Book Excerpt | Uttarmarga By Pratibha Ray

Pratibha Ray’s Uttarmarga: Where Freedom Reigns is a paean to the courage and sacrifices of ordinary people during the freedom struggle. It is a political allegory debunking the notion that Gandhi and Nehru alone orchestrated the fall of the British Empire. Originally written in Odia, the novel depicts not just people’s enthusiasm and sacrifices during the freedom struggle but also their disillusionment with a freedom that failed to fulfil their cherished dreams of equality and prosperity in postcolonial India. The protagonist, Diganta Keshari, leaves home and joins the freedom struggle, hoping to see the country become the ideal kingdom—Ram Rajya. But when he returns to his village after twenty years of Independence, he encounters a new form of oppression and evil perpetrated by people they considered their own.

Here's an excerpt from Pratibha Ray’s Uttarmarga: Where Freedom Reigns

‘I’m Digdarshi from the ashram nearby. If you want,  you can join the ashram. Many girls like you, who aren’t treated well by society and want to escape the system, have joined the ashram; they work for the country’s independence.  Bye for now! I’ve got to go—I must embark on my journey before daybreak,’ he introduced himself and his mission, and left. 

Digdarshi had a final, gentle look at that pale, sick, innocent face. Maithili raised her trembling, frail hands, and folded them in gratitude for the man who gave back her life. It was dawn,  and to Digdarshi’s eyes, the pole star looked like a resplendent drop of tear on the rosy cheek of the sky. 

Maithili had cried hard the day jewellery pieces were removed from her body. Someone wiped off the red dot from her forehead, chopped her long hair, took away her colourful sari,  and wrapped a white one over her. She cried for her cherished bangles, bracelets, earrings and anklets. She cried for her silk sari with colourful domes on the border. She cried for her kohl,  vermillion and long hair. The nine-year-old never understood why her parents, aunts, uncles and other relatives were crying after they took away all her favourite stuff. It wasn’t the age for her to understand the things happening to her. 

‘My darling, you’re no longer going to eat fish or wear bangles,’ said her mother sobbing. 

Little Maithili thought her father had become so poor overnight that he couldn’t buy bangles or fish for her.  ‘If all of you can have these adornments like vermilion, jewellery and bangle, why not me? Why can’t I eat fish if the rest of the women can?’ she later asked her mother and the women in her family.  

The mother had no answer except her tears. Finally, it was her uncle who came forward with an answer, ‘The man you married is dead. You’re a widow now, and a widow can’t have all these things. Control your mind, dear child! There’re many  women in our village who have got a similar fate.’ 

Maithili didn’t give in easily. She thumped her foot on the ground and cried, ‘I don’t know him at all, never even met him. Why am I not supposed to eat fish and wear jewellery if he dies? Did he or his father feed me?’ 

The protest didn’t go well with her father. He silenced her with a thunderous howl, ‘Be silent! Ill-fated female! Don’t cross your limits by asking too many questions. Remember! You’re fated to be a widow and must bear with the misfortune. Nobody  here widowed you!’  

He screamed while wiping out his tears. The nine-year-old was stunned to hear the word ‘widow’ from her father. It was revolting for her to imagine herself as one of those pale women draped in a coarse white sari without any makeup or zest, for the rest of her life. She knew those women weren’t allowed to attend celebrations like marriage or thread ceremony. The girl rolled on the ground, questioning if her mother, aunt or any other woman in her family wasn’t a widow, why should she be?  

The crazy behaviour of the girl upset everyone. Her grandmother warned that those questions were a bad omen for the rest of the womenfolk in the family. The old woman slapped hard on Maithili’s tear-soaked face and calmed her down. ‘Ill-fated witch! Your bad karma killed your husband. Your fate is sealed. Don’t curse your mother and aunts.’

Initially, Maithili looked for her bangles; she didn’t like her bare wrists, but slowly, she got used to that rule. Some fourteen or fifteen widows in her village lived without wearing bangles;  no hint of colour appeared on the white sari they donned. She forsook the bangles and colourful saris, but still craved fish.  Nobody in her home dared to offer her fish. It violated the pious life that a widow was mandated to follow. It was a sin to feed fish to her. Maithili’s father, Udayanath Panda, who taught in the Sanskrit school, mandated her to follow every practice that a Hindu widow was supposed to follow; his daughter was no exception. 

Maithili had no bed; she slept on the bare floor and her hair was regularly chopped. She was barred from attending celebrations and enjoying songs, dance, music or theatre.  Restricted from eating moringa leaves, onion, garlic, gourd,  cabbage, cauliflower and other vegetables, she survived on bare vegetarian food. She ate a single meal in the months of Baisakh, Kartika and Magha. She had the limited choice of eating whole mung bean boiled with taro, agasti spinach, plantain, and a little ghee with rice. Yogurt and salt were additional. The father used to supervise if she followed every practice. 

The father hit Maithili hard if she wished to eat fish with her cousins. Hurt and humiliated, she refused to eat some days and went to bed hungry. The house witnessed a lot of tension surrounding the poor girl. Initially, she was a very picky eater,  but things changed drastically. The mother was traumatized to see Maithili constantly craving food. The miserable life of the daughter made her very sad. She, too, didn’t care for her looks.  She stopped wearing bright saris or putting vermilion on her forehead. She was extremely awkward about wearing jewellery as Maithili went around without embellishment. She managed clothing and other external things, but the food aspect of it was different. Being a married woman, she couldn’t fast on Ekadashi or shun eating fish, for those were believed to be practices of a wife to assuage huddles to her husband’s long life and wellbeing.  

Udayanath, the hardliner, warned his wife to watch over  Maithili. The mother often thought that it would be better if they stopped bringing fish home, but Udayanath couldn’t manage to eat without fish. The least he needed on his plate was a little bit of fish curry on the side. When the smell of fried fish wafted in the air, Maithili would rush to her mother and beg for a piece passed on to her secretly; otherwise, she would threaten to go without food. But her mother didn’t dare to defy the rules for her naive daughter. When Udayanath and his younger brother Balunkeswar sat on the floor and relished the lush gravy of the fish curry elaborately served to them, poor  Maithili stood at the threshold and watched their feast without flapping her eyes. Often, the mother stopped serving food to the brothers in between, and asked the girl to go outside and play. The mother would touch a bit of the fish curry to her tongue, and join her daughter for a bland dinner. Tears from the quirky girl’s eyes and the tears of a mother who couldn’t violate the dictums for a widow, mingled with the food on their plates. The girl cried non-stop for fish and often choked,  while the morsel of rice went cold in the mother’s palm; they were half-starved and got weaker gradually. 

During the sacred months of austerity and fasting on Ekadashi, the mother hardly ate while the girl sat in a dark room without water. Udayanath had once hunkered down and slapped hard on Maithili’s tender cheeks for picking a few morsels of puffed rice from the floor and eating on a day of fasting. He never tolerated violation of rites related to faith. He feared more for the sin of deviation that might push his forefathers to rot in hell. After that incident, Udayanath started locking her up in his bedroom. The girl cried non-stop inside; she begged for food and water. The smell of tempering on curries made her crave food; she begged for a few drops of water to quell her thirst in the terrible heat of April. The Brahmin, who gobbled a huge bowl of rice seasoned with yogurt, burped happily. If he heard his daughter asking for food and water, he said with concern that Maithili had to bear the misfortune of a widow because of the sins she committed in her previous birth. He warned the poor girl that if she didn’t follow the practices meant for a widow in this life, the misfortune would follow her in the next birth too. 

The mother didn’t care for the punishment in the next birth or the sins committed against previous generations. She was convinced that she didn’t give birth to a daughter to see her go through the misery in her present life. She hid water in a pitcher, and snacks and bananas under the bed. Maithili didn’t cry for food after that. But neither the girl nor the mother were careful enough to throw away the banana peels tossed under the bed. The father caught their crime, hit his wife cruelly, and checked the room thoroughly before locking up Maithili. Once more, the mother looked for an opportunity to feed her hungry daughter; and since no transaction, good or bad, could be a secret forever, she was caught by her mother-in-law while stealthily delivering some food in a pouch through the window. The old woman was horrified by the lack of piety in their conduct. She screamed that if she, a seventy-year-old senile, could withstand hunger, then why not young Maithili? She declared that the co-conspirators were bent upon sending the ancestors to hell. The old woman’s two sons rushed to check. The mother stood hunched like a culprit awaiting the verdict. Distraught  Udayanath atoned for the sin by offering water to pacify the souls of his ancestors. He vowed to send Maithili back to her in-laws’ place, where she would toil like a slave. The mother fell at his feet and urged him not to push the widow to that place of unspeakable suffering.  

The mother and daughter were locked in two separate rooms on every Ekadashi. The father told Maithili the story of a sati in his clan who, years and years ago, ended her life after the death of her husband. According to him, every Brahmin girl needed to know the glorious practice of sati. He criticized the  British for abolishing some sacred Hindu traditions like sati and child marriage. He believed that their stringent law prevented countless women from reaching heaven, and was upset with natives like Raja Ram Mohan Roy for joining hands with the foreigners to end sati. He scolded Gandhi, who came from Africa and fought relentlessly against child marriage and encouraged widow remarriage. He looked deep into Maithili’s curious eyes and pointed at the sati ground in his backyard and the sahada tree, beneath which his father’s auntie attained sati at age eight.  The pandit was proud that someone from his ancestry did such a pious deed and rose to that exalted status. 

While fantasizing about heaven, Maithili felt terror listening to the details of the sati’s ascent to that dreamland. Udayanath asked her to sit close to him and listen to the story. The pandit elaborated that the legendary auntie was married at seven to a man as his fifth wife. Before the union was even solemnized, the old man breathed his last. He was from the neighbouring village,  and when his pyre was readied, the girl was decorated as a bride. Excited, she wanted to know the purpose of the arrangement. 

‘You’re going to heaven. God has already opened the door for you!’ said a relative. The girl was excited to go to heaven and meet the gods and goddesses. But she couldn’t make out when the people said that someone who had joined her for eternity—for uncountable births and rebirths—would be waiting there for her. She began to recall the person close to her; none of her parents, uncles, aunts or siblings had been to heaven.  She was curious about the person who waited for her in heaven.  ‘Am I going alone?’ she asked. 

‘Yes, darling, going to heaven is a lonely journey,’ said someone. 

‘Not even my parents?’ 

‘No! Your parents aren’t that blessed.’ 

Petrified, the girl clung hard to her mother. She panicked  and cried miserably, ‘No, Ma, no! I won’t go to heaven. I’ll be  too scared among strangers. I’m scared of the darkness and can’t  sleep alone. How can you send me there all alone?’ 

The mother sobbed and choked miserably; they held each  other tight. Someone pacified her from behind. ‘Why’re you so  scared? Your husband is in heaven. You’re married to him. He  died yesterday and has already reached there. He has been waiting  for you there. Your real life will begin there. No need to suffer  in this sinful world. It’s all God’s grace,’ explained someone. 

‘Ghost! Ghost! That man became a ghost after death. Why  should I go to that stranger? I can’t recognize him. Ma! I’m so  scared of ghosts. I might die, but I won’t go to heaven. I’ll be  with you…,’ screamed the girl. 

Before leading the eight-year-old to the pyre, the priest at  the cremation ground made her drink a bowl of a concoction  made from a mix of poisonous dudura seeds and bhang. Most satis were forced to drink that concoction. How can the journey  to heaven be enjoyable without being intoxicated? While she was taken to the cremation ground, the girl was delirious. Under the  influence of the drink, she giggled uncontrollably in euphoria one moment, then fell on the ground and cried hard, refusing to go to heaven the next. The uproar from the combined mix of drum beats, conch blows, ululation, cheers and singing the praise of God, drowned the shrill cries of the girl. 

As soon as she saw the leaping flames of fire, she became aware of their intent. She held on to her uncle—who was leading  the procession—tight, hid her face in his chest, cried hard,  and howled, ‘I don’t want to go to heaven. Don’t burn me for that dead man. I’m so scared! Please let me go! I’m begging  for my life!’  

The girl, who clung tight to her uncle’s chest in fear for her life, was forcefully taken to the pyre. Four men flung her to the flames and pressed her body hard with bamboo poles against the rising fire. The spectators were desensitized to the roiling sight of a sati burnt before their eyes. The barbarism was sealed from them by pouring enough ghee and incense  into the flame that covered the place in smoke and smog.  The roar of drums and bells, and cries of prayer, drowned  the painful wails of the girl being burnt alive. The spectators glorified her attainment of sati with cries of praise for her. It  was hard to determine if the tears in their eyes were tears of  joy for her attainment of satihood and ascending heaven, or  of their unspeakable guilt. 

From that day, the area was known as the sati ground, and it  became a place of pilgrimage for the scores of villages surrounding  it. The memorial that glorified Udayanath’s clan became the site  of an annual festival; actors dramatized the event to drive home the concept of sati to young girls. Tender Maithili cringed in pain and guilt while she heard the horrible atrocities inflicted on her great grandfather’s sister to make her a sati. She seethed in anger against the inhuman practice, and her tender rebellious heart crumbled into innumerable tiny pieces in disapproval of the barbaric custom. It wasn’t an isolated incident related to her family; sati was a practice very much alive in other parts of the country. Many innocent souls were, thus, purged in plain sight with no qualms because people refused to give up their heinous prejudice against a woman when she became a widow. 

Goddess Sita, in the Ramayana, was asked to prove her purity before Rama, and had to enter the fire several times.  Draupadi, in the Mahabharata, had to cleanse herself in fire every day before she entered the chambers of any of her five husbands. Fire is elemental for a woman to prove her chastity and faithfulness to the man she is given out to in marriage.  These reflections crushed young Maithili’s rebellious mind. She was a hapless, young ignorant widow, absolutely powerless. The revolt, however, agitated her heart unabated. 

Extracted with permission from Pratibha Ray's Uttarmarga: Where Freedom Reigns translated by Kanak Hota; published by Rupa Publications