Free A Life Less Ordinary by Baby Halder Page A

explain to him.”
    â€œI’ve tried! But he just won’t listen to anything I say. If I so much as open my mouth, he jumps down my throat! I don’t know what to do.”
    Sometimes when I felt very alone in the house and got fed up with staying inside, I would go out, cross the road, and watch thechildren playing. I wanted so badly to go and play with them. One day, I was standing outside the house watching the children play gulli danda . Suddenly the gulli flew through the air and landed at my feet. I thought I would pick it up and throw it back to the children, but the moment I touched it—I don’t know what happened to me—instead of throwing it back, I picked it up and ran into the field where they were playing and joined in. I lost track of the time, and I would have gone on playing with them but one of them caught hold of my hand and said, “Didi, that lady over there is calling you.” I looked and saw that some women standing by my house were watching me, and one of them, whom I called Aunt, was calling out to me. When I got to her, she chided me: “What on earth do you think you’re doing? What if you hurt your stomach? Look at the size of you! You can hardly walk and you think nothing of rushing off into the field to play! Get back inside at once!”
    Shamefacedly, I ran into the house. Everyone in the neighborhood began to make fun of me, especially the young boys and girls, who said, “Look at the new bride! She can hardly move and she is playing gulli danda !” When I heard this, I couldn’t help but laugh.
    When I was this happy, my husband’s house did not seem so bad. In Baba’s home I had found it so difficult because of the continuous tension, but here there were only two people and one of them was hardly ever home. He would fight and go away, and then to console myself I would watch the children play, or go to visit Sandhya-di, who was always ready to give me support. It was Sandhya-di who had told my husband to give me whatever I wanted to eat. That way, she told them, my child’s mouth wouldn’t water unduly. And I, fool that I was, believed he would do as she said and I began to dream about what I would ask him for. I decided that when the time came, I would demand some chop mudi . Just thinking of this made me happy; I truly believed he would do as I said, and so I waited for the day to end and the right moment to come. As the hours passed, my anticipation increased and so did my happiness. Then I suddenly remembered that he would not be home in the evening, so I thought, Why don’t I ask him now? But how could I? We hardly spoke to each other…I told myself, it has to be done, let me try once and see what happens. So I went into the kitchen. He was sitting there on a stool, and I kept hovering about. He was looking at me and I at him. Then I told myself that the chop mudi would not come by itself, so I plucked up courage and asked him, with a smile, to give me some money. I had to say it two or three times, but finally he pulled some money out of his lungi and sort of threw it at me rather reluctantly and left.
    My husband never gave any money to me. I had to ask him for each and every little thing I needed. He would decide whether he wanted to give me money or not. All kinds of vendors would come into our neighborhood to sell things, and I felt very bad when I saw all the other girls buying from them. Even when there was shopping to be done at the market, he would go himself. Finally, when I could not stand being without money at all, I thought up a plan. When I sat down to cook, I would put aside a fistful of rice every day. After several days when I saw him going out of the house with a bag, I asked if he was going to buy rice, and when he answered yes, I said to him, “I have some rice, would you like to buy that?” He laughed and said, “Show it to me, how many days will it last?”
    â€œOh, two or