Close to the city of Paithan, in a small village called
Sauviragram, which lay along the banks of the great river, Godavari lived a
woman named Ilaa. Being cotton farmers, her family was well to do, but not
among the richest in their area. It was the harvest season, and cotton had to
be picked from the plants. The wholesalers and traders from Paithan would be
arriving in just a few weeks, carrying gold and goods for barter. They would
exchange what they carried for the cotton that farmers grew. The bales of
cotton had to be ready in time! Work was at its peak!
But Ilaa was not to be found in the fields. She wasn’t
working. Instead, she was sitting by the banks of the great river Godavari.
‘I am sick of this!’ she grunted loudly. The river, as if it heard Ilaa, nodded silently in unison.
Her thoughts didn’t create ripples, but nurtured fierce waves, thought Aastha,
her friend, turning her face to hide the emotions. Aastha was Ilaa’s neighbor, all-time
acquaintance and a forever tag-along. But Ilaa never minded it.
They were similar yet different. Similar in age, but different
in dreams. Similar in looks, different at heart. Similar in living life, but
different in enjoying it. Similar in strength, different in power.
The tiny balls attached to her anklets took the wrath of her
frustration. They flattened sideways with her tapping on the rock she is
sitting.
She suddenly stopped, remembering that it was the gift from
her friend, her late husband to be precise. And along came bitter truth that
neither she nor her anklets were supposed to be there. Widowhood was as bad as
a witch. The sound of her breath and the rhythm of her moving legs both entwined
both alive, not by fate but by fight. A fair fight against the norms of
society. Against all odds, her Father, Madhava strived to save his daughter and
he did protect her, her mother in just another form. That was day when she was
walked by womenfolk to her husband’s pyre, when she hardly knew who a husband was.
Many hands were trying to choke life out of Madhava’s throat
by clasping his jutting out nerves. Ramaji, to whom Madhava lent his cow for a
few days to make living with her milk, was thrusting his strong muscles around
his head. Naroba, who received generous discount for his yearly cotton needs
from Madhava was now, pinning his arms to his back. So did, Neelesh, Girmaji,
Sadashiv, Kailash, Pandurang, Narayan and others in Sauviragram.
Out came the appeals, requests, cries, pleas, begging,
hustling, struggling, fighting and finally rebellion. It didn’t come in the
form of a blow or a punch but even more powerful weapon i.e. ‘word’. Ilaa shushed the women around her and the
monsters around her Father with a loud ‘Oyii’. With a jerk, she came back to reality
which stung her bitter. With a sigh of frustration she again said, ‘Why is this
world so unfair?’ It was like this same expression was imprinted on her face
ever since the town crier announced the value of a single bale of cotton. The worth of each bale was completely
dependent on the seller. A Hindu would get a couple of sheep, while a Muslim
would exchange three for one bale. The elderly farmers were taken for granted;
all they would get was a bag of staples sufficient for a month. Young Pathans were
the only ones who can set their own price. They would demand two gold coins per
bale, but would settle for two coins – one gold and one silver. But ironically,
the buyers accepted the deals of costliest vendors, for it’s a matter of
respect and prestige. He who bought stuff for lower cost was laughed at.
Aastha, judging her frustration, meekly said, ‘It’s always
been like this, you and I can’t change the world for what it is.’ Suddenly
cursing her for a passive reply, she excused herself to get back to the task
she was doing, washing clothes. To escape her mother-in-law’s pestering
questions, she brought a pile of soiled clothing to wash. Young girls in the
village meeting Ilaa was not encouraged or tolerated by anyone. Ilaa and her Father,
they both were known to spoil the minds. Unfortunately, they were not banished,
but punished.
Now, after five years, things were still the same. Ilaa went
back to her mumbling. It included cuss words, solutions, plans and more plans. While
Aastha laughed and chuckled for a few, she dismissed most of them and remained
silent for some. Such was Ilaa, a rare mix of fun and strong, lovable and
strict, understanding and hell-bent. Rare is often not the correct the word to
use, if there existed something that’s just one of its kind.
The plans went on like this. First idea was to disguise like
a man, second was to send her produce along with her Father’s, third was to sneak
into neighbor’s tents and shout out the bargains their customers want, fourth
was to sell it all to a local farmer, but who would buy it from a woman? The
last was a prayer for rains.
A group of kids were cautiously and silently passing the
river to reach the other side, the side she, Aastha and Rajan, her
friend/husband had discovered – ‘The Magical Mystery’. She hasn’t been there
since Rajan died. She waved the kids to come and they happily hopped their way
towards her on the small stones on the shore. Ilaa was fondest kid among
everyone in the village until the day she raised her voice against the kangaroo
court and threw her purdah off her face to make her voice loud and clear. In
the times, when no woman was seen outside her house or the fields uttering a
word to a stranger, there she was shouting her lungs out, saying the things the
elders didn’t know, heard or have the capacity to understand.
The kids chatted with her for a while and left for their
picnic to the ‘The Magical Mystery’. She drooled and drowned in her thoughts,
but couldn’t find one single solution. This was her second year as an
independent farmer. She had learnt the techniques to nurture Mother Earth from
her Father, but couldn’t flush out the rotting conservativeness that was seated
hundreds of fathoms deep in everyone’s minds. She was not like Chimabai, who saw her own
daughter burn down to flames when her son-in-law, who lost his life in a
gambling game, was cremated. She shrieked and cried, but never opposed. Ilaa
was not the kind who thought that people can only understand the pain when they
have endeavored one. She instead, gathered a bunch of forlorn women and
motivated them to join in her engagement. Thus, Ilaa and her entourage aging
between 15-25 years have emerged as a sole women only peasant group. Last year
has been a disaster with scores of bales lying down unclaimed, unbought and
thereby deemed unworthy. They have to later distribute it for free among the
villagers, which most of them threw out even before the young women left the
premises.
These memories made her even more sad and helpless. Fighting
back her fears and tears, she decided to take a break. Without even saying a
word to Aastha who was calmly observing her from a distance, Ilaa walked away.
And, Aastha knew where she was going. Ilaa took to the thinnest part of the
river and crossed it on her foot, she took a sharp right turn immediately when
she could feel the Godavari water till her calves. There after ten minute walk,
hop, bend and duck, she reached her dream valley. She and her friends named it
‘The Magical Mystery’, because no one knows of its existence, except the kids
in the village. It was a small pond, surrounded by flowers of all colors and
sizes. They smelled like heaven and it felt like home. The entire area was about a few hundreds of
meters, but it felt endless because of its greenery and hundreds of flowers.
Being there itself gave her a new energy and relief as if the solution is there
right in front of her. And yes, there was the solution. And yes, Ilaa found it.
She gathered her team, working in the fields and explained
them why the cotton buds they collected have to left open in the air in the
room rented in the corner of the field. This being the last day of collection,
she asked them to come a little late tomorrow. As one after the other they came
in, they realized what the hero of their lives is upto. A week later, when the
market was open, Ilaa was there at a tent in the center of the market place.
She was not in disguise, not there to overhear the customers or to accept
defeat. This was her year and every coming year too. She opened the gunny bugs
carrying her cotton and put them on display in the front. Every head there in
the market turned to see, what appeared like a garden – full of flowers of all
colors rolled into buns of various sizes. Ilaa created colored cotton, using
the natural colors from the flowers of ‘The Magical Mystery’. She collected the
flowers of different colors, dried and powdered few and grinded few more
separately. The cotton was left to dry out completely and later the cotton was
powdered, sprinkled and soaked in colors and dried using the one whole week for
their advantage. Sensing the surprise package at the market, all the traders
swept their feet towards Ilaa’s tent. Gender didn’t interrupt them, but
uniqueness definitely attracted them. Thus, Ilaa like promised on the day of
her husband’s death, ‘Woman is the Power you Worship, the Teacher you Pray, a
Mother you Bow to. For once, practice what you preach. Because I do. As a
human, I want to live and as a Woman, I want to live as much as a man wants to.
I promise, this is not just my day but a day of every woman.’
When the rest of the country was still following the phrase
‘a loyal woman follows her man to the grave’, Sauviragram has welcomed a future.
A future of ‘Us’, not just ‘We’.
