Some people always have to be doing battle with someone, sometimes with themselves, battling with their own lives. So they begin to create a kind of play in their head, and they write the script based on their frustration.
Tilo heard the old lady say these lines and realised how much they were true – every word of it was painfully true and relevant to her life. Right from the moment she had been born, all she had been doing was fighting; first as her Mother tried to kill her while she was still in her womb, and then as the people around tried to kill her soul. All she had been doing was fighting – battling to guard her existence; battling to guard her virginity, battling to guard her innocence, battling to exist in a world that was crueller than could be imagined. Every moment a struggle. Every moment a war waged against her one self that wanted to believe in the good in people and her other self that had nothing but eyes that could see the world around her with all its bad and bad.
But when night fell and her Mother had cursed and cursed her and gone off to sleep, Tilo would dare to dream – of a caring Mother, of a clean house, of school; of a normal life and a better world. And it is these few moments every night and the hope they brought that helped Tilo pull through every day.
Until the day she heard the old lady speak – the old lady that she was scared of, but that she loved to hear when she began to speak. The old lady who Tilo saw always in the same clothes and who never smiled. There was something mysterious about the lady. She was not a beggar, and yet people passing her seemed to drop money for her and touch her feet. The lady never touched the money, and never seemed hungry or thirsty. She looked almost ethereal. At some point in the day the lady would start talking – and the stresaaset would go silent; but not because everyone would be listening, but because everyone would just clear the street. They would all disappear, take their children in and go inside their little huts and shut the doors and stay in till dusk. One evening Tilo had wandered off ad returned after the street had cleared and had heard the old lady speak. She had been scared at first and had tried to make her Mother open the door so she could come into the house.
‘Pay for your little excursion! Thousand times I tell you not to wander too far away, but you just don’t listen. The Devil, that’s what you are!’
Tilo had been very scared and had cried and cried till her throat went dry and her eyes and head started to ache. Finally when exhaustion took over and she couldn’t care less if she died or lived, she walked towards the lady and went and sat down in front of her.
The old lady’s eyes were closed, and she appeared as if to be chanting something. She broke out into prose once in a while, and went back to the chanting soon again. But her eyes always remained closed, like she was reciting something from memory. Her slow steady voice almost managed to put Tilo off to sleep when the lady opened her eyes and looked at Tilo. Tilo’s fears returned, but she sat rooted to the pace, stupefied. The old lady kept on looking at her – a constant unblinking stare, and Tilo couldn’t help but stare back into those eyes. How long they sat like that, no one knows. But after quite some time had passed, Tilo felt a hand lift her to her feet rather roughly.
‘Do you want to invoke the wrath of the Devil on the entire village?’
Tilo looked at her Mother, and turned back to look at the old lady. But she was gone.
– x – x –
‘You must take her to him! He is the only one who can save your daughter!’
‘Yes! No one who has ever seen that lady or spoken to her has ever lived to tell about it. But she has. There is something that’s definitely wrong.’
‘Take her to him. He knows just what to do.’
‘He will cure her.’
‘He will save her.’
– x – x –
Several days passed. People continued to drop money at the place where Tilo had seen the old lady sitting, and continued to touch the ground even. But Tilo was confused.
‘Mother, who do they offer the money to, if the old lady is not there anymore?’
But this innocent little question only brought upon another thrashing on Tilo, and she learnt never to ask her Mother about it again.
Several days passed by again. And then several weeks. One day Tilo met the old lady while she had wandered a little too far and away from her house. This time Tilo was not scared of the lady. But the lady, instead of maintaining her distance as always, addressed Tilo directly by her secret name –
‘Janhavi!’
Tilo was so astonished that the old lady knew her secret name that she forgot all her fear and the promise she had made to herself – to treat the old lady as indifferently as she treated her – and curiosity took over and Tilo ended up talking to her. She spent the whole evening talking to the old lady, and the night and it was almost dawn by the time she realised that an entire night had passed by. Tilo felt excited. This was her first night away from her home, and she was still safe and sound.
She had witnessed the good side of the world.
Tilo started meeting the old lady regularly. Her Mother kept on beating her up when she returned home just before sunrise every day.
‘Who is she sending you to?’
‘Who is sending me anywhere Mother?’
Slap.
‘Come on you little witch! Speak up! Where are you hiding all the money?’
‘What money Mother, I don’t understand.’
‘Oh you scoundrel! Just you wait till I get my hands on the money. How long are you going to hide it from me anyway.’
Tilo discussed this with the old lady one evening.
‘Mother keeps asking me funny questions. She keeps demanding money from me. I don’t understand.’
But the old lady just smiled.
One evening Mother caught hold of Tilo just as she was about to slip off to meet the old lady.
‘Not so easy darling. Today you shall go to who I tell you to go to.’
Mother gave Tilo a clean set of clothes to wear. She combed her hair and braided them. Tilo got confused, but was still happy. Her Mother today seemed like the one from the story they told at the school that Tilo liked to listen to secretly. Before mother and daughter stepped out of the house, Tilo hugged her Mother.
‘I love you Mother!’
Little did she know what lay in front of her, what her Mother had planned for her. But in spite of all that she had to go through each day, Tilo’s heart was pure, and it knew only to love.
They reached in front of a big house after some walking. Mother picked Tilo up in her arms and knocked on the front door. A big man answered the door.
‘At last.’
Mother gave Tilo into the arms of the man. The man reached inside his pocket and pulled out a thick wad of money and handed it to Tilo’s mother.
Tilo looked upon the transaction and turned to her mother –
‘So he had the money! But who is this man? Is it Father?’
Mother looked for a moment at Tilo’s face. She realised she was going to burst out crying. She quickly turned on her heel and began to walk away as fast as she could.
Tilo called out to her Mother to wait. Tilo felt really sad – how unfortunate that on the very day that she had seen a side of Mother she didn’t knew existed, Mother had also abandoned her and left her to the mercy of a strange big and scary man. Tilo looked at the man.
‘I am hungry Father.’
The man slapped Tilo across her face. Tilo’s eyes instantly sprouted tears. The man’s hands stung worse than her mother’s ever had.
Tilo kicked and punched and pushed and tried to break free from the man’s hand as he dragged her towards a room in the inside of the house…
– x – x –
‘Mother!’
Tilo called out to her Mother who was sitting by the pot of water that was kept in one corner of their house. Mother turned to look at her daughter.
‘That man was not at all nice Mother. Who was he? Why did you leave me with him Mother?’
Tilo’s mother kept staring at Tilo. Suddenly she came up to her and fell at Tilo’s feet. Tilo got confused.
‘Mother! Why are you touching my feet!’
But just as Tilo touched her mother’s arms in order to lift her up, her mother’s body broke out into a crackling fire. Tilo quickly stepped aside from her Mother, shocked at what she had witnessed. Tilo quickly went to the water-pot and tried to lift it. But she lost balance and the water spilled onto the floor.
The fire died out as mysteriously as it had erupted. Tilo looked around the house, but there was nothing there. No ashes, no sign that only moments ago there had been another individual in the room, as alive and breathing as Tilo. Tilo felt the old lady’s presence and turned around to look at her.
‘What happened? Why didn’t you save Mother like you saved me!’
But the old lady just smiled.
‘I wanted to tell her how you saved me from that man! I wanted to tell her you are not a bad woman!’
‘She wouldn’t believe you Janhavi.’
‘But she would! She was my Mother!’
‘Would you have believed her, if she told you the same?’
Tilo stood still.
‘Everyone has to find me and come to me on their own. No one can be pushed in my direction to seek me. When their hearts seek me out, I shall heed. Till then, I shall wait.’
Tilo did not completely understand what the old lady had said, but she felt a lot calmer anyway.
‘Come.’
Tilo looked at the old lady’s hand, and wondered if she should take it. But somewhere she knew even before she took the hand that the choice had already been made.
Her life had already been changed.
Her path and her destiny were never going to be the same again.
And she was tied to this woman for eternity.
Tilo took the old lady’s hand and they walked out of the house.
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