The rest she dealt with mechanically, her mind on the most important things that needed to be done. She had to protect her sisters. She had to protect her father from himself. She looked up legal books, she studied the personal laws binding women in all religions, she looked at the rent laws since the flat was in the holy joint family name, she spoke to experts about partnership laws since her father was a partner in the shop.

This was not about rights—there is far too much inequality for anything to be really right—it was only about fairness.

Her sisters saw this as unnecessary aggression, disrespect to their father, an attempt to ‘take our mother’s place’. She protested, there were fights, often they were resentful.

She knew she was being over-protective about her sisters. Better that, than none.

Her sisters are grown-up women now, working, owning their own apartments; when everyone gets together, they try hard not to miss that feeling of another time. The evening paper would slide from under the door, ma would receive her millionth phone call of the day from daddy and then make tea, steam the patrel; the girls would troop in from school, their uniforms happily dirty, their plaits askew, their ribbons undone. Suddenly there would be a five o’ clock feeling in the house, food would leave a special taste of happiness on the tongue which had nothing to do with eating.

In those moments there was something close to perfection.

If only they could have all gone on like that.

If they could have held their lives at that level.

If ifs and ands.

Mothers & Men

Brave, brave child.

All of twenty-one, her hands playing tourniquet with her test papers. She gets the best grades in her third year of arts, she goes to the classiest college, she reads the best books; they teach her about human psychology and sociology, why men are contemptuously tolerant of women; the finest in feminist literature which has helped her figure out why her father did what he did to her. This, she has understood with finality.

‘It started when I was six. I have an elder brother, and two younger ones who are twins. He wanted to control us, as completely as he controlled our mother. He would call out to her, she would go to him, into their bedroom and close the door on us; always we would be on this side, and they on that side of the closed door. Outside the door mother was like a shadow, his shadow in his house. I spent more time with my brothers and their friends, I was a tomboy. My father resented the fact that I was not submissive, he wanted to break me. Later he started the same thing on one of the twins; he picked on the one like me, also rebellious and outspoken.

‘I told my elder brother a long time back, he did nothing, he let me down. He is twenty-four years old now; our father used to beat him, it stopped only when my elder brother started going to work. My father used to do things with the maid, it was so open, but my mother did nothing. I told my mother about what my father did to me when I was sixteen, I thought she knew all along, I always thought she knew and would do something, anything, to stop it; mother cried when I told her, she was uncontrollable when the twin told her it had been done to him too. She took action then, she filed for divorce and for the house in the name of her children.