In the meantime it was getting dark and mother had not returned from her work in the government dispensary. And I was beginning to feel hungry. I looked at my grandmother to see what she was doing. She had closed her eyes and was mumbling some words under her breath, almost oblivious of my presence there. After what seemed like a long time, she got up slowly and said to herself, ‘It’s time to feed the pigs and chickens.’ Once again I was plunged into despair, interpreting this as her way of dismissing me. But I sat on and decided that no matter what they, my mother and grandmother, did, I would resist being sent away and would insist that I belonged with them and that I was not in any way different from them. Thinking about what to say to mother when she came home, I found myself becoming angry and resentful towards these two older women who had withheld the truth from me, even though I admitted that they had shown only love and concern for me all this time. But I kept on asking myself: why had they not told me the truth?

  Medemla’s History

  I am Martha’s mother but the real story of my life began long before her birth, on the day I received that terrible letter from Imsutemjen, my long-time fiancé, telling me that he could not marry me because his father was vehemently opposed to the idea. I still cannot describe the feeling of rejection and betrayal that seemed to incinerate me, reducing me to nothingness. I began to wonder if there was anything peculiar or different in me that repelled his father. It took the better part of a year for me to come out of the depression which set in. Only because of the heavy workload as a resident nurse in the hospital where I trained that I was able to outwardly maintain some semblance of normalcy. My father was terribly hurt by this unexpected turn and came to see me. But my mother simply sent word through him that I should consider myself fortunate in not marrying such a man. Though there were good proposals after the break-up, I rejected every single one without a qualm, much to the consternation of my parents. They were shocked that I would do such a thing, especially in a case or two where they had tentatively given their consent to the boys’ parents. When it became apparent to everyone, my parents included, that I was determined to remain single, they simply left me alone.

  And then Martha came into my life as though ordained by some unknown powers. I happened to be the staff nurse in the maternity ward and had to oversee every delivery. Generally, people have the habit of coming to hospitals as a last resort when all home remedies fail and quacks wash their hands off, citing God’s will. We were able to help save many such cases in our ward but there was the occasional failure where a patient died through totally unforeseen causes. Martha’s mother was such a case. When she was brought to us she had lost much blood and was near collapse. If the baby was not delivered soon, we were afraid that both mother and child would die. But the husband would not consent to a Caesarean section; so the failing woman had to be given inductive drips and was made to exert some more to push the baby out. Luckily, the delivery was accomplished and the healthy baby began to squeal the moment she was born. Then disaster struck: the mother went into convulsions and before the doctor could be summoned, she died.

  I have never felt such a sense of failure as I did that day. No matter how much I tried to convince myself that it was a hopeless case from the very beginning, I somehow felt personally responsible for the tragedy; that in the joy of delivering a living child we had somehow neglected to detect the tell-tale signs of some serious problem in the woman’s weakened body. When the husband heard the news, he broke down and cried like a baby. But when he learned that the child was a girl, his entire demeanour changed. He stood up in a rage and railed against the nurses, the hospital and above all against a cruel God who had denied him a son. When he was asked what he was going to do about the baby girl, he shot back, ‘What will I do with another girl? Do whatever you want; I don’t want to see her ever, she who has killed my wife.’

  This is how Martha became a ward of the hospital and an addition to the group of abandoned children who would either be adopted or brought up by the Mission. The name Martha was given to her by one of the nurses after the father disowned her. From the very beginning there was something about this baby who had caused so much anguish to people on her entry into the world. For some inexplicable reason I became attached to her from those early days and when she started to coo and smile, my heart was captured by the serenity and beauty of her smile. Even after I was shifted from that ward, I used to visit her every day before going home. She began to recognize me and would cry when I left. It was as if some unseen hand was forging a bond between my lonely self and this abandoned child and inwardly, I began to dread the day when some childless couple would adopt and take her away from my life. That is how I began to examine the possibility of adopting her myself.

  At first it seemed like a preposterous idea, even to me! Imagine a single unmarried woman, still completing the obligatory internship in the hospital, unsure of future placement either in this very hospital or elsewhere, daring to think of adopting an orphan girl. But above all these practicalities stood the hurdle of genetic and cultural disparity. I was an Ao-Naga, of medium height, fair complexion and still young at twenty-six. And Martha? Dark as a bat, with distinctly aboriginal features and a head of thick curly hair already showing signs of an Afro! I was all too aware of these obstacles but strangely, they only reinforced my desire to take this child and make her my daughter.

  I then decided to write to mother asking her if she would look after this child I was planning to adopt until I fulfilled my obligation to the hospital. In my letter, I gave only the barest details about Martha, wilfully omitting the physical description, only highlighting the mother’s tragic death and the father’s blunt and harsh refusal even to look at his own flesh and blood. I was not very optimistic about my mother’s response because I did mention the fact that Martha’s parents belonged to the tea tribe. It was nearly a month before mother replied saying that if such a step would make me happy, she was willing to take the child to the village and look after her until I found a regular job.

  I was ecstatic over this positive response and went immediately to the Nursing Superintendent with my proposal. She listened in silence and dismissed me with a curt reply, ‘Think over it seriously and come back in a week’s time.’ I was terribly disappointed and also confused; these people who always taught us about loving the unfortunate, ugly and sick people of the world seemed to disapprove of my wish to adopt an abandoned child. But I would not give up and went to her earlier than she had suggested. I told her about the arrangement with my mother for looking after the child until I finished my stint in the hospital. This time, the Super was ready with the terms: if I insisted on adopting Martha, she told me, I would have to leave my job immediately and would get no letter of reference from the hospital. I was stunned! They were going to punish me for doing something which they always preached. If they thought that this would sway my decision about adopting Martha, they were sadly mistaken. It only made me more adamant in my resolve. I told the Super that I still wanted to go through with the adoption and not only that, they should pay me for the number of days that I had already worked that month.

  From a fellow nurse I came to know that some people from my village who had come to visit a relative in the hospital were leaving in a few days’ time and I arranged to leave with Martha in their group. It was indeed a fortuitous coincidence because the fag end of the journey to our village after getting off the train would be on foot. And these kind people took turns in carrying the little baby on their backs when I became too tired to go any further. And so I stepped into my father’s house with a baby on my back while a fellow traveller carried my few belongings into the cottage.

  The first reaction of my parents on seeing Martha was one of shock, disbelief and even of open disgust. But after a good night’s sleep when they saw her in daylight and the child bestowed her first smile on them, they were completely mesmerized: they simply gawked at her and their faces broke into genuinely happy smiles. They clamoured to hold her but the child was reluctant to go to them at first. It was mother who succeeded in making friends with Martha within the first week and she started to carry her on her back wherever she went. Her trips to the fields became less frequent and after a while stopped altogether. If father remonstrated, she would reply curtly, ‘What, you’re going to baby-sit her when I am away in the field?’ He had no answer to this and with the ease born out of organizing household affairs, mother established the routine that continued until Martha was enrolled in school in her fifth year. She was a good student and sailed through every exam with excellent marks and I secretly began to dream of sending her to medical college to become a doctor. But I had reckoned without the independent spirit which she exhibited from the earliest days.

  When I came home that day exhausted from a difficult delivery case, I found them, my daughter Martha and my mother, sitting sullenly silent and strangely, away from each other. They had not lighted the lamp nor started the evening meal. Their silence was catching; I too sat down near them without saying anything. It was mother who uttered the first words, ‘Medemla, tell your daughter whether you are her real mother or not.’ I looked at this young girl whom I called daughter and began to tell her the history of her birth and subsequent adoption and asked her in the end, ‘So now, don’t you think that I am your mother though in a different way?’ My daughter, with all her intelligence could not articulate her response to such an adult question and my mother chided me for creating more confusion in her mind. She started to say something and this time I stopped her, ‘Let her give an answer which will be the answer to her own question.’ Martha stood up, as though she were in school and coming closer to us said in a clear voice, ‘Mother, I may look different from you or grandmother or from all others in the village but I feel no difference in my heart.’ She could not continue and broke down in sobs. I went closer and embracing her, said, ‘Just as you feel, I am your real mother. Do you understand?’ She nodded through her tears and I could see that there were tears in my mother’s eyes also as she put her arms around us.

  The three of them just stood there for quite some time; a strange trio, as though enacting a ritualistic affirmation of the power of mother-love to mesh the insecurity of innocence in the magic of an emotionally enlarged truth.

  Lipoktula’s Secret

  My name is Lipoktula and I am Martha’s grandmother. You may wonder why I do not begin by saying ‘I am Medemla’s mother.’ It is because my role as grandmother to this alien child is not encumbered with any sense of guilt or fear whereas my role as Medemla’s mother was. Our life was difficult, our sole resources were what we grew in our fields and that was not much. The additional income came through my weaving and my husband’s wages as a daily labourer in odd places after our harvests were over. Even then we could not meet with the deadlines for paying fees, and the older boys sometimes could not sit for exams. In disgust both of them ran away and joined the Assam Rifles, after studying only up to class VI. Medemla’s case was different; she was very good in studies and there was no problem about her fees because the boys used to send us money regularly. She went on to do her matric exam and then decided to go to nursing school. She was a good girl; obedient, humble and not at all flighty like some of her age-set. I was confident that one day she would make an excellent wife and a good mother. Little did I know how her future would be blighted by the secret of my past.

  The nightmare started the day I received a letter from Medemla telling me of her friendship with a boy from our village who was studying to be an engineer in the same town where she was undergoing training. She went on to say that she had fallen in love with this boy named Imsutemjen, son of Merensashi, a council member of our village, and informed us that they were planning to get married in the winter. The boy’s father would soon approach her father and formally ask for her hand. I felt as if a bolt of lightning from the sky had struck me and I collapsed in a heap on the floor. Luckily I was alone at home that day when the letter was brought and I decided to destroy it immediately. I threw it into the fireplace and saw it crumple into a black mass and mingle with the ashes. I realized that my dark secret had at last raised its ugly head and was about to destroy two families and along with it, my daughter’s happiness. This marriage had to be stopped. But how? What could I say to Medemla or even to the boy? And above all, could I ask my husband to refuse permission without citing a convincing reason? The only person who could break up this relationship was the boy’s father.

  I thought of this the whole night and decided that I had to confront the man who was responsible for making me carry this secret in my heart for all these years. You see, Merensashi had raped me many years ago and Medemla is his child. It happened like this. His field adjoined ours and one day when my husband was away on a road construction job, he came in while I was eating the mid-day meal, claiming that he had stumbled and may have sprained his ankle. I finished my food hurriedly and boiled water to give him hot fomentation for his injured foot, though I noticed that he was looking at me in that certain way that a man does when he is sexually interested in a woman. All the same, I finished my task and was about to go back to my field, when he stretched out his hand as though to thank me and pulled me to the ground. I did try to ward him off but he was like an enraged bull and his passion was brutal. When he was done, he held on to me and would not let go of my body lying almost naked next to him. He tried to say something and I began to collect my clothes in order to slip out and make for the village. But no, something stirred in him and he pinned me to the ground and took me once more.

  When he rolled off me the second time, visibly spent, I grabbed my clothes and sprinted out of the hut and made a detour to the stream to wash myself thoroughly. It was when I was squatting in the water to wash out what he had poured into me that I realized what had happened to me. Though I started to blame the man, there was a recurrent question in my mind: why had I not resisted more vigorously, screamed or even scratched his face when he was groping for my sex? I could not explain my own conduct. But the fact remained that it had happened, not only once but twice in the space of half an hour, and here I was sitting in water like a fool to wash it off! And I began to condemn myself. I sat in the water for a long time as though to wash away the sense of shame and guilt now overtaking me. It was only when I felt numb due to the cold that I came out, dried myself, dressed and made for home, a thoroughly confused and broken woman. For many days I remained at home, pretending to be sick, and did not stir out of the house. Then I missed my period and soon realized that I was pregnant. The burden on my soul was becoming unbearable, and in the second month, I went to my mother and blurted out the truth to her. She chided me for not running away immediately but all the same, was absolutely heartbroken at my plight, and we both cried hard and long. In the end she said to me, ‘You know, it is always wise for a woman to keep a part of the self all to herself and sometimes she has to choose between telling the truth which destroys, and living with a lie which may remain a secret forever. I cannot say anything more because it is only you who can make the choice.’ That day I made a momentous decision: I would remain silent.

  It never occurred to me not to have the baby and Medemla was born, to the delight of my husband who had always longed for a daughter. I admit I was terrified at times but hoped that no one would ever come to know the truth about this child’s true parentage. She would always belong in our family. When Medemla was about a year old, my mother took a long intense look at her and whispered, almost to herself, ‘Thank god, she does not look too different from her brothers.’

  But she was different from them, and, I had to think long and hard about the terrifying spectre of an incestuous marriage. I realized that the onus was entirely on me to prevent it at all costs even though it would mean destroying my own daughter’s prospects of happiness in the process. I agonized over the pain that my daughter would feel if the marriage was called off. But there was no earthly way of avoiding this seeming act of cruelty against my own child which must be carried out in order to avert the curse of incest. Hurting her just this once was, in my mind, far better than seeing her in an incestuous marriage forever. ‘No one would know’ had worked once to cover my guilt from my husband. But if I took refuge in this now, it would mean committing a graver crime not only against my own flesh and blood but also against a society where such marriages are banned; in ancient times the penalty was death. The first time I had acted out of fear of the truth which would have ruined two families. But now I was going to build a defence on the truth because of a different kind of fear: the fear that my daughter would be condemned to live in an incestuous marriage.

  I had to work out a strategy through which I could privately urge the boy’s father to oppose the marriage. So the next Sunday when Merensashi walked out of the church, I stepped in beside him as though two churchgoers were walking back home side by side, quite by accident. At a point where there was no one near, I quickly informed him of his son’s intent to marry Medemla and told him that if he did not stop it, I would publicly announce that he had fathered Medemla that day in the hut and that his blood ran in her veins. He was not convinced at first that she was his child, so I told him, ‘She has a birthmark below her left collar-bone, just like yours. Besides, I should know when she was conceived.’ Saying what I had to say, I walked away.

  I do not know exactly what happened but soon after this, Imsutemjen wrote a curt letter to Medemla breaking off the engagement, and the rest is her history.

  Martha

  Mother wanted me to become a doctor: it would mean that I had to be away from the village for many, many years to complete my studies. I did not want to be away for so long from the village where now I felt I truly belonged. Every one treated me as an equal and nobody mentioned the word ‘coolie’ in my presence any more. Besides, I had fallen in love with my classmate Apok and we planned to marry when we finished our eighth class. We were secretly meeting every weekend in grandmother’s barn mainly to talk, but the intimacy of being together away from anybody’s gaze emboldened us and before we realized what we were doing we started to make love. Though he was gentle and kind, I cried a little the first time because he hurt me there. I had some initial misgivings about what we were doing, but Apok’s gentle ardour overwhelmed me each time and soon I began to look forward to these exciting encounters. I was going to tell my mother soon about our relationship, but before I could do that, something happened: I became pregnant. When I told her, she turned to me with an ashen face and said, ‘Martha, Martha, what have you done? Why couldn’t you have waited? I was going to arrange a grand wedding for you. Instead, you have brought shame upon the family by becoming pregnant before the wedding. There will not be a proper wedding now, only a small gathering of relatives and the Pastor to formalize your marriage to Apok.’ I looked at her pained expression and wondered: how could one describe the responses of a woman’s body to the touch of a man she loved to such a person as my mother, who had never felt the demanding power of such love? And harder still, convince her that once you’ve tasted love like that, there was no stopping?

 

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