This is an English translation of “Putril Uraiyum Paambugal”, a Tamil short story written by Rajendra Cholan.
***
Sitting with her legs folded, when Vanamayilu was busy
segregating and beating the bundles of corn stover flat that she had collected
near the fence of the grove to pile them up neatly for using them as fuel in
the kitchen, she saw the young man who was staying in the house opposite and
mumbled. ‘Look at his eyes… looking like eggs of chicken, ogling at me
without even batting his eyelids. He couldn’t have been born with sisters.
Could he have?’
“Look at him. Do you know how long he has been goggling at me
like this?”
Kanthasamy, her husband, who was feeding the fodder mixed in
water kept in a trough to the cattle by stirring it with his hands, did not pay
attention to her rants.
“Look at that bloke… He doesn’t even move a bit… Hell with
him and his look. Sitting like Aiyyanar statue…”
He scooped out a handful of husk from the trough, holding it
on his palm, and was feeding the cattle.
“This guy will learn a lesson if only he gets beaten
elsewhere. Till then, let him ogle like this. If not anyone now, someone in the
near future will definitely take his eyeballs out. I don’t know; I get terribly
uneasy when a man stares at me. I am not such a woman who debauches blatantly
right in front of her husband. It is such a lowly birth that it deserves slaps
with slippers. Isn’t it?” She nudged her jaws against her shoulder in contempt.
She looked at the opposite house sternly, threw a frowning stare at her
husband, and pulled her sari to cover her breasts, which were already fully
covered.
“Listen to me… yaaa… That man is staring like this
piercingly, giving a damn that you are sitting here. If you don’t chastise him
now, you don’t know what he would do after this. It seems he won’t even
hesitate to hold my hands to pull towards him. Will he dare to do that? I will
beat him black and blue with the broom. Won’t I?”
He tethered one of the bulls standing on his right to a peg
and brought the bull standing on his left.
“I have been telling you something, seeking your attention.
But you keep feeding them as if you are destined only to do that. Don’t you? If
you throw back a stare at him as if to ask that idiot why he was looking this
way, he will run away from there, for sure. Won’t he? But you prefer sitting
idly rather than rebuking him. Don’t you?”
He kept on stirring the fodder in the trough and feeding the
cattle.
“Does he think of me as a cow on heat? See him there…still
standing without even moving an inch aside. If he has guts, let him come to me.
Only then will he understand who I am. Actually, my reputation of not getting
into any brawls won’t be any help in this case. I won’t leave such men just
like that. I will pour cow dung water on his head and spit on his face. Won’t
I?”
He was breaking the soft corn stover without showing any
visible interest.
“I think that chap is thinking so highly of himself. As he is
working in government service, he thinks that I will run to him showing all my
teeth. He is not aware that he would get beaten with the winnow.”
He came inside the house carrying as much corn stover as his
hands could hold, carrying them against his body.
“You are also existing here, shamelessly, as a man. Aren’t
you? That man is staring at me as if he were standing there after he had
swallowed a crowbar. But you seem dumbstruck that you don’t like to question
him about why he is doing that. He won’t swallow you by mixing you with
jaggery. Will he? If it were some other man, he wouldn’t be quiet like you?”
She kept the bundles near the stove, scrubbed her clothes
once, and made sure that no dust was sticking to her saree, clock on breasts,
and blouse.
“Since it was me, the matter has ended up with this. If it
had been any other woman, she wouldn’t have remained quiet like me for this
long. She would have jumped out of this entrance long ago. But men like
you will never understand my importance.” She came out, sat again with her legs
folded, and started breaking the stover again.
“Look over there… He is just showing me that he is still
standing there. It seems that he is not going to move not even an inch here and
there from that spot.”
Her husband tethered the bull, went to the haystack, and
started collecting hay.
“Doesn’t he have any relatives? He has been all alone ever
since he came here. I haven’t seen him visiting his native place,” she told
him.
Her husband’s concentration was still on the haystack.
“If he had had relatives, they would have definitely advised
and kept him disciplined. He wouldn’t have ogled like this. It appears that his
relatives had let him loose like the wandering bull of Perumal temple. Useless
ass!” she turned her neck with a contemptuous jolt.
“If he could stare at a woman who did nothing other than
minding her own business at home, what would he do with women who are roaming
carefree out there? Had I been like them, what else could he have done with me?
Chee…only pus flows in his body…not blood.” With a contortion in her face, she
pouted her lips and threw away the bundles of corn stover on the floor.
He bundled up the hay he collected, brought it to the bulls,
and shook it out in front of them.
“Ever since he came here, Pangajam is nowhere to be seen.
When I go to meet her, she is not ready to come out of the house to speak to
me. Even if she comes out, hardly she stays up, unlike earlier, just to speak a
couple of words comfortably. She swiftly disappears like a crow as if she has
forgotten something. Have you ever noticed all these? Both are in the same
building, and only Goddess Kaliyammal knows what is going on…”
After shaking out the hay, he lifted the tilted bamboo fence
and fastened it straight.
“Who’s afraid of gods these days? Everyone enjoys their time
as long as they are alive, giving a damn to what others in the village say
about them. Once a girl attains puberty, no girl will be allowed to step out of
the door in my home. As I was brought up that way, I stand clean. I am not like
others. Oh…good heavens… How could they go astray, betraying their Thali?”
She feigned a shudder with an expression of contempt,
animating the parts of her body.
“How dare they play around without being questioned?”
When she was bringing another bundle of corn stover, she saw
through the gap of doors that someone was standing on the street and calling
them out. Her happiness knew no bounds.
“Someone has some there. Please go and see.” She told him.
“Who’s that?” he just turned his neck and asked her.
“What sort of a man are you? How do I know who he is? I don’t
know everyone in this village. Do I? I never stepped out of the door of this
house since the day you brought me here after our marriage. Even during the
rare times I walk on the street on account of going somewhere, I used to feel
awful that my body gets rotten. Yet, you have the nerve to ask me this question
without any qualms. Don’t you?”
She hid along the wall as if the garden would be visible to
the street through the slit of the street door.
“Go and see who it is. Someone is calling out.”
He stopped fastening the fence and got up. She also kept the
bundle in the kitchen and followed him. Near the door, she hid her body behind
it, standing there showing up only her face.
“Please come in…come in... Isn’t it you? Please have a seat,
he told the visitor. The fair-complexioned visitor with a white shirt sat down
on the veranda.
“You are aware that we once discussed a matter in the
village panchayat related to the laying of a road to Koralur. Now
I am thinking of submitting an affirmation after obtaining signatures of
concurrence from the concerned. Next week the minister is visiting
Kooteripattu,” he spoke a little about it.
She noticed his fair, spotlessly clean fingers taking out a
pen and white paper kept folded in his pocket. Her husband was wiping his hands
dry with husk and chaffy hay on his loincloth for putting his
signature.
“You should have cleaned your hands in advance. Shouldn’t
you?” At once the visitor lifted his head to see who spoke it; she pulled her
head inside.
“Can you please ask someone to bring water…to drink?”
“Heii… bring him some water for quenching his thirst”
She moved away from the door and washed the bronze mug, which
she had already cleaned in the morning, with some tamarind swiftly and poured
water from the pot into it. She searched for the single ‘ever-silver’
tumbler she bought in the third month, brought it with her, and stood near the
door.
“Come here…come inside,” she called out to her husband.
“Give it to him.”
“I told you to come inside.”
She twisted her body in all possible angles. With her body
convoluted with feigned body movements, she was standing near the door like an
innocent soul.
Kanthasamy received the jug from her and gave it to the
visitor.
“The water is from the well and likely to be a bit salty,”
she told, standing behind the door as if she was talking in the air. The
visitor left after drinking the water.
“What sort of a man are you? Don’t you know that I would be
uneasy if you asked me to bring water in front of an unknown man? I can’t do that.
Can I? Even now my body sends out chillness into me at the very thought of it.
I am still unable to come out of the shock. I was profusely sweating. Do you
know that?”
She came to the grove and sat beside the corn stover.
“The moment you asked me, I felt that my entire birth had
come to a point of nothing. I was confused as to what this fellow had had in
his mind to ask me like that. I was totally clueless why you had asked me to do
that. Now tell me…what did you have in your mind when you told me to do that?
You just tested me on whether I would bring it or not. Didn’t you?”
He kept on fastening the bamboo fence, which he had left
halfway.
“The soles of my legs felt so uneasy even to stand near the
door. But you…an ignoramus…have asked such a good woman to step out of the door
to give water to an unknown man. It is not justifiable anyway. Is it? You will
be asking me to do such things in the future too. Won’t you?”
She cleaned up the trash lying there after breaking the
remaining corn stover with the required measurements.
“Some women are so adept at speaking pleasingly with unknown
men. Aren’t they? That too without giving any second thought… But when I speak,
I feel some millipedes crawling on my skin. My eyes won’t be at ease even while
raising my head to have a glance at a stranger other than my husband.”
She shook her body once and emitted an expression of
contempt.
He halted fastening the bamboo fence, came to the street, and
was searching for the Palmyra tree fibers he had kept under the columns of
the house.
She kept the broom aside, came out of the house, and stood
there without any purpose. Squinting her eyes and standing without any specific
task, she was gazing absorbedly at the empty house opposite.
That egg-eyed man appeared again. Buttressing her cheeks with
her hands, burying her jaws into her palms, she was standing with her eyes wide
open. As her face gleamed with an expression of amazement, she was standing
there as if she were to act in some pantomime.
At her back, Kanthasamy came with a stack of palmyra fibers.
“Look at the chap… He has come again and is staring at me
like earlier. Why shouldn’t I burn his eyes with a brand?”
“Let him be so…. You get inside and stop your rants and those
empty harangues.” He sat down again to fasten the bamboo fence. ‘Hopeless
woman… trying in every effort to show her as if she is still a chaste one,’ he
muttered.
