Along Came Bonny Meghali Barua
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SOMEBODY CALLED A WOMAN
She screamed out in terror…she could not breathe. It was as if her whole being was paralyzed, she realized that her broken body refused to move…maybe it was out of sheer fear or some primordial instinct to save herself. As she lay on the carpet, battered and broken, like a shattered porcelain doll, all she could see were fleeting visions… as if in a flicker… of those nine years, almost a decade when she had weaved and weaved those rosy dreams about how she was going to spend her life with him…him.
She had barely broken into her twenties when she had first met him… when both were University students, full of life…full of dreams. She had met him during her second year of her graduation…a chance encounter which shook her tiny, clustered world. Even now, even as she drifted in and out of her consciousness, she could remember the first rendezvous, the first fluttering glance…the boy kneeling down in front of her professing his love. She could remember how she was taken aback by his intensity; she could still remember how her heart had skipped a beat when she could see his damp cheeks and quivering voice telling her how they were meant to be together, forever and ever. He was her “forever one”, she could feel it…she knew it.
One fine day she was engaged to him and it had felt like a triumph for her, for him too…perhaps. That day, their entwined destinies got the stamp of approval from their families; she was greeted by beaming faces, calming her turbulent but rapturous mind. Just a day after the engagement he had to traverse to a new land, rather a far-flung continent…to build a new life…for him and her. And for four years and yes, though the world had taken an atomic character, he chose not to travel back to his country…he could not afford it, he had told her and this she believed. For four years, late night international calls, video conferencing were a major chunk of their East-West love story.
The wedding date, at the opportune time, was finally set finalized amid discussions and deliberations by the elders of both sides. All her dreams were coming true…now they would be together…forever.
The wedding day… when she exchanged her “I do” with him, almost four years of endless wait, she could feel all her pining for him, all her yearning to be with him vanish away into nothingness.
Oh! That wedding day, rather the hours when the wedding was being solemnized, was magical…a match made in heaven, people had whispered. Her teary-eyed parents too had shared her rose-colored dream and left no stone unturned to make their princess’s special day truly beautiful. They made sure all the beauty of her love for him, her love, timeless and resolute, was captured in the beautiful revelry and arrangements they had picked with so much care and affection. All they had wanted was that their daughter’s special day to be etched in their memory as something beautiful, a moment that withstood the passage of time. Her proud parents, smiling yet damp-eyed, hovered around the couple, “We are not losing our only daughter…a new son is entering our family”. And then as the vows were exchanged, as she looked into his eyes, as they promised “till death do us apart”, all her dreams had come true at last…or so she had felt.
That wedding day her wildly- palpitating heart was at finally at peace. For her those long, never ending years of magical dreams she had so tirelessly woven had all come true. She was now with him…forever; the thought elated her so much and more. Without any second thought, she gave up her career, the one that she had loved so much. She had to make that sacrifice, after all she would be settling with him in a new country, a new place. Without any trepidation, she was ready to fly thousands and hundreds of miles to be with him…in an alien land, a faraway continent. It was a difficult rite of passage for her, a girl suddenly having to turn into a woman. But she believed that he would there…by her side…always and forever. This thought made her sail, fly rather, through all her turbulent days of leaving her home, of leaving her parents behind. She could still remember her parents blessing her, their trembling fingers caressing her bowed- down head as she touched their feet a day before she was to leave…of them whispering softly to her that they will always be there with her, for her.
In her new home, as she settled in, the first few days were almost like someone had been a silent spectator to her intimate thoughts and carefully woven dreams and had run around trying to put everything together…till the last minute detail. “It’s just me and you now, baby…it’s me and you”, he had said when he had opened the door to their tiny little apartment for the very first time and she believed him.
Time passed…
“Was it all a dream?” she wondered now. Nothing was real, she realized now…it was nothing but a carefully laid out mirage which she had probably chased all her life.
Then it happened… The first time he hit her, she could not believe that it had actually happened. The first time…as she lay sobbing on the cold bed, it was snowing outside and all of a sudden her world had become dark…she felt utterly alone. But then…he seemed so sorry for what he did…and she felt sorry too…maybe she had failed to understand him. She remembered sobbing till the red- and- white pillows seemed to have been dunked in a pool of water and put beside her. She had to forget what had happened…after all, she and him had nothing but an eternity between them to craft a beautiful world …one for which she had dreamt her entire life… “It’s me and you, baby…me and you”. She locked the whole experience in a little box in her mind and threw the key away…never to be opened…never to be spoken of again.
She smiled for the shutter-bug…she smiled at the scintillating world. She was ecstatically happy, or she made herself believe that she was. After all, she was married to him, lived in one of the most beautiful places in the world, had a lovely home…But in her solitude the reality would hit her… “Who is this stranger I married? What changed him?” Sometimes she would ponder as she sat alone in the apartment wrapped in the unbearable tomb-like silence. Was it his binge-drinking weekends or was it the ‘organic’ Mary-Jane he would so excitedly partake. How ‘proud’ her new guardians would be now to see how much she was learning…this was what they had wanted…her to become “modern” enough befitting their son.
And it was him…he was teaching her all the paraphernalia that goes with his enjoyment. At first he seemed restrained…probably not wanting to scare her. After the first incident, he probably had felt that there was no need to hide anymore…there was no need to wear the mask of the ‘genteel’ again. She spoke to her new guardians…pleas for help… many a time… countless times. The rejoinder that came back from these difficult conversations would always invariably be the same, “Don’t let anybody know!” She did not know then whether she should laugh or cry …she felt like screaming. All she knew that her heart was getting broken over and over again…her heart mauled again and again till it could feel nothing but bleed…bleed.
She loved him even then…she learned to cook for him…all of his favorite dishes. She learned how he liked his food to be on the sweeter side. She kept the tiny place as beautiful as she could, entertained his friends, went wherever he took her and did whatever it took to have a semblance of a family life… Whatever she did was never good enough…this, her new guardians never forgot to taunt her.
Sometimes he would be kind…but he always seemed restless. It was as if he lived only for the weekends…Her heart would break when he would flirt with unknown strangers in a night-club asking them to dance with him in front of her…the next day, the excuse would come, “I was too drunk”. “You are married now”, she tried to remind him. She could see the jeer in his eyes, the intense hatred of that reminder ‘that he was married’. He would take her to the ‘gentleman’s club’… experiences which shocked her to the core. She could see how his eyes would brighten up when he would go there…how he pretended not to see her meandering tears. She will never ever be able to forget the night she had to bring him home from a pub…drunk and violent.
And then it happened again and again…and again…And came the promises that it would never happen again…asking her to forget what had happened…it only happened because she was rude to him and that he had never meant to hit her…it happened because he was too drunk and could not remember anything…it happened for that…it happened for this..
That last night as she lay screaming, as she begged him not to choke her, not to hit her… all he could say, “Do you want me to break your face? Do you want me to use my fists?”…and he battered her again and again. That was him…the man spitting on her, hitting her, choking her…that was him.
Humanity! Where did you go? She remembered how her in-laws had warned her again and again not to tell anybody, especially to her parents…to keep what had transpired locked away behind the closed doors. But she did…finally… she told her parents everything… gathering every ounce of strength she had ever known or felt. It broke their hearts when she told them everything… hers broke when she did tell them…everything.
Humanity! You do exist! That frightening day… when all of her instincts told her that she was not going to survive the terrifying ordeal and that she had no one to help her… when she was just about to give up and resign to her fate… That final day when her life shattered into tiny fragments, two Angels, in the guise of two kind friends with hearts as big as hearts can be, hearing her frantic cries and pleas for help saved her….gave her refuge in their home…and later made arrangements for her safe passage back to her country and to her home…protected her from him…Him! The one she had trusted with all of her heart…her forever one.
As she flew back home ,lost in her reminiscences , a myriad of conflicting thoughts flitted across her turbulent mind…To her utter shock, he was back at work even as she made her way home ,broken and battered. When she had called him from the stop-over airport to tell him that she was on her way to her homeland, he made it clear to her then and there that she no longer existed for him… that it was over. She knew the reason…she had dared to defy him…she had brought out in the open what had been happening behind the closed doors.
Sometimes even now she would hear of him…that he is still busy attending his party circuits…that he is still up to his same ol’ antics. That was the life he chose over her and loved…he had deserted her… Nothing could shock her anymore, as now nothing should.
She learned now that very few people will and have the strength to stand up for what is right…for what is just. Her family did…her two saviors did…they stood behind her as her wounds healed, scars faded. She learnt how people who genuinely care will always do…and those who do not, who never did…will never do. She learnt how ugly people can become once their masks and façade come off…it was all too confusing and terrifying for her at the same time. All this she learnt in one lifetime…
Her resilience grew… “You are a very strong woman”, people tell her now. That she could be strong…this strong…that she never knew. Life was not about bowing and bending down to someone’s whims and commands … life was not about getting beaten up by someone for whatever reason these ‘some- ones’ would try to justify their actions later on. Life was about being happy and free…free from pain, free from fear.
Marriage was about companionship….it was not about domination…it can never be about dominance. Marriage was about love…it was about standing by each other no matter what. And all this she learnt in one lifetime…
She went to begin her wedded life with rosy dreams but came back with a broken face; but her spirit was indomitable, her soul could never be broken.
“You are a domestic violence victim!” sometimes people blurt out, voice dipped in sympathy when they would hear her story. She smiles then, “No…I am a domestic violence survivor”…she softly corrects them. She says, “I am just somebody…I am somebody called a woman.”
