A poor mother’s majboori

Navneet Kaur Karwal  

With a block of bricks on her head and a crying infant tied to her back in a tattered shawl, she was continuously going to and fro, loading and unloading bricks at the construction site of our new house. While my pragmatic brother was busy extracting the last drop of blood and sweat from the labourers with his loud ‘jaldi karo, jaldi karo’, I was sitting silently on a rickety chair, spending the afternoon in a lazy manner. Suddenly my gaze settled on Radha Rani. I recall her name because my brother kept shouting at her for being somewhat sluggish in carrying the load. Her  sallow complexion and sunken eyes did not produce any pity in his heart; for people like him, labourers were mere mechanical hands that must be twisted to work till they are bruised and broken. 

Though mindful of the cries of the suckling baby on her back, Radha Rani was not allowed to stop to feed the child, as it possibly would have incurred the anger of the paymaster (my brother). But when the cries grew louder, the tender mother in the gruff exterior revolted. She halted her bee rounds and sat in a shady corner to nurse the baby. Just as the paymaster raised his pitch of protest, I could no longer withhold the mounting anger within me and defended the cause of the lactating mother. My intervention brought a mute feeling of gratitude on her face.

In no time, my protest was acknowledged and without any further clamour, she was allowed to properly perform her primary duty which the Creator had assigned to her. It was a moment of victory for me, and my guilty conscience was comforted to some extent. 

But another unspeakable horror began to surface soon, against which I could not lodge any vocal protest. It was a spectacle of moral bankruptcy. When the baby’s hunger was being satisfied through the benign act of breastfeeding, the lust of lecherous men at the site was being whetted. Their prurient eyes attempted to pierce through the veil, shaming entire motherhood. Furtively, and with morbid curiosity, they left no stone unturned to get a better view of a mother’s bosom. 

After a few hours, the labourers called it a day as the pall of dusk spread across the sky.  When the paymaster was busy distributing the wages, I nudged Radha Rani and put a hundred rupee note in her palm, in addition to her paltry wages. Despite my attempt, this act fell under the eagle eyes of my brother. I did not care about his reaction. I was just deriving pleasure by looking at the innocent face of Radha Rani’s baby.