At home, I learnt some tough
lessons in life. I had a teenaged cousin, Sanjay, who was very strong and
stubborn. He had alpha male characteristics like my father and perhaps he was
eyeing my father’s position in the clan. He would bully me and my other cousins
a lot. I was the special focus of his tyranny. He would devise all sorts of torture
methods and punish me. One day, on some pretext, he decided to whip me with a
stick made from the branch of a date tree. I would get goose bumps imagining
the pain I feel while he dragged me to the date tree by the road. He had a knife
that he had tucked into his waistband.
“Stand here while I cut a
branch.” Sanjay ordered me.
He climbed skilfully onto the
trunk. He fixed himself below the canopy of date branches, took out his knife,
and started cutting one of the thin branches. I was looking at him tilting my
head skywards. There was no point in trying to run away. He would jump from the
tree and catch me in no time. I would be subjected to more severe punishment. I
was imagining the beating marks that I would get on my body. In the beginning,
they would be red and turn blue-black in a day’s time. Perhaps it would take a
couple of weeks for the marks to go away. People would ask me how I got them.
Was there any way I could escape? Not even the village elders would be able to
save me from the tyranny of my cousin. He would not listen to them. Only my
father could save me. Would he come to my rescue? There was a slim chance. My
father would never return to the village at this time of the day. He would come
home by 8 pm only. I was lost in my thoughts.
The date tree fibre was tougher
than Sanjay had anticipated and it took more time to cut through the branch. I
sensed that he was getting impatient and tired with his task. He was sweating
and some of his sweat fell on me. He was distracted for a moment and the knife
slipped. It ripped through his left hand. He lost his balance and came down
with a thud. His hands and legs were scratched and bruised badly as they rubbed
against the bark of the date tree trunk. In my village, defecating in the open
was a common sight. All the streets and lanes would be lined with human and
animal excreta; if you were careless, you could easily step into them. My
brother fell on the excreta. When he got up, he was covered in blood and shit.
He was a figure far worse than I was imagining myself to be.
Sanjay was a strong lad. He got
to his feet and asked me to walk back home with him. He bathed after fetching
water from the well in our house and entered one of the rooms. He took out an
old sari from his mother’s trunk, tore it into many pieces and wrapped these around
his bruises. Then he looked at me. “Get me a bottle of Dettol, Handiplast and
cotton from uncle’s medicine shop. Do not tell anyone about this incident.”
I went to my father’s medicine
shop. I waited patiently for my father to take a toilet break. I slipped some
rolls of cotton, the Handiplast and a bottle of Dettol in my pocket and came
back home. Sanjay did not trouble me for some time after that.
No comments:
Post a Comment