The Times Of India/16 May 1999
Enticing the Lotus
Her name
was, inappropriately enough, Senthamarai. With a wiry frame the colour of
polished teak and a pinched look on an unremarkable face, she was more a
hill-flower than a lotus, a thamarai.
She was the
maid I’d inherited along with the bungalow, when I relocated to the Nilgiri
hills. Clean as a pin, quietly efficient, she came and went like a wraith and
before I knew it, she’d become quite indispensable
Then one
rainy morning, Senthamarai did not appear. Conditioned to cynicism where
domestics were concerned, I took it for granted that she had ‘French-leaved’
the day off. She didn’t turn up the next day, or the day after that either.
Instead,
Senthamarai’s husband turned up. Senthamarai had run away with a married man of
50, a stranger from a neighbouring village, some 30 years older than her. She
had fled the coop, leaving her small children behind but taking all the money
in the hut, and the jewellery her mother had given her at the time of marriage,
seven years ago.
It seemed a
pretty conclusive gesture to me but impelled by compassion, I asked if he
thought she’d return. “She was a good wife,” he said. “The elders in my family have filed a police complaint.”
Within
three weeks, the police had flushed the runaways out of their hiding place, a
shack in the Kateri Falls area. Senthamarai’s husband paid me another visit.
The police were rough-handling her, he said. Would I go meet the girl?
When I
walked in, she gave me that shy smile. There wasn’t a jot of guilt, remorse, or
whatever emotion a runaway wife was expected to display. Her partner in the
elopement stood to one side, a hefty grizzled man with a cast in one eye.
Her 24
hours in prison had not been pleasant. Her in-laws, barring her husband, had
fallen on her and started beating her. The police had used their own methods of
intimidation. Her new man’s wife had descended in a whirlwind of fury, blaming
Senthamarai for enticing her husband away.
“Senthamirai,”
I said, trying hard to keep my voice level, “The man is married and so are you.
Your children have been crying for you. Go home.”
“No amma,” she told me. Does your husband beat you, ill-treat you,
does he drink too much, I asked. “No amma, he is a good man,” she replied
without so much as a look at the man under discussion.
“Go home, then.”
“No, amma.”
It was
clear we were at point non plus. Then Senthamarai’s brother-in-law spoke up.
“Well,” he said philosophically, “if she won`t come, she won`t come.”
Senthamirai
looked up sharply, a gleam of hope in her eyes. A gleam that died when the man
continued, “We’ll send her home to her mother. I’ll take her there myself.”
When I left
the police station, Senthamarai was standing still as stone, her face devoid of
emotion. Her paramour was being dragged away by his vociferously abusive wife.
It was indeed love’s labour lost for this strange, quiet woman.