vine and Kitaab International. Her short story won the Rama Mehta Writing Grant Award (2023).