Exploring Love...the shade of PINK

Dhundhla Astitva Chapter 7

The walk to her mother's village had taken nearly four hours, a journey through the skeletal remains of the night and into the bruised purple of the dawn. Radha had moved like a ghost escaping its own funeral, her feet, toughened by years of standing on the Haveli's cold stone, now finding a strange rhythm on the jagged dirt path. She didn't feel the sharp stones or the thorns that snagged her hem. Her mind was a vast, quiet blank—a white canvas after years of being painted over with the suffocating gray of "duty."

She reached the familiar cluster of mud-brick huts just as the sun began to bake the dew off the tall grass, turning the fields into a shimmering sea of gold. Her mother's hut sat at the very edge of the settlement, leaning slightly to the side as if weary of the world's weight. It was small—humbler than the grain store where Vikram kept his surplus—but as Radha approached the gate, the air suddenly felt lighter, devoid of the iron-heavy scent of incense and judgment.

In the small, swept yard, her mother Shanti, was hunched over a pile of dry sticks, her back curved like a weathered bow. She was blowing into a small clay stove, her face obscured by a cloud of bitter woodsmoke that made her cough.

"Ma?" Radha's voice was a whisper, a sound she hadn't used for her own needs in seven years.

The older woman froze. She turned slowly, squinting against the harsh morning light. When her eyes finally settled on the tall, thin woman standing by the bamboo fence, the bundle of sticks fell from her hands, scattering like broken bones in the dust.

"Radha? My child? My bitiya?"

Her mother scrambled up, her joints creaking with a protest that Radha knew all too well. She ran to the gate, her calloused, earth-stained hands reaching out to touch Radha's face, tracing the sharp line of her jaw as if confirming she wasn't a vision brought on by the heat. She didn't look at the lack of heavy gold; she didn't look at the dusty, tear-stained hem of the cotton saree. She only saw the girl who had been traded away seven years ago.

"You're here... you're actually here," her mother sobbed, pulling Radha's head onto her shoulder. She looked behind to see anyone but there was none

"You are here? Alone at this time? Everything is fine, Bitiya?" Shanti asked worriedly. Radha saw ehr tense face and asked

"You are not happy to see me? I am here all the time thinking about you being happy."

"No No my child I am happy. I was just asking randomly...like...you didn't visit for the past seven years."

"But now I am here." Radha again hugegd her mother to get the familiar touch of her love.

Radha let out a breath she felt she had been holding since the day of her Gauna. She didn't cry yet; she was too hollowed out for tears. She just let the scent of her mother—dry hay, old cotton, and woodsmoke—wrap around her like a protective shroud.

Inside the hut, the world was small and brown, illuminated by the soft light filtering through the thatched roof. There were no silver platters here, no marble floors to scrub, no voices booming commands from the veranda. Her mother moved with a frantic, joyful energy, pulling out a frayed jute mat for Radha to sit on.

"How is the Sarpanch-ji? And the little ones? Sundar and Kishan?" her mother asked, her hands busy stirring a pot of thin, watery rice porridge. "Did they come with the jeep? Is Vikram-ji waiting at the main road with the men?"

Radha looked at her hands, the skin red and raw from the previous day's labor. "I came alone, Ma. I just wanted to see you. I want to stay for a few days... if you'll have me."

Her mother paused, the wooden spoon suspended mid-air. She looked at Radha's face—the sharp, protruding cheekbones, the dark hollows beneath her eyes, the way her wedding ring sat loose and spinning on a finger that had grown too thin for its own history. A mother's heart doesn't need a formal confession to hear the truth of a daughter's suffering. She knew the reputation of the Haveli; she knew the cold pride of Vikram's lineage.