10. Kuppamma
“Did you eat yet?” Gurusamy says to me. I just move my head from side to side for a yes, or shake for a no.
“It’s all right,” he says to the others, smiling. “She can be like that only, because it’s — she’s my niece only!”
They always laugh at the same joke. They’re also laughing because he’s having a hard time getting the words out. Some of them tease him and scold him in a friendly way; they all laugh and chat, except Patti looks unhappy. Gurusamy keeps making his jokes, but not to me anymore.
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[Content warning: CSA.]
“Is it so hard for you to laugh sometimes?” Patti says. “Or smile? When your husband is talking to you nicely?”
I’m failing at my task to make Gurusamy happy and to get him to stop drinking. Now he’s just looking at me, with a drunken half smile, not saying anything either. I’m supposed to be medicine for him, or like his doctor. But I’m unhappy and frightened, Gurusamy is bored, and Patti is angry; her son was supposed to have a second life.
“You’d be happy to marry some kid,” she says. “But marrying my son isn’t good enough for you.” I don’t say anything, but her words make my heart burn. “You are lucky, you know.”
A couple of days a week he comes, in the evening after work, especially when he’s bored with the illicit vapatti woman, and then goes. I never know when he will show up and I’m always listening for the sound of his bicycle outside.
There had been one more milk incident before I realized they were drugging me, and I stopped drinking anything they gave me in the evening. Now when Gurusamy comes to me, I’m fully awake and I have to fight him. Fighting means mostly crying, trying to push him away; it doesn’t help. But what else can I do.
When I’m with Chitti, busy and working and talking, I’m okay. I can’t show I’m sad. But I’m constantly thinking: What is going on? What can I do? Why is my life like this? What happened to me? And my mind is filled with memories: of all the men who had attacked me before, ever since I could remember; and of my school friends, climbing in the trees with the boys back in Bodi; and all the many young men who liked me and would have wanted me for a wife. But I married for my parents’ sake and if they’re happy, at least one thing has gone right.
And then, as I’m cooking with Chitti, I realize he’s outside; I hear the neighbors greet him — “How are you? You didn’t come for a couple of days! How is your young wife?” — and Subbaya will shout, “Mama is coming, Mama is coming!”, because he’s not very bright and he gets excited that our uncle will use his money to buy things.
Usually he would arrive around 8:30 in the evening; we eat for about an hour, he chats and jokes around. It will all happen so quickly that before I know it, we will have finished dinner, people get up and leave, Chitti will go out, Patti will go out, they close the door, and I know he will rape me.
* * *
One time after lunch, when we were sitting outside the house with everyone, doing timepass and chatting, Gurusamy showed up on his bike. He never came this early and this sober. When he was not there, I was able to put on a smile and talk to people. That is just my character; it didn’t mean there was ever a time when I wasn’t sad or thinking about suicide. And when he arrived, I immediately froze and stopped talking.
He said his hellos to everyone, and then to me: “I want some of my friends to meet you today.” He was leaning against his two-wheeler; I could smell a bit of alcohol on his breath but he wasn’t drunk. “My airport colleagues. I’m just coming from there. We go and say hello and have dinner, okay?”
I didn’t say anything. I had never gone out like that without Patti coming with me, or sometimes Chitti; it was an unsafe area and I couldn’t see anything after dark. But now I was even more nervous because I remembered Patti telling me earlier: “Maheswari, if he ever asks you to go with him to a house, don’t go.”
Gurusamy looks cleaner than usual, he is wearing his khaki uniform and shirt. That he’s sober makes me even more wary.
“No,” I say.
“All right, if that’s how you want it, I’ll stay here with you tonight?” he says. “You’d like that better?”
Everyone laughs. It’s all a joke to them; I’m the shy young wife who is not yet comfortable with her husband. But I know he’s making a real threat.
“You come with me and I won’t touch you,” he says.
So I move my head, to say: okay. “But I want Patti to come.” I turn to her, asking for help with my eyes.
When she had told me never to go with Gurusamy to visit his friends, she had also said: “If he makes you go, don’t spend the night!” She never explained why. I’m sure now she has to put her foot down, tell him I can’t go, or at least offer to come with us. But she says: “No, I can’t come, but you go ahead.”
“Good,” says Gurusamy. “Go get ready now.”
When I go back inside to thread my hair and put a bindi on my forehead, Patti follows me into the house and walks over to me. She’s talking fast, trying to make sure no one can hear us; it’s hard to make out what she’s saying.
“If they give you food there, don’t eat it!”
“What?”
“And come back tonight,” she whispers, “don’t sleep there. They are not good people, they might give you poison.”
“What, why? Patti, I don’t want to go!”
“It’s okay, you just go for a little bit and then tell him you want to come back, okay?”
“But who are they?”
“You will see who when you get there.”
* * *
I’m sitting on the back of his bicycle in my saree, my legs on one side. The bike makes a squeaking noise, kitsh-kitsh-kitsh-kitsh, as Gurusamy pedals along the bumpy dirt roads through Thiruvanmiyur. He has looked tense ever since we left the house and doesn’t say anything. It takes an hour, the sun is already setting when we arrive at a small hut in Thiravani where an old-looking lady greets us.
“Vaanga, vaanga,” she says, “come in, welcome!” She seems very friendly but won’t stop looking at me. It’s like she’s startled to see me, but there’s warm food in pots on the floor; she is expecting us. Inside, a younger woman greets us, maybe in her early 30s. They look the same: narrow, dark faces with black circles around the eyes, both of them tall and thin, except the daughter is shorter than the mother, and her hair isn’t gray. We sit down on the floor and they start serving food. Gurusamy begins to eat, no one is introduced.
“Eat, eat!” they tell me.
I hesitate. “I’m not eating anymore today.”
“No no no, you have to,” says the older woman and smiles. Her teeth are red from years of chewing paan. “All this I’ve made for you! No choice, you must eat!”
“I’m not hungry.”
Now both women start to look hurt.
“What is this?” says Gurusamy. He sits on my right side, the daughter is sitting to his right. The only one I can see clearly is the amma in front of me, so I’m not sure what Gurusamy is doing. I have a feeling that he and the other woman are talking to each other with their eyes.
“Okay, maybe you would prefer chai first?” the amma says. “I will go get some,” she says to her daughter.
“I don’t need any food or any drink either,” I say.
“First you have the chai, we’ll see if you feel like eating after that,” she says and leaves. As soon as she has stepped out, the younger woman gets up and goes to another room; then Gurusamy gets up and follows her. I’m left sitting by myself and confused. All the food, the plates and pots, everything is still on the floor in front of me. Serving food on plates instead of banana leaves is how you eat with family, not guests. Why had Patti said, “You’ll know who they are when you get there”? What kind of work are these people doing at the airport?
I hear soft talking. There is very little space in the hut; Gurusamy and the woman are not really in another room but an area behind a thin leaf partition. They are secretly talking to each other. I can hear her bangles making clinking sounds. Minutes pass and they don’t come out; there is a sinking feeling in my chest. It is hard to explain; it is not jealousy, I don’t love Gurusamy. But that he treats me so badly and then would take me to this kind of place — all of it makes being his wife even more humiliating. Though I’m not sure I understand what is happening, or who these women are.
Gurusamy comes out, a big smile on his face. “Just sitting here, thinking something serious, eh?” he says. “Still no appetite?” Maybe they stepped out so he could make her less jealous of me? On our way here, he looked almost angry; now he’s happy, talking this and that to me and to the daughter. Then the mother returns, carrying a brass sombu full of chai and pours it into tumblers. They are all having the same stuff so I decide it won’t hurt to drink some. But Gurusamy has drunk something else too, I realize. How is it possible? Did he keep some saarayam in the house?
They keep eating and making jokes, and every time they burst out in loud laughs, the mother slaps him, teasing him, the daughter sitting on the other side with her hand on his thigh. What is going on?
“So, when are you coming to stay with us?” says the mother to me. “My daughter will take good care of you. She’ll wash your clothes, cook for you — why would you even want to stay with your patti?”
“But who are you?” I ask.
“Why? You don’t know who I am?” she says and looks to Gurusamy, then back at me. “He didn’t tell you?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“I’m Kuppamma. Your father knows me!”
That is a name I know very well. So, it is this amma who is Gurusamy’s vapatti? But he is sleeping with both mother and daughter — and wants me to come live with all of them? I’m getting very upset: about that horrible thought, about having been lied into coming here, and that this woman has talked to me about my family.
“My father knows you, huh?” I say, and without another word, I get up. I don’t care if it’s dark outside, I want away from this house.
“Sit down!” says Gurusamy.
“Yes, eat!” Kuppamma says, looking hurt, then starts demanding: “Why aren’t you eating? I cooked all this rice for you! Why would you not eat my food? Where are you going?”
“I don’t want it,” I say and run outside.
It’s dark. I’m standing in the middle of the road; Gurusamy follows behind, I can hear his footsteps but I can’t see anything. “Come, come, come,” he says, trying to coax me back. Maybe he’s afraid I’ll run away, get lost and disappear. I don’t know Chennai, I don’t even know where I am. Then I hear Kuppamma’s raised voice.
“Oh, you married this young girl and that’s why you don’t want us now, is it? Fifteen years I’ve taken care of you!” She’s upset seeing Gurusamy running around after me right outside her home, giving me all this attention.
“Maheswari, we have to go inside,” he says, trying to grab my hand. I can hear that there are other people somewhere further away, watching us, talking with each other. They’ll want to come and see what the problem is and try to help — that always happens.
“You’re like Karunanidhi now, is it?” she keeps going. “You want to have young girls around yourself so you can live a long life?”
“I want to go home now!” I say to them.
“Why don’t you just go with your young wife? Go and support her!” she yells. “I bought all the vegetables, cooked us a nice dinner — and this is how she behaves in my house? Why is she doing this?”
Someone walks up to us. “What happened here?” It’s a woman’s voice.
“He married this one! And left us!”
“Oh, this is your new wife?” the neighbor says. “Congratulations. That is why we haven’t seen you around so much?”
My ears are sharper and sharper ever since I started to lose my eyesight; I can tell there are many more neighbors watching now, somewhere close by. It’s making both of them nervous; Kuppamma changes her tone, tries to cajole me. “Okay-ma, you don’t have to eat,” she says, “if you don’t feel like it. But let’s go back inside now, okay?”
“No, we all eat,” says Gurusamy. He’s losing his patience, starts pulling me by the arm. “You come in now or I won’t take you back to your patti’s place!”
“I don’t want to eat, I want to go home now!”
I’m refusing to move. People are watching us; now Gurusamy tries to be gentler with me too. “Why you want to go back? What is there? We can go together later. Come on.”
“Yes, it’s ten o’clock already,” says Kuppamma. “You just sleep here now and you can go home first thing in the morning!”
I’m very nervous. They are not going to let me go, I know. They keep trying to coax me, but I just stop listening; I walk back towards where the house is, find the entrance and sit on the ground outside, next to the door, and start to cry. They give up and go back inside. For about ten minutes, I can hear them talking, raising their voices over each other. Then Gurusamy steps out, alone, a dark cloud over his head. “Let’s go,” he says, without looking at me. He walks over to his bicycle, grabs it and slams it on the ground in front of me. “Sit.”
I take my place in the back and we go: kitsh-kitsh-kitsh-kitsh… All I can see is the back of Gurusamy’s head and shoulders as he pedals fast through the darkness. He starts cursing into the night. “Why did you ever show up? Just to spoil my life, huh? Who do you think you are, Aishwarya Rai? You think you’re so wonderful and important?” It’s like he’s talking to me but doesn’t even care or know if I can hear what he’s saying. “You don’t know anything! You’re a dumb blind woman without any dowry! Who else would even have you? She’s the one who took care of me only and washed my clothes and cooked for me! She’s good! And you, why would you—”
And then — bang! A loud noise stops him. Gurusamy starts, steps on the brake. The bicycle slows down and he gets off to inspect it: the back tire has punctured. His whole body stiffens, like he can’t believe what he’s seeing.
“You don’t listen!” he yells. And he smacks me in the back of the neck. His hand is big.
That was the first time he ever hit me. What had I done? It couldn’t have been my fault that the tire broke, I weighed less than 40 kg.
We walked the rest of the way; he kept cursing me without even looking my way, telling me there’s no one else who would ever take care of me, that I’ve spoiled everything, and why did I even marry him, and that my parents dumped me on him because they are so poor, and on and on. At home, he kicks open the screen in the doorway and stomps over to where Chinna-Patti is asleep on the floor: “You ruined my life!” he yells. She jumps up, terrified, not understanding what’s going on. “You ruined my happiness!” And he storms out of the house.
* * *
When I wake up in the morning, my heart feels light. It’s a strange, good feeling: that I had kept him away from me. After Gurusamy had shouted at his mother and disappeared, he came back at one in the morning, so drunk he couldn’t stay on his feet, collapsed outside the house and fell asleep there. It had been a horrible night and I was shook and unhappy, but whatever else had happened, for the first time, I had done something to push him away.