Guilt

By: Chandra Goswami

5:30 a.m. I tossed to the other side of the bed, trying to ignore the beeping alarm that threatened to spoil my sleep. Mentally, I was already awake, as the small devil in my head nudged, “Sleep you lousy cow, and keep expanding like a balloon.” As my body shivered at the thought of getting up this early, the six months of potent will power to start a morning walk slowly gave in, to the placid sleep of a winter morning. “Good, occupy two seats on a bus with that butt of yours, which is outgrowing you every day. Stay as round as you wish to be,” the mind prodded again.

I made an effort to open my eyes like a drunkard. Physically, I felt drained as my mind spoke again, “Should you get up this early? You are not sleeping well. You slept at 3 last night”. I loved this version of my mind, my angel who always uttered things I wanted to hear. My body lay there wanting to save itself from the coldness outside my blanket, and the bitterness outside my home. But there was no reason to stay on the bed either, especially, when I had spent almost a month being at home, sleeping and avoiding the world outside my house.  However, at the end, I gave in to the guilt tormenting me for wasting my life, and left my bed to face a new day!

“Why are you crying?” my mother would ask.“That moron has spoiled your life. He is out for good.” In India, parents are quick to get their daughters married. But they are quicker in undermining the dynamics of a relationship after a divorce.  For almost six months, I had to live through a devastating divorce with blames and counter blames gyrating from both the sides. The struggle to win freedom was distressing. But more distressing was the fact that society did not take a minute before throwing away its veil of modernism and adorning hypocrisy.

Those who supported me wanted me to become a Ninja Queen, preferably Uma Thurman and vanquish the family that I was married to, more like a "Kill Bill" sequence. Those who felt the other way wanted to turn me into Nirupa Roy, who would wait for ages to see a wayward man become sane in some miraculous manners. There was no middle path for me. If I divorced him, it could only be because he wanted to burn me alive on a pyre. Incompatibility, loss of dignity, the absence of love, and crises of individuality were basically Hebrew for all the parties who came to my rescue.

If I showed weakness and said that I loved him, people would ask, “Then why are you leaving him?” If I said he was a Satan reincarnated as my husband, people would say, “Why do you miss him then?” I dreaded showing any kind of sentiment to people to an extent that even my unstable emotional state would find a vent only when I was alone in a shower or in my bed at night.

I did marry him out of love, but our ideologies were two different poles of the globe that could never connect. And the longitude that kept us together, which we called care and friendship was also losing its meaning over time. But then I tried my best to respect our differences and ignore his overtly melodramatic stance of publicly humiliating me for almost three years. Finally, my patience simply withered away.

In our country, I believe it is better to live a life of a widow who, at least, gets to have the sympathy of the society, than being a divorcee who lives constantly under a social scanner.

Once I filed my divorce petition, my neighbours started taking a keen interest in my life. I suddenly felt like a Page 3 celebrity whose pain was now an issue of public debate. People were quick to bring their judgment to the table. Hell, they were quicker than the Indian judicial system! Those who decided to side with me considered themselves the flag bearers of women emancipation. Yet, they were the first to broadcast the news regarding my failed marriage to others.

Those who didn't side with me assessed my character on the degree of happiness I showed on social media. “Look at her! She is going to the parties and travelling with friends. I tell you this girl has no integrity. That’s why she is divorced.” On days when I felt low, comments such as, “I told you, divorce was not a solution,” or “See, you can never be happy after a divorce,” would make me more determined to find a meaning to my life and search my happiness. I would not cry in front of the world to prove others that I was weak. Rather, I would live happily at the expense of being judged by the society.

By the time my divorce was settled, my guilt trips almost became a regular visitor in my life. "Don’t you think you were too hasty in asking for a separation? You should have been more patient. Look at Tulsi Virani; look at Parvati; look at all the typecast actors of the daily Indian soups! They keep up with all kinds of indignation and that’s the reason why they sell. You will be damned by this society,” my thoughts would wander.

However, on days when I felt normal again, an invitation to a wedding or social gathering would let the guilt score a home run. Look at those lovely couples… Ouch! There are so many people in this world and yet I am lonely… Ouch! Wow… that girl looks good in Shakha & Sindoor (Bengali symbol of marital status)… Ouch. People must be gossiping behind my back… Ouch! Are they trying to ignore me? Keeping me away from the rituals since I am a divorcee? Ouch. My guilt would keep hitting me hard, while I continued to perform the Herculean task of appearing in the social gatherings with a smile.

I joined a school thinking it would keep me busy and engaged in a positive environment.  Unlike my belief, the school turned out to be a rigorous workplace where I was stretching myself to accommodate every whim and fancy of the management. To add to the injury, I found myself surrounded by kids. The guilt would laugh a hearty laughter before starting its monologue, “You will die alone, all alone I say. You don't even have a kid. You will grow old and lonely like Miss Havisham (Great Expectations?)."

Every morning parents would come to drop their kids at the bus stop. Some would ask whether I was married, and if yes, whether I had kids. I would churn out pretentious stories so that they won't know what chaos jittered my core at that moment. The school bus would be packed with dreams that could never come true for me and I would freeze feeling sorry for my empty womb.

My encounter with guilt continued until one fine day I came across a lady carrying a rug on her shoulder, standing very close to the bus stop. The woman had a bottle of water in her left hand with which she tried to wash off the dirt on her plastered right leg. Her hair was dirty and matted. She wore a thin cardigan through which I could glare at the fold of her tattered sari.

She made a difficult attempt to hold the rug on her shoulder, pressing it against her chin, while her hands brushed the plaster on her broken foot. I stood there wondering where did she come from, and who might have deserted her! Was it a husband, a father, a brother, or a son? My eyes suddenly turned moist as I felt a sense of acute empathy for this figure. I realized how similar our situations were; she was just another soul like me who was deprived of love!

As I continued to stare at her, I found a way to impede all the guilt trips that I undertook. Being a woman, for me, love matters the most. There was always a risk of being left alone in a relationship where love did not exist. Wasn't such desertion equivalent to death? Then why was I feeling guilty for moving out of a relationship where I didn't find the love that I desired? 

That woman at the bus-stop became an epiphany for me. I realized why I had chosen to give up on a relationship that caused me so much pain. I just did not want to become her!

Soon my bus arrived. Before boarding the bus, I reached out to her and passed a hundred rupee bill into her hand, knowing that it won't make much of a difference. But my life was full of gratitude for her. Her presence was enough to help me grow stronger to fight this world, even with my guilt.