for better or for worse

For better or for worse
The woman with one ear
Saroj, a diminutive woman, frail with vacant haunting eyes always looked at me as if, pleading me to save her from these invisible and some not so invisible bonds of matrimony which bound her till death do us apart for better or for worse. It seemed as if, this had been coined for specially, I learnt later.
What stood out on her was her wiry hair which somehow managed to escape the tightly bound dupatta covering her head. It seemed omnipresent, always there as if waving a red flag to me…we took her in one late evening when she came outside the farm gates crying for help, asking to be saved from her alcoholic , abusive husband, Sikander.
We gave her shelter that night and she started working, assimilated into the domestic work-force. It seemed she would never stop working, rising early and working late so no one could find fault with her and send her back into the village. I would see her sweeping the floors, picking up a stray leaf from the gardens (which had the temerity to fall under her watch!!) and always dusting with her trademark dupatta .This continued with her content to get her 3 square meals and some hand me down clothes from me. One day, in the middle of the afternoon post lunch someone was frantically ringing the bell, when I went out to check, there she stood with hair all astray wild swirling like a dervish. She looked different and it struck me her dupatta was missing. Saroj cried, “He’s got her, he took her away from the gates”. Please get her back; I want my daughter. I made her sit down and was just patting her when I realized she had a gaping hole on one side with the ear cut up and sewn on one side. A crisscross of stitches in the middle of the skull stared at me telling me a story of their own.
I was shocked and stunned at the violence meted out and the scars on her. When I asked her, she just answered nonchalantly,” Oh! These, he hit me with an axe one day when he came home drunk and I refused him sex.” “I had to pay for my refusal, as it’s his right and he can do what he pleases.” Forget this, get my daughter back she said , wiping her tears .Indian women , gritty, have a genetic default , an inbuilt transmitter where they can bear all pain, abuse in the basest form all in the name of marriage, vivaah. What are these bonds, these ties where one woman can be debased, beaten by an alcoholic husband and she bears it all in the name of those rounds she takes around the ceremonial fire. The moral fiber is weakened where a woman is hacked grotesquely just because she refuses, but the irony is that she still stays with her…
Saroj got her daughter back but I wonder the woman with one ear would/could sever her ties as easily as her ear was hacked. These shackles which tie an Indian bride’s soul need liberation.
Van Gogh cut his ear in a fit of madness and was heralded as an unparallel genius; I wonder when madness will strike the Indian women!