Our flat has a sweeper who comes in for half hour and cleans up the common areas everyday. She would constantly take leave which was a cause of concern for all of us.
She is a frail woman, very weak and always used to come with puffed eyes. She has a son who works somewhere and a teenaged school-going daughter.
Since her husband is a daily wage earner and a drunkard, she had the responsibility to supplement her son's income to run her family.
This drunkard would beat her up regularly everyday. Would question her about where she went, why she was sitting while she should be standing, (Perhaps he may also ask why the dog on the street barked thrice instead of once or twice just to have a reason to beat her up). This was an everyday ritual and she lived in perpetual fear of her husband.
She would come to work, hurriedly finish off, run back home, always be petrified with fear that her husband may have come back home. Be ready for this barbaric ritual, anyway. That was what she went through all these years. He would come to our flats searching for her, I was the one who used to turn this fellow away from the gate itself. I din't want to see such fellows around our complex. They will be emboldened to enact this tamasha in front of us just to show their power and might over their mate. I told him to his face that I would not like to see him at our place under the pretext of searching for his wife.
For for the past one month, I noticed that she appeared happier, her daughter too, who would substitute for her often, appeared much brighter and healthier than in the past.
Only yesterday when I was home, I had the opportunity to interact with her for some issues. In passing I asked her about her husband. She broke into such a blissful smile. She said his beating has stopped completely! He had reformed. I could not believe my ears and asked her how this happened.
She narrated how, one day while on his beating spree, his son who had come home earlier from work saw him at it, tried to physically separate his parents, got hit by his father and when his father din't stop beating the mother, he took his crudely made cricket bat lying around and hit him on his forehead. The father fell down more shocked than from the hit. Since he could not believe he got up and again went for his wife, this time the boy seemed to have hit his father harder. The boy also warned his father not to touch his mother and if he did so, he won't know where he will hit him the next time. He also told his mother to inform him the next time this was repeated in his absence.
Luckily there was no next time. The grown son has taken over control of the situation. He often checks with the mother on his father's behaviour while all are present at home. She said her husband is now afraid of his son. The son was behaving like the headmaster now. If he asks his father to sit or stand or go out, he meekly obeys without a word of protest.
She said she felt so peaceful and her daughter who also used to get beaten alongwith the mother, is shining with good health, both physically and mentally.
Kind words, surrendering to domestic voilence, submitting oneself to such behaviour from the other are not the answer to this problem was the lesson I learnt while talking to her yesterday. Give the doctor his own medicine in full measure seems to be the best remedy. Going on inflicting pain by one and going on bearing it by the other is not a healthy equation at all. The sufferer has to address this problem to make the torturer understand what it is to suffer such domestic voilence for whatever the reason may be for such voilent behaviour. We are not animals. Even among animals, like in dog fights on the roads, we find both parties, giving it as good as they get it.
The more the passive one suffers in silence, the more the upper hand the dominant partner takes. It becomes such a bad habit and addiction that both parties actually anticipate these sad occurances as a routine.
In the above case the woman, who is too weak physically, has been advised by her son to hit back with a stick should his father beat her while he is away. Now she says, she no more lives in a constant fear of physical abuse and torture. While she was narrating the bad treatment I could imagine what she must have gone through. The drunkard would catch hold of her frail hands so tightly that all her glass bangles would break under that pressure, at times resulting in cuts and bruises on her wrists. Pulling and tugging at her hair was another torture where her head would ache for many hours after the incident. Of course beating and kicking was expected on top of these.
Salute to the worthy son for his courage to stand up against this kind of jungle behaviour.
Mahalakshmi.
