The ragging increased in intensity. But I brought this on myself. When I went home for the holidays, I found it heartbreaking the way my mother and sister lived, hand to mouth. At around that time, the old woman who cooked for us in the hostel retired, claiming fatigue. I met the director and asked if my mother could have the job. He agreed and I returned from the very next holiday with my mother and sister in tow.

Aai was paid thirty rupees a month and her food as well as my sister’s board. She had to cook for fifty or sixty boys. But Aai always said, “This is better than doing free work for the village. I just have to sit in one place and slap on the bhakris.” Aai’s old scrofula problem resurfaced. One by one, the boils would appear and the wounds would suppurate and refuse to dry up.

Now the boarders began to harass me even more.

Some of them were nice but the bullies were aggressive. They were from the upper classes. No one spoke politely to me. And to this were added accusations of food theft. Rumour had it that my mother was feeding me additional quantities. When I sat down to eat, everyone would look daggers at me. So it became impossible for me to go to the kitchen and say a couple of words to my own mother. An invisible wall rose between us.

It was hard work for Aai. The same job was handled by two women in the local Koli boarding school. There were fewer students in that hostel, and the pay was higher. I could see my mother was being exploited. But if I complained, I knew they would say, “She wants the work, she does it. Or she can shove off.”

And so Aai worked like a bull at the wheel of an oil press. All she had was the satisfaction of having her children close by. She had to rise before dawn to get the breakfast usal going. Barely had the boarders finished with that and Aai would have to make twelve to fifteen seers of bhakris.

There wasn’t much variety in the food served. It was generally bhakri and something wet to get it down. The boarders would say: “What kind of gravy is this? You can see the ceiling in it.”

Poor Aai, what could she do?

She worked there for three or four years. No casual leave, no paid leave. All day long, she sat in front of a roaring stove. The kitchen would fill with smoke, a veritable gas chamber. It was only when the school vacation began that she got a break. And then she was only a prisoner out on parole.

The residue of sorrow on my face began to settle then. I did not spend much time in the boarding school. I came in only for meals. Otherwise, I’d be with my upper-caste friends. I would visit their homes, Khambekar’s in particular. His family was also very affectionate.

I did not mention the fact that my mother was the cook at the hostel but I think now that most of my friends probably knew this. No one mentioned it, though, perhaps so as not to hurt my feelings. Once Khambekar’s mother asked me about Aai. My face flushed. I must have looked like a thief caught red-handed.

I began to avoid Dadasaheb too, for no good reason. I suppose I was simply working out my anger against other things happening in my life. When he was supposed to come to the hostel, I would head to the village. Once when it was announced that he was coming, I stayed at a friend’s house on purpose. I returned when I thought he would have left, only to encounter him at the door.

He was very angry. “You’ve been given free admission and food and you’re not observing the discipline of the place,” he said. But it pleased me to feel that I was bold enough to ignore his standing and behave badly with him. In truth I was angry only at the social structures that had brought me to this pass. Dadasaheb could not understand this and it brought us into conflict.

Although I was the kind to turn the other cheek, one day I snapped.

I was quite shocked at my own behaviour that day. It was as if a volcano erupted, spewing lava. I am coming back from school one day, hungry and tired. When I get to the hostel, I hear boys singing in a closed room. Someone is beating accompaniment on a tin. This is no new thing at the hostel. I peer in, casually, through a crack in the door.

What I see makes me explode. My nine- or ten-year-old sister is dancing and the boys are watching her, delighting in it. They are singing an erotic laavni number: “Kaathewaadi ghodyavarti pudyat ghya ho mala; Raajsa, zhaau ya Jejurila’. (‘Set me on your Kathiawari horse, Raja, and let’s be off to Jejuri’.)

I cannot take this. The blood vessels in my head begin to pulse. I kick the door furiously. The boys open it, wondering what’s come over me. I curse them: “You cunts, why don’t you make your mothers and sisters dance for you?” No one says a word. They begin to leave, one by one. That I should get angry at something so ordinary probably surprises them. I hug my sister and sob. All day, I am disturbed.

~~~

The story I’m going to tell you now still has the power to disturb me. How much the boys were to blame is debatable. Indian culture has us all in its vise-like grip; how can the Dalit escape?

And yet I feel no hatred for all those who played a role in this miniature Ramayana. Some of them are now officials of high rank. One heads the Zilla Parishad. When I meet them, they ask after Aai. They speak respectfully of her. There were some for whom my mother has shown more affection than she does for me.

This is how it happened. Aai had not even been working a month in the hostel when she began her period. She was a traditional woman so she wondered how she was supposed to cook when she was in a state of ritual uncleanness. She took her dilemma to the Superintendent. He had no answers. There was no way he was going to pay someone else to work for four days each month. What of it? he said and forced her to go back to the kitchen. How did word of her condition spread to the students? That must remain a mystery.

When I enter the mess, plate and tumbler in hand, I am greeted by a chorus: “Shame, shame.”

No one is willing to eat. I have no idea what this is about. I think the curry might have gone bad, for the students are always griping about it; sometimes it is too salty, sometimes too thin.

Some take an unholy delight in summoning my mother for a scolding while I am there. And then there are some truly perverse types. Once or twice, they have thrown fistfuls of salt into the curry behind her back. When it all gets too much for me, I sometimes steal to my mother’s side in the middle of the night and we weep together. At that age, tears are never far away. A few words can bring on sobs. Sane Guruji has done a good job of describing tears. But so many tears flow that my eyes begin to dry up.

Ignoring everyone now I force down a couple of mouthfuls. Then I get up from my seat and go to find out what has happened. Aai tells me. I want the earth to swallow us. I am too young to realize that it was the same society that had made us untouchable that deemed the woman’s body as unclean in the menses.

At another time, Aai was accused of robbery.

And what was she accused of robbing? Flour. Not that she had anything to do with it. The real thief was the Superintendent. His marriage had just been fixed in Little Sangamner. He was a man of some years, a widower, and the girl was much younger.

His new relatives-to-be lived in the outhouse of a dak banglow with many children and much paraphernalia. Morning and evening, he’d be off for there, grinding his gums. Perhaps the age difference made him generous, for the provisions meant for the hostel began to be sent there on the Superintendent’s orders.

One day, one of the students caught one of the Superintendent’s future relatives leaving via the back door, with a towel full of flour. This crime was laid at Aai’s doorstep. Since the Superintendent had the upper hand over us, neither of us could say anything. We could not afford to anger him. And so when the students had their kangaroo court and accused Aai, I could not say a word in her defence. Nor could she. The world, it seemed, was against us.

Excerpted with permission from Baluta, Daya Pawar, translated from the Marathi by, Jerry Pinto, Speaking Tiger Books.