Suvechchha SahaWhen I decided to write this, I was unsure. I was unsure of what will happen to my fingers that would go back and forth performing waltz on the pale white page. Would they be paralysed? What will happen to the eyes who will watch the horrible words rising from the paleness,what will happen to the brain that will drive those wretched organs of my body! Oh, my body, my body! My poor sweet sobbing body! I should look again at her before I write more. I have to check if she is okay with it or if she is bleeding again? Transparent dark red blood at which I saw my reflection for the first time one year ago. How old was I then? Oh sorry, I was not born yet. No, she is not bleeding now. She is sleeping. I should finish my writing before my body wakes up. Because then I have to feed her, tell her stories, take her to the park. I have been busy this year, very busy. Let me tell you what I was like before this very busy year.
I lived in my own room inside our house. I fought for that room. Because my mother and father were reluctant to part with me. ‘We feel so lonely without you’, they used to say. I was very disobedient. I used to disagree with almost everything. My mother became angry sometimes. She would scold me on those occasions. But mostly she was sad, as I gave her a lot of sorrow being so difficult. Yet, she thought of me as a good girl. A disagreeable right girl. I know she used to be proud of me in secret and sometimes in public,too. I had a boyfriend. He was the most handsome man I have ever seen. We fought over things others were certain of. We loved the parts of each other others despised. We used to sit on an afternoon field and watch the setting sun with resting minds, till the rising moon made us restless. We talked about books. Books. Books. Books. My books. I loved books. I loved books like I loved breathing, like I loved feeling, like I loved living. I cared for them as my own children. Children, they were, of course. I read with all the fluid of my body and the nutrition of my soul. How could it be different from rearing a child inside me for nine months? I remember leaning against the wall beside the plant my mother put in my room and reading a book, and keep reading and keep reading. My fingers decayed with the turning of pages, and they melted with the ink. My whole existence used to melt in the book. Inside it, I could smell leaves- young, fresh green leaves waving in the autumn breeze. Such a solemn, sweet life I had.
Then, one day, I went to the little library of our town. I had been going there for a long time. I told everybody that it was my real home. Oh, how everyone must have laughed then! I knew the librarian there. He was very good to me. He liked that I liked books so much. And I liked how he gave me whatever I wanted, Like an angel of heaven. I liked him so much, so much I liked his conjuring a book from that dark volt going in and out, in and out, in and out inside the room smelling of the book where he and I were alone one evening, that I forgot he was a he. Not a book like a hundred of which were hanging from the wall watching all of it. But a he. And I thought I would die. Die of the pain, die of the humiliation, die of the defeat.
I screamed until all the characters inside those hanging books had to put their palms upon their ears, until I deafened all those stories inside them who used to sit and listen to my interpretation. The blood limped and made its way through my paralysed legs. Maybe it wanted to flee from the crime scene. But soon, in its hurry, it hit the leg of a nearby reading table, and it began assembling there. A thousand ounces of dark red fluid, thousands of years, and thousands of lives were assembling there. I saw them with the one half of my right eye. I thought they would flood the earth, but they did not. Then something poured down from that one half of my right eye. Maybe all the tears of my life had been gathering there. And it flowed in a small drop to unite to that assembly. The wave broke, and the flood came onto the earth.
I remember getting up calmly and putting on my pants with calm fingers. When I came home and stood at the gate of our house, my pants were wet with blood. But everything was dry above the waist. My stomach, my heart, my eyes. My mother and father must have felt like dying after seeing me, but I did not care. I kept my brows in a slight frown and denied to see everything with the open eyes underneath them. Blind remained I. Days passed like years, and hours passed like moments. I will not find any adjective to tell of the time. I have tried before. But I do remember that I did not blink for months. Or even if I did, I did not realise that. The only part of my body I was aware of was the frowning brows. They were the only living thing in me. They were alert day and night and guarded my smothering soul outside its tomb. That tomb horribly looked like the dark volt of the library going in and out, in and out, in and out. I did not eat for days. But sometimes, I would calmly shallow some water. My mother and father must have mixed glucose with it. They were under an impression that it was keeping me alive. Every day, they tried for hours to make me speak, to make me see, to make me cry. My father would tell me my childhood stories. I used to nag him to tell those stories even in my twenties. My mother came and talked about the times she was angry with me and the times I was angry with her. Then they both cried like the sea. But I could see nothing. I could only hear the sky telling me to cry, the earth was too. But my brows remained in frown,they did not let a tear flow in.
When my boyfriend came, I was sitting at the window with a stony breathing face fixed on finding someplace to hide outside the earth. I did not remember how my hair looked, but I know, standing there at the door, watching his dead girlfriend, he was thinking of her short, innocent hair tips always roaming out of place. I know it reminded him of the afternoon field, the setting sun and the rising moon. I know it reminded him of living. And I know he must have been crying too. He loved me. But I despised love. I retired under my frowning brows and ran miles and miles and miles away from love.
When everybody used to leave me for maybe some minutes, I would bring out the knife I used to hide beneath my pants. No, I did not stab myself or cut my vein. I ripped the soft layers of my vagina. One at a time. I felt the blood of my body. Oh, my body, my body! My wretched, bitter, dying body. I felt the blood as it was running out, leaving me alone. I wanted to smell the blood as it tried to escape the dark volt going in and out, in and out, in and out. I wanted to taste the blood as it looked back and did not want to go away any more. Then, one day, I went to my room for the first time. And I saw the bookshelf standing there waiting for me, shameless like a cast-out stone wall. The books looked at me. My books. I looked back at them. For the first time, I saw. And I rushed towards them like a mad eagle to the leftover of its stolen prey or like the wave that flooded earth that day. Blindly, I took out the book, which my habitual hand had found blindly many times before. And I ripped the book with one slashing of the knife. I holed the leaves with my nails and tore them with my cruel teeth. The dead book fell on the floor like ashes. I lowered my eyes and looked at them. I saw it at my feet, lifeless, dead. I fell down, too. And then my frowning brows left guard. They left the tomb, and it came flying like the smallest, most ignorable bird of spring. It sat over my eyes. I wept. I wept, holding the ashes of my book. I wept, holding the book on my chaste. I was sorry, so heart-crushingly sorry! I was lying over her and crying, “Oh, what have I done? What have I done?” All the other books cried with me. They came out of the shelf and embraced me like their mother.
Then, new leaves started to spring. The breeze began to swing again. My brows were not frowning anymore. Instead, there was a frown on my lips now as I sat there leaning at the wall beside the plant my mother put inside my room, with all my books lying around me, telling their mother stories she did not know before.
I know not whether the rape happened for real. I know not if it had been a dream. I know not if it had been the rape of those million others. But I know it will happen one day. And then, I will write the story again.
