MY MOTHER'S REMARRIAGE

Had it been a normal day at the office, I would have summoned my assistants one by one—arranged not alphabetically, but by what I called their intellectual height. Tall minds first. 

Each would receive a set of crisp, sharp-bordered printouts with deadlines stamped in bold on the top left. Their day’s work. 

It was my design for order, a formula that made my professional journey seem smooth—like the hum of a printer that never jammed.

My life, though, was not of my designing. It wasn’t a sketch where I outlined the contours of a life on a blank sheet and then filled it in with the soft hues of a brush. It wasn’t a canvas soaked in planned shades. It was a splatter of accidents and silence. It was a field of bruises that didn’t always show.

My early days at work had been as easy as walking barefoot on a sword. That’s not a metaphor—I don’t do metaphors well when it comes to pain. I was just used to balancing on the sharpness. Today, though, the sword felt sharper. The blade had found its mark in the tender part of me that I had long tried to fortify with steel.

The blow had come from home. From my mother.

My mother—the only constant in my story. In her fifties, she worked at a school as a clerk. Her back often ached. Her hands trembled if she stood too long. The headmaster, she said, was kind. She never said much more about him, but the way she spoke his name held softness in it, like a child whispering a secret to herself.

That morning, when she called me, her voice was hesitant. I knew something was different.

“Sweta, I need your permission for…” she had begun, pausing mid-thought. Unusual for her—she wasn’t someone who sought permission from anyone, let alone her daughter.

“Mama, if it’s about money, don’t ask. Just take it from my purse.”

“No, no. It’s not that. I mean... Panditji—our headmaster—and I…”

“What? What about him?”

“We… want to get married.”

Those words rang in my ears long after the call ended. Long after the office emptied. Long after I had mechanically dismissed meetings and deadlines and coffee breaks. I remained frozen in my cabin, staring at the white light of my computer screen, unable to compute what she had just said.

My peon knocked at the door. “Ma’am, will you sit late today?”

He asked it twice before I heard him. Normally, I would have scolded him for disturbing me. But today I found myself looking at his torn cap, his uneven dress, his mouth stained with years of tobacco. His nose sat crooked on his face, like a badly stitched button. And somehow, his face pulled me back into my childhood.

My first memory of life is the fall of our roof.

Our home was never really a home. It was a handful of materials pretending to be one—a mosaic of tin sheets, bent-out-of-shape outboards, hay, cardboard, and ropes. Collected from garbage bins or taken from construction sites when no one was looking. A house that leaned on itself, exhausted from the effort of standing.

Inside it, apart from me and my mother, lived a man. People said he was my father. I don’t remember calling him anything.

When the roof caved in one monsoon night, I was barely three. One of the sheets cut my forehead. My mother screamed. The man cursed. Rainwater poured over our bodies like punishment. I don't remember whether I cried. But I do remember thinking—if the sky has fallen tonight, will it return tomorrow?

Some memories, like old bruises, linger long after they stop hurting. Some hide under the skin and wait.

I was seventeen when I met someone I thought I could trust. My English teacher. He was everything my father wasn’t—clean, articulate, polished. He owned a scooter, lived in a proper house, wore neat shirts, and had a collection of books. In a town like ours, that was equivalent to royalty.

He encouraged my reading. Lent me books. Paid my library fee once or twice. He spoke softly and used gentle phrases. I looked up to him.

One day, after finishing a lesson on “Feminine Gender,” I went to his home. His family was away. He invited me to stay. “Let’s cook and dine together,” he said. It felt innocent. It felt safe. The student followed.

I had no idea what waited inside him.

The transformation was terrifying. He didn’t touch my food. He touched me instead. My blouse. My skirt. My breath. My voice. All disappeared under his hands.

He stuffed my underwear into my mouth.

I remember the ceiling. A cobweb danced at the corner. I remember his breath—sour, ragged. I remember the weight. His tongue licking my belly like a starving beast. The way he grunted. The way he tore.

He broke me.

At 2 a.m., I was on the road, bloodied and barefoot.

I left a note for him the next day: “Don’t come within the range of my eyes. I will slaughter you.” He never did. He understood what I meant. Not death—that would have been mercy. No, I wanted to cut off the part of him that made him believe he had power over me. I wanted it burned in the town square.

I never went to the police.

Trust never resided in our town. Especially not for girls like me. Poor. Alone. Unimportant.

The body healed. But I didn’t.

That night seeded something in me. A hard, bitter core. Hatred. Not just toward him. Toward all men. All of them. My father. My teacher. My future. I built walls. I sharpened my tongue. I never let another man come too close—even if I smiled, even if I flirted. My soul stayed behind bulletproof glass.

I left my town. Left behind the fields, the broken cots, the taste of old chocolate. I walked through college. I earned a job. My father died—without redemption—and I didn’t grieve.

Then came the city. The office. The schedules. The quiet bed where I slept alone. All of it tightly packed.

And now, this phone call. This man—Panditji—this... new chapter. A man my mother wanted to marry.

At home, I opened the door like I usually did. But I didn’t toss my sandals. I didn’t throw my purse. I walked inside like I was entering someone else’s house. Everything felt cold. Foreign.

Lying on my bed, I drifted again. Back into the alley of memory.

There was a shopkeeper who gave me chocolate. His hair was like shredded paper. Whenever he came, my mother closed the cardboard door. He would press her on the cot, heavy and loud. I thought he was trying to flatten her into sweet bread. He bit her face often. She never screamed.

Maybe she had run out of voice.

After he left, she gave me the chocolate.

My mother had a torn silk purse that she kept hidden under her blouse, between her breasts. It was the only thing she brought from her lost homeland—Bangladesh. She opened it like a treasure chest. If it had no coins, she cried. I cried with her.

Then we went to the shopkeeper’s store. We came back with flour, oil, and rice.

And chocolate.

I never understood why she endured that life. I didn’t understand the shape of her desperation. Only later did I learn about 1971. About the war. About the borders drawn by generals, soaked in blood by fanatics. About how her father died in the paddy fields. How her mother fell off a bus roof. How her brother was crushed under boots and a rifle butt as he fled toward India.

She had to run. From Bangladesh to India. From being a daughter to being a refugee. From being a child to being a woman before she turned fifteen.

I still don’t know why she married my father. He had one working hand, a liquor bottle in the other. He beat her like he wanted to break every bone. He suspected me. My eyes were blueish—he said I wasn’t his.

He might’ve been right.

I wasn’t anyone’s child. I was the child of war. Of desperation. Of hunger and refuge. I was the child of a border that had cracked and swallowed my mother’s life.

As a child, I had screamed at her: “Hit him back, Ma!” She never did. Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe she wouldn’t.

And yet—here I was. Breathing. Living. I was the fruit of her decisions, her silences, her stubbornness.

I was the fruit of a failed marriage.

The next morning, I walked up the school stairs with heavy feet. I went straight to the headmaster’s office.

He sat in a semicircle room bathed in pale light. His suit was cream-coloured, his tie a subtle blue. His moustache was thick, curling like a question mark over his mouth.

He looked up and smiled. “You must be Sweta.”

“Are you Mr. Pandit?”

He pointed to the nameplate.

I didn’t sit.

“Do you love my mother?”

His smile faded.

“I do.”

“Would you marry her?”

“She can pick the date.”

“Will you love her?”

“Till the day on my death certificate.”

I nodded.

“If you’re serious, come to dinner. Tonight. Eight o’clock sharp.”

He stood up. “I will.”

That night, he came.

He brought her flowers. Not roses—lilies. She smiled like a young girl. I had never seen her cheeks flush like that.

We ate. We talked. And I watched them.

I watched the way she looked at him. Not like a survivor. Not like a refugee. But like a woman.

The next week, they married. No grand ceremony. No noise. Just dignity.

At the ceremony, I stood beside her—not as a daughter judging her, but as a woman who had finally understood.

She squeezed my hand and whispered, “You’re not the fruit of a failed marriage, Sweta. You’re the fruit of survival.”

And for the first time in decades, I wept.

Not because I was broken. But because, finally, I was healing.

THE END

Attribution:

Pennell, Elizabeth Robins,, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons