Unknown, Unseen

(As a tribute to those women)
A blue broken wooden door. Paint peeled off like the rain-drops that clung to the tiles of the roof and then slowly dropped down into the drain. Outside the rain fell in torrents making small puddles in front of the door. Inside a small rusty iron cot with a tattered mattress and a torn sheet lay in the stillness. A clothesline that stretched across a small wall where the clothes hung--a faded red and yellow. A few pots and a burnt out fire rested.
She was the village belle once but that seemed like it was centuries ago. She vaguely remembered the huge bonfires where she and her friends had danced in the night to the beat of the dhol (drum). But her once-known-happiness had changed to a burning desire to go far away and have a better life. So one night, she tied a small bundle of her clothes amid hushed goodbyes and left. The moon guided her path as she walked towards the city.
At first, the vibrant tall buildings with the thousands of men, women and children that thronged its roads had excited her. She walked past numerous stores where beautiful dresses in flamboyant colors were in display along with dazzling jewelry. She wandered around the city all day and at night slept on one of the benches off the street. The warm breezes alongwith the smell of dung and the sewer forced her off to sleep.
The very next day she found a job at a construction site as a brick & cement loader. She toiled hour after hour, day after day, for a measly 200 rupees a month. She rented a crammed one room and bought a few pots. Months went by and her life became as monotonous as the hourly roar of the trains that went past her small shanty. She stayed up many nights coughing as the cement had lined her lungs. She felt weak, disabled.
And then the blow fell. Her supervisor at the site called her once and said “dekh ladki, dhang se kaam nahi karr sakti toh chali jaa yaha se! dheela kaam nahi chalega!”(Look girl, if you cannot work properly then get out of here! Slowness and laziness is not permissible!). He handed her 200 rupees and walked away. She stood there with tears in her eyes.
She had met a young man though: Shyam, handsome and boyish who worked in the ration shop that was opposite to the site where she had worked. He brought her flowers that he stole from the park 2 blocks down and told her amusing anecdotes about his life in the city. She slowly and steadily, fell in love with him and one night: conceived a baby with him. She wanted the three of them to be family but he felt differently and asked her to get it aborted. She was shocked by his opinion that refused to bend despite numerous tearful appeals. And then she wordlessly watched him walk out of her life as she told him that she had decided to keep her child. Grief and anger ravaged through her as she bore the baby 9 months later. It was a boy who was doted on by his mother but who silently enraged her everytime she looked into his eyes and saw his father in them. Despite numerous attempts, she lost job after job, as she was not as ‘dedicated’ as they wanted her to be. Her son grew into a fine young lad who day after day looked more & more like Shyam.
And then one day she met a man who told her he could give her a job in a ‘Men’s’ House’ with a pay of 600 rupees per month! She felt a happiness she hadn’t felt in a long time as she could not only pay her rent now but also feed her son and perhaps, even send him to school!
And this is when she, the belle of the village: turn into something she had never comprehended: she felt sordid, dirty and worthless as a person. She earned more and more customers, as they loved her for her beautiful black eyes and slender figure. But she was tainted with an image that made her shield herself from the eyes of the people she walked past on the street lest somebody recognize who she was. It was an image that reflected an hideousness to her when she looked into a mirror. She felt like the stain of rust on her old sari that could never be wiped out. She was trapped in a vortex where there was no going back. Voiceless cries and her 10 year old son became her only sustenance through the humiliation as tears rolled down her cheeks everytime. What could she do? She had the made the choices then,she had to live with them now.

And thus gradually like the paint that peeled off her door and the rain drop that fell down the drain: this was how she lived and this was how she died.