eFiction India eFiction India Vol.02 Issue.09 | Page 59

STORIES

from others. Within a few seconds, they
were all around the daughter-in-law of the
sweet maker household.
Eight to ten heavily-built young men came
and asked her, “Tell us where everyone has
gone?” She was not able to utter a single
word. Her whole body was shivering. She
looked at them with wide open eyes. The
leader of the group said, “What are you
staring at? Put the fire on; we are hungry.
Put oil in the pan. Fry the baby in your lap
and feed us.”
The daughter-in-law of the sweet maker
household had just given birth to a son.
She had not even held the child for a few
hours. The child hadn’t taken to the mother’s breast yet. How the mother’s heart
must have been beating! She had a lot of
patience and a lot of strength. She said, “If
you want to eat the child, sit quietly.” She
held the child in her lap and lit the fire in a
wood burning oven. Soon the oil was hot.
She stood up and with a ladle in her hand
started spooning the hot oil from the pan
onto the face of the soldiers. The soldiers
fled the place screaming for their life.
Granny used to say this happened when she
was young. Had Parijat been a little older,
she could have understood that this incident was never possible because the atrocities of the Marhattas occurred before granny’s birth. She did not have any clear idea
about the Marhattas then. She imagined
that they must be like elephants, horses,
tigers, lions or perhaps demons. Why else
would they ask for human meat? She could
not disbelieve this story of Granny but the
other story made her very sad. Her mind
was full of disgust.
As Granny combed her hair with the sticky
oil, she would massage her back and say
this back is a golden back which has a son
for the family. After her birth, the much
desired son had been born in this family so
Granny thought her back was the golden
back. She also used to narrate a short story
about this. After praying for a son to various
gods and goddesses, when her mother had
lost all her hope of getting a son, Granny

heard of a tested formula for begetting a
son and applied it on her mother. Once she
picked up the worms from Parijat’s stool
and hid them in a banana and gave it to
her mother to eat. In the course of events,
her mother gave birth to the much awaited
son and Parijat got a brother. The day she
heard this story from Granny, her mind was
full of disgust. She did not want to sit with
Granny to get her hair combed anymore.
She looked at Granny with a sense of disbelief. She felt her mother was betrayed. She
really felt pity for her mother.
Part II

T

WO EYES WET with tears had
haunted her since childhood.
At dusk, when the dirty bulbs
emblaze, she remembers those eyes. Then
slowly, the lady in her forties adorning a
white saree with a white blouse appeared
in front of her. The lady’s voice disturbed
her Parajit’s. The voice of the lady was so
deep; it sounded as if it was drowned in
deep water. She was very desperately saying,
“Please give me something, oh Nuni, my
children have been starving. They have
not had a morsel since morning.” She had
a cloth bag in her hand. Her pleadings
never reached Parajit’s mother’s ears. The
lady would sit on the ground and wipe her
tears. After a while, mother would twitch
her nose in disgust and say, “How can I give
you every day? You come over every evening
begging. What do you think? No one has
any work but to listen to you?”
The lady never got up or left. In a rage,
mother would bang the utensils or throw
the broom she held. She used to leave the
place thumping her feet without giving anything to the lady. She would roam across the
house and come back to the lady and say,
“Are you still there? Didn’t I say, there is no
rice in the house? Where will I get rice?”
“Please give. Pl