Yes. She is his wife. It is said she was born as his wife! Her parents celebrated her marriage by force in her tenth year itself. She also does not deny it, and it happened a long time ago!

She was his wife four years ago. But now? We cannot say so. As per law, if a husband and wife do not live together for two years, she can get divorced from him. At least she has the right to say she is not his wife. She can lead an independent life.

But she does not know any of these things. Even if she knows, she does not derive additional benefit. As a matter of fact, the opportunity did not arise for her to divorce him. As for her life, she has been living independently for four years. Even when he was with her, did she live happily, sitting pretty!

He went away. Where he went no one knows. It is not known how far away he went. But she had great confidence that he was not dead. That may be the reason why she wears bangles like a married woman who has a living husband. Whenever possible, she puts on the bindi on her brow. The villagers treat her as a married woman whose husband was alive.

But we cannot say she still loves him. We cannot also say at the same time that she hates him with all her heart. There is never a day when she does not remember him on some occasion or other. There is not a day she does not curse him. There is not a day she does not cry. That is her life.

He left her. We cannot also say he left her for good. He simply left her and went away. That was all. There was no information from him. For the last four years they had been living their lives for themselves separately.

It is doubtful whether he knows how she is living now! It is also not known whether he remembers her at all. In the beginning she entertained some hope. But her tree of hope dried up. She also dried up and became a skeleton of a dried-up tree.

She has her parents, elder brother, younger brother and younger sister. She has other male and female relatives. Yet she runs her family all alone. Her self-respect does not permit her to shift her family to her parents. Anyway, what is it she gains by living with others? They live their lives separately. She was brought up only for marriage like many others.

That is why she lives in the hut left by him. She lives with the children left by him. She lives in the memory of his having left her. She lives as a guardian of the responsibilities left behind by him.

All people in the village knew that he had left her and gone. Yet his shadow follows her like an evil force all the time. Perhaps he is not responsible for her difficulties. She is tortured by the middlemen and those who became rich all of a sudden and with the problems and difficulties they create for her. Her sky is a lonely sky. The sky over that village is filled with restrictions, hopelessness and darkness. Her small heart is filled with fear.

Yet, she is living. She cannot but live and so she is living. She hates suicide. She fears it. So, she lives. She loves her children. So, she lives. That is the reason she did not die. That was the reason she could not die though she thought of dying. Perhaps the newly rich thought that that was the crime she had committed.

Their sight was too sharp. There is no count as to how many times her body was pierced and injured because of their sharp looks. There is no benefit even if the number is counted. Her hut was pulled down into a heap four times by now. They made her shelter less.

Her wounds reveal that her body responds to touch. The wounds confine her to her cot for a week or ten days. The agony of those days will be of a different kind. That it would have been good if one of them had died. Those curses and beatings are because of him. Something seems to have happened sometime back! He was involved in it! If it was not known where to search for him, this was the method to be adopted. But it is nowhere written like that. Yet what is done is that. In that manner he did not leave her all these four years. Yet he is not seen. Now and then he is heard of in this manner.

The spring in her life faded again and again. The happy days when she lived with him were also receding into the background. In recent times nothing had been heard of him also. She was happy that her body was not being subjected to wounds. Fear for some other reason, agitation and in this manner, she lost peace of mind. The silence was giving her greater pain. That means she was still loving him. She was living like his wife. Yet he is not seen, is not heard of.

The sound that had gone silent suddenly exploded. Somewhere a newly rich had died. The storm that raged as a result swept off her hut and destroyed five other houses in the village. Hundreds more houses were razed to the ground in neighboring villages. 

It was his shadow that made her shelter less for the fifth time. Her six-year-old daughter was lying in a pool of blood with a broken head. The eleven-year-old son had a broken hand. She had fallen down and was unable to move. They remained like ruins in the ruined hut for seven days.

The newly rich attackers warned the villagers saying that if they gave her shelter or rebuilt her hut, they too would suffer the same fate as her. For another ten days fear ruled the place. Later the village erected her hut again. It had only a look of a hut, but it was no hut of the past. The old articles were also not there. It was a shelter that looked like a pandal. She wiped her tears with gratitude thinking that it was itself a great boon.

Her eyes had not yet dried up, which she had wiped. She heard another news. When the news was brought to her, he was not alive. They did not hand over to her at least his dead body. They killed him and burnt his body to ashes somewhere. She could not believe the news which she did not see with her own eyes. A little hope glowed feebly in her mind.

Hardly a month passed when her young daughter told her mother that an account was written about her father. Her tender hand held a colored paper. It contained her father’s photograph. She wept uncontrollably.

In that manner he left them for good. Another chapter in her life ended abruptly. Yet strangely, his responsibilities were still with her. His responsibilities became her responsibilities and controlled her life. She did not desire such a life. As for him, not only his life, even his death took place in the way he desired. Though without her volition, her life took the same old shape.

She can remarry without her second marriage, creating problems for her responsibilities and sacrifices. Society could not inject courage into her for a second marriage. So, she could not opt for a second marriage. 

Time was passing. She was growing in years. Along with experiences, her courage was also growing. Now she collected her courage to re-marry, not caring for the jibes and remarks of society. But she cannot marry now. Her children were not prepared to forgive her now. They wanted their mother from earlier times. Even if she had a second husband, she wants children like the earlier children. She wants both things. But society asked her to choose one of them. She opted for affection, love and motherliness. So, in her proverbial hundred years of married life, the eight years she spent with him remained her boon.

~*~

Now she has grown into an old woman. Her son who grew up and supported, her, died like his father. Her daughter, who married, remained in her new home without going back to her mother, like her mother.

She grew blind. She cannot see any of her people. Tragedy has been taking place in her life again and again. Tragedy entered her house more severely and cruelly than the earlier times, the mother losing her children.

Another colored paper in her changeless life in which her problems were not solved. The paper contained only details about his birthplace, the manner he grew up and the deeds he had done. There were also compensation and condolence. But it did not mention anything of the sacrifices she had made. But anyway, she does not know anything about these. Though she knew, nothing could be done about it.

That paper closed midway to another chapter in her life more unexpectedly. At the end, like a twisted ripe leaf falling off in the forest, she too died with a body shriveled in wrinkles.

Those who knew her remembered her as the daughter of so-and-so. Some praised her, saying that she was ‘that’ man’s wife. Many extolled her as the mother of that boy. In this way, this father- oriented language made her the daughter of someone, as someone’s wife, a mother of so-and-so and not recognize her as an individual having a name for herself. Unless there were such ideas, a language also will exist. She was born and bred not to live her life. She passed away in a life which was not hers. Society expected from her only sacrifice and her life had no rights. She is the stone edict of sacrifice which melts away in all circumstances. This is the history of her sacrifices made to society while supporting her family. Her name is ‘Housewife’.

Original Telugu published in Nalupu fortnightly, (May, 1991)