Struggle - A Short Story

I wrote this a couple of years ago. I would really appreciate your opinion on it. If it seems to end abruptly, that's because I am hoping to write a second part. It's a tad bit dramatic for my taste now, but whatever...

'Struggle' - A Short Story

By: Pallavi Datta.

Red brick upon red brick, a city of smoke, almost as if drawn with sooty hands and bits of charcoal. Gray skies, broken glass-windows, and rickety three-wheelers on dirt roads. Kilometers and kilometers of wires hanging on street poles, an ugly black jungle of burning rubber and there is still no electricity in my little room.
A yellow hue illuminates the rotting paper on the desk. The sound of a scratching fountain pen is what I wait for. A thought, a memory, an incident, the exciting, the mundane, something, anything… my pen almost scratches the surface of the paper once, pregnant with black fluid, waiting to set free that one drop of ink that would perhaps paint my future.
Old jute slippers next to sour milk on the floor, a cupboard with four shirts, two pants, they are all that I own in this city.
A sudden rap on the door makes me jump out of my skin, it makes my heart flutter, makes me spill the one cup of tea I had wrangled out of the gully-tea shop on a loan. I told him that I would pay him back. And with what, I asked myself. May be the money I don’t have to pay the pan-walla for all those smokes, or may be the money I don’t have to pay the rent the landlord is asking for now.
I never realized, exactly when it was that my struggle to become a published writer turned into a futile one for survival.
Food, a roof, to sleep I must have a bed; all protocols of society dictate that one must ‘have’. Have clothes, have water, have food, have knowledge, it all really boils down to having money. I see that if I am to write today, I cannot live tomorrow because tomorrow has a cost in some rupees that must be had…
I call this, this room, these four walls, this moth eaten sheet, this tainted mirror, the foster home of my lost hopes. When they first read my work, they told me to forget about it; apparently my work had nothing to offer. I created a world full of old ideals and virtues that are bought and sold today as cheap as a bar of soap. What was it that I hung around for then? It was over as sure as it had never begun. But, can an end have no beginning?
I look at the little steel Tiffin on the bed, a lid with “Prokash” etched on it in Bengali by my mother. Inside are some sweets, her ten odd dreams for me and her prayer to kali-ma for my safety. My home, that tiny steel box is a piece of my home, and as I open it, I go back there. The sweet taste melts in my mouth and I remember now, the kitchen smells of coils and Aunchi auntie’s sweat as she wrestled with the plates the in the washing area on the floor. With the taste gone, I am dully wretched back to this room. I am defeated, the words are lost. I see only these fragmented images, as fragmented as I am. Only a shadow of who I was lurks about the corners of my mind. Just a line today, it is a color without a picture to put it in. As I sit over the desk for hours, into the putrid night, the wind blows out the candle, I can still smell the burning wick. This room is a wound; it is the essence of my entire existence, four shirts, and two pants. This room is me.
I will go back home… may be another month, then I will go back home once again. Till then I exist, perhaps they will come back to me, my words, perhaps they will come back.

Write Off The Bat

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Bathe Religiously.

By

Pallavi Datta.

Nilimaa was safe now. She was safe and though she had never really been cold, she felt warm for the first time in a very long time. She had asked for help. The world, her parents, her in laws, even Raman, her husband had taught her but one lesson in life, ‘never ask for help’. She grew up in Delhi, where truly no one belonged to a caste or religion. All that seemed to matter was money and how much of it one had. Were you the auto type, the bus type or the chauffer driven type.

Nilimaa, made the terrible mistake of falling in love with Raman. Suddenly friends who sat at a college table, content in the happy oblivion of being dressed alike, and going to the same coffee shops were compelled to think of religion. They would sit down and ponder the meanings of words such as ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’. They made a real effort to see the difference. Perhaps driven by a naïve understanding of what those words meant, and what those words meant to them, they came to a decision.

Nilimaa married Raman. Nilimaa became Nilam. He had promised her the world, its every comfort, it was a small bargain in return, she thought. She exchanged her name for his love, and his family’s acceptance. But soon the life that they had imagined, this consumerist utopia that a city like Delhi had offered was not enough.

Nilam longed to be called Nilimaa, it was the name her parents had given her, and she could not fore go that love to seek an entirely new name and person.

The days seemed to run in to each other like faulty wiring. They were all the same; the same painful pang of a wasted education would burn Nilam’s skin as she slogged on the stove and cooked for ten people. She cut the vegetables with misdirected anger and cried in to the onions as they died a guiltless death. She washed their clothes, and as she wrung the water out of them, her breathing became rapid almost in a frantic ecstasy as she imagined the item of clothing was Raman’s neck.

On one of these days, Shikha ma, Raman’s grand mother walked in on Nilimaa’s personal shame. Nilimaa was on the bed, on her knees, reading the afternoon namaaz.

She wasn’t beaten… They gave her food, but no one talked to Nilimaa. It was as if she was lost in a dark silent cave, but the cave some how was floating amongst a busy road on a hot and noisy day. The stillness was daunting, things never changed. Nilimaa was stuck, stuck in a home full of people whose love for her was subjected to more ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ than anyone would care for.

She gave up her name for them… Now she was being asked to give up her beliefs in this loud silence. The demand was in the way they would receive a plate from her hand, shrink away; functional but somehow disgusted, it was in the way they looked at her…

So, Nilamaa would give them what they asked of her. She would compromise who she had once been. But Nilimaa would bathe religiously.

There is a bathroom in west Delhi, where every morning, a naked woman kneels on a wet floor. She puts her hands up to her face and asks for respite. Nilimaa asks for forgiveness, Nilimaa asks for help and she believes it will come.