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.