Free Strength to Say No by Mouhssine Rekha; Ennaimi Kalindi Page B

home, since my mother is probably still furious. I agree with him. He promises to bring me my school things early the next morning.

    It is after eight o’clock, and I’ve been up for nearly two hours. Dipak is late in coming, and I’m going to be late to school. I go to the house hoping that Ma will be away. I see her in the courtyard weaving bamboo baskets. She sees me and looks daggers at me. Her dark, piercing eyes are fierce, her lips pursed. Dipak takes me by the hand and tells me that my mother no longer wants me to go to school. Her decision is final, and neither he nor Baba has succeeded in making her change her mind. She will not tell me directly because she has sworn not to speak to me again.
    All right then. I go back into the room, grab the tobacco basket and go plonk myself down at the other end of the courtyard near Budhimuni’s house. In one morning I make more than five hundred cigarettes. I have so much experience that I can work with my eyes closed. If I keep on at this rate, in no time I’ll beat my father’s production figure of a thousand bidis a day. There is also a high probability that my back will be wrecked and my fingers bent before I’m married. And it’s not impossible that my mother and I will never speak to each other again.
    I hear the children chattering in the street, and I recognize the voices of Budhimuni, Ashok, Pinky and the others. Atul asked them to find out why I haven’t been to school. I reply briefly that I had to drop everything and help my parents. The conversation very quickly turns to the newspaper articles thatall the parents in the village are talking about. I really underestimated the impact of my speech. I am under no illusion now that the whole country knows about my talk. Budhimuni is the only one who understands the extent of the damage. She advises me to talk about it with the teachers at the school. For the time being I don’t want to make the situation worse, even though she is undoubtedly basically right – but I have no idea how to get out of this mess I’ve created. I ask her to lie to Atul and Arjun and tell them that I had to go to my sister’s in Sampur. I don’t want to get them mixed up in this business. I have already hurt my family enough by giving them so much bad publicity.
    Baba dismisses the children who are clustered around me. He is livid. He confirms what Dipak told me before with regard to the school. From now on my main activity will consist of either making bidis or else going to the brick factory where my sister works. I reply calmly that I prefer to follow his line of work because I don’t feel like learning a new trade.
    â€˜Tomorrow we will go to the dealer to get double the amount of tobacco and eucalyptus leaves,’ he says with finality.

    Several days went by, but my mother didn’t get over the shockwave that I caused in the press. She spent a lot of time squatting in the courtyard brooding over the shame that I had brought on our family. She didn’t open her mouth except to insult me. She told me that from now on she would no longer feed me, that she was going to make my life so difficult and unbearable that I was soon going to look back longingly at the time now gone by when she loved me with all her heart. So that she would becertain not to come face to face with me she wove her baskets in the neighbouring courtyard with the other women.
    I took advantage of the fact that she wasn’t watching me to go for a walk down the main street. I couldn’t take a step in the village without hearing remarks or being asked questions about my speech. I brushed off those remarks and claimed that it was nothing to do with me, that there had been a mistake. Most of the people had only a very vague idea of what had been said. Nobody had really read the newspapers. I found it strange that my neighbours were interested more in my marriage than in me myself.
    At home I tried to