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‘Yes, please,’ she said, every syllable dripping with humiliation. ‘I have no one else to turn to.’
‘Don’t you think you have brought enough shame to us already? Look at our parents – Mummy is on dialysis and Daddy has spent his entire life cleaning up after you. You want us to do more?’
She looked down at her hands, silent, letting the tears do the talking.
‘Beta…’ her mother tried again.
‘You have been so selfish,’ her brother started again, ‘and I am tired, completely tired of continuously trying to understand you. I hate being your brother, I hate—’
‘Shut up!’ Priya shouted, cutting in. ‘Everyone, shut up!’
The sheer power and authority in the voice, and the fact that it was coming from someone who had not raised her voice in the last three decades, resulted in total silence in the room.
Four pairs of surprised eyes turned around to face Priya.
‘You all disgust me!’ she spat, her gentle face now red with anger. ‘Is this what I have spent my entire life creating? Family is the anchor when the waters get rough, it is a circle of strength and love. And here you are, telling your little sister that you hate being her brother? And you,’ she now looked at her husband, ‘we created these children together. If one of them needs our help, no matter what she has done in the past, will you turn your back on her now? Now, when she needs it the most?’
‘Priya, don’t exert yourself, I—’
‘Out, everyone, now,’ she said.
Four surprised faces exchanged looks. This was the first time their gentle mother had asked them to leave a room.
‘Out,’ she repeated, ‘Now.’
Stunned, they got up to leave the room when she called out again. ‘Koyal?’ Her voice was now gentler, softer.
Koyal turned around sharply.
‘Ma!’
‘Stay back, please,’ Priya said, ‘and close the door behind you. We need to talk about you and Amit.’
13
‘What did Amit do?’ Ma asked, her eyes shining with an angry light that Koyal had not seen in them since her illness. There was no escaping Ma now, she knew.
‘What did Amit do?’
The word. That one word she had never been able to say out loud, almost as if not saying it out loud would make it un-happen.
‘Koyal Hansini Raje, you answer when your mother asks you something!’
‘Rape. Marital rape.’
A gasp from her mother made her look up. Ma’s face looked white as paper and her eyes were wet. Mother and daughter stared at each other for the next few moments.
‘He raped me and he hit me,’ Koyal went on, breaking almost instantly into tears. ‘He made me believe I was useless.’ Koyal sobbed, the pent-up frustration, the loneliness, the hurt, findng a way out. The sobs hit the walls, echoed in the room and wrapped themselves around her in a dank blanket that offered no comfort.
Ma looked at her and then big, fat tears began to roll down her cheeks too. ‘Oh, my poor, poor baby,’ she sobbed and opened her arms wide.
Koyal rushed into them and when her mother gathered her to her chest, for the first time in four years, Koyal felt like she was at peace.
For a few minutes, mother daughter stayed like that, lost in thought. And then Ma spoke. ‘Four,’ Ma said, her voice dripping with red-hot anger.
‘Wh … wha
t?’
