Burn The House

At night she sat on her bed, worried what would happen if her father knew. She couldn’t imagine making him angry, she felt like she could bury herself in an earth hole instead and never return. Just like the stories. ‘The earth opened up and swallowed Sita’ Grandma had narrated once.
Shinu too would ask mother earth to swallow her.
When her father smiled it felt like all they said about God and angels was real. He could fight all monsters. He was strong. He sang her lullabies on most nights before putting her to sleep. She loved daddy. That’s why she couldn’t disappoint him. Mama rarely acknowledged her, it felt like he was all she had.

A throbbing part of her, shuddered under her skin, the other parts turned into Jell-O. Under all the squirming fluidity that got stuck and yet continued to run scared inside her, she slept. The blanket of night stars wove dreams above her, they were like shadows she was too afraid to touch. She slept like a hollow dark pit beside a patch lush green land. In the morning, she wet her bed. Again.

Shinu was almost five years old then. ‘Just’ almost five years old
Pre-school had begun and mornings in their house-hold were rushed. Mama would cook, be busy in one thing or another, daddy would get Shinu ready for school, make sure she drank milk and take her to catch the school bus. Daddy would often carry her on his shoulders and run, propped there she would look at the road that raced behind her fast running father. Once she would get on the bus, he would wave at her and she would wave back at him. It was the same thing each day, Wake and run. She liked sitting by the window, air breezing on her face, her mind always ran with the clouds
‘Study well’ Daddy would say. And when she would, he would bring out a bar of five-star chocolate from his pocket. Its sweet taste would fill her for days.

School was fun, daddy made sure she studied well. Shinu scored well in all her tests. She liked to draw, learn math, and most of all she enjoyed stories. Story books for children, anecdotes, short stories- she would want them all. Daddy would recite them to her in the evenings, slowly, often making her repeat words, or write spellings. The evening smell of spices and incense would fill the drawing room where they would sit on the floor beside a wrought iron bed.

‘Because – write- B.E.C.A.U.S.E’ he would say in his baritone
And Shinu would scribble with her pencil on a squared notebook
Ship- S.H.I.P

Words were forming in her mind and stories were making their way in her heart.

Every day, after school Shinu would go to a day-care centre. Her parents, both had full-time jobs and would pick her from there after their work. An old couple- day-care grandparents and their son. There were two other children at the day care- much older, they too would sit around the house until their parents came from work. They were too old to play with her, so she would be alone. Shinu didn’t like staying in her school uniform, she would want to change from it as soon as she returned. The old man, who she referred as day-care grandpa would change her out of her school clothes and into fresh ones. She would wander from one room to another or sit on the floor and draw on an old slate till her parents would return to fetch her.

‘Where is my darling’ Daddy would shout from the door of the day care centre and Shinu would run to him.
She rarely got permission to play outside. Afternoons had a dreary light about them. She would watch from the window; tall coconut trees, a small empty enclosure with children playing and a street out front with vehicles passing. Day-care grandma would rarely let her outside. So, she would watch.

‘When you get older, you too will be able to go out and play. So, grow up already’ Day-care grandma would say. Shinu would hate that she was small, she would envy others and she would wonder when God would make her grow.

Day care grandma was kind but strict, she would feed her everything she would otherwise be picky about.
Every evening around 6 pm her parents would fetch her from day care, she would get to play outside for a short while until it would get dark, which would be too soon, according to Shinu. Then, there would be homework. Loads of it.

One afternoon, day-care grandpa asked her if she would like to go out to play. Of course, she wanted to. Day-care grandma wasn’t home that day. Shinu was overjoyed, she wondered what it would feel like to be everyone on the playground.

They walked out of the apartment, he held her hand while crossing the road, she jumped up and down excited. The skies were clear and it was breezy. Daddy would be back soon, she would tell him all about her day. They left the ground on the other side, she asked day-care grandpa, ‘where are we going’?

‘You’ll see, there, you can play as much as you want’, he replied.
There were trees, it wasn’t a park but a dense unkept enclosure of trees, it wasn’t far from her house. There was a tiny temple somewhere in that wilderness. Logs of wood. That was it. No children, nothing.

Where do I play? Shinu asked day-care grandpa confused. There wasn’t a ground even. Fallen leaves everywhere, dried leaves, wet soil. It was a strange place.
He looked at her with his cold grey eyes and pulled her close, pressed his mouth on hers, it smelled like foul betel nut, she struggled under his firm hold, he slid a hand inside her skirt it kept grazing her thigh, her waist, her buttock.
Shinu squirmed and said she wanted to go home breaking into a scream almost. Mama had warned her ‘Never let any strange man touch you. Never let anyone close to you.’ Surely it was her fault. She cried again.

The wilderness kept her scream. Her small body died many innocent deaths in that helpless moment. Her small heart would remember it all in the years to follow. Over and over again.
‘I am playing with you. If you tell daddy, he will punish you. They will throw you out of your house. Then where will you go? He will hit you. He will never love you’, said the old man nonchalantly.
‘No, daddy will never do that’, she cried
‘Wipe your tears, and don’t repeat this to anyone’, insisted the ‘day-care grandpa’.
Evening closed Shinu gravely in the darkness of her dark wings.
That night, she sat on the bed worried. The next morning, she wet her bed. The next day, she stayed close to day-care grandma.

‘Come, play with me. Or else, I will tell daddy’, said the day-care grandpa again a few days later.
Shinu refused to go.
‘Common, we are friends. I won’t tell him if you go with me’
She didn’t want Daddy to throw her out, she wanted daddy to love her, she didn’t want him to be angry, so she went.
The day care man would touch her and do things with his hands to himself. It made her nauseated, it made her uncomfortable. She could never tell anyone. She had no siblings. Her mama was indifferent and Daddy was strict. She was ashamed.
Days ran like the speeding school bus. They stole her playfulness, took away her shine and her need for attention grew. Unfortunately, the world was too busy to notice, Mama was pregnant, Daddy was busier and her own grandparents who adored her were away. She continued staring out the window, looking at children playing – vehicles passing.
The new term at school began amidst heavy rains. They were taught to make little paper boats in school during the craft hour.

‘Children, make a wish and release your boats’ their class teacher instructed
‘Wishes are boats, they carry your messages to God’ teacher told them.
When Shinu left little paper boats into small streams, she knew what she wanted. She wanted to be away from day care grandpa. She prayed, she wished, she wished some more. She wanted to become like she was before he touched her. She didn’t want to feel ashamed, she didn’t want daddy’s anger.

That year, Shinu’s brother came into the world.
They had to switch from that day-care into another one. Once, then twice. In the years, she forged friendships, scored good marks in school and received five-star chocolates from Daddy. Shinu was seven then, almost eight.

When she entered the new day-care premises, she saw: A swing, a garden, and a vet clinic. It was like a dream. Surely, she would get to play here, she thought.
The house, in her first week she realised was filled with mean aunties, and lazy uncles. The premise was large, the house was big, it smelt of burnt wood and fallen wet almonds, it had a dark room in the corner. A back-yard where aunties washed utensils with ash. Shinu dreaded the darkness of the room. But, it was a good place for hide-and-seek.
She hid there once, while another girl searched for her, there in the dark she didn’t notice uncle sitting on the floor. When she did, he smiled. She saw he was wearing only an underwear and the smell of his sweat dampened the dark room. He pulled her close and touched her. Nausea gripped her insides like a loose damp cloth, it clung to her throat.
‘You like it’ he asked
‘No’ she said and ran. It began all over again.
Shinu would play outside, near the cotton tree, on the swing. He would call her inside, blow cigarette smoke on her face and squeeze her arm.
‘The swing you play on, its mine’ he would say pressing his mouth onto her small lips, he would bite them push his tongue inside her mouth. He was too strong, too tall, what if he crushed her arms? She would close her eyes shut and wish it over. Later, her lips would feel numb, she would rinse her mouth again and again. She didn’t want daddy to notice.
She was too scared to tell anyone. Who would believe her? She was only eight.
That year she made many paper boats. When it rained, she released them in tiny streams and wished –Burn the dark-room, Burn the house.
When the rain drenched her, she let it. That day she had stayed out in the rain for too long. Little Shinu fell sick.
Her parents decided that the day-care was irresponsible and they pulled her and her brother out.
Many years later, she would pass the houses that broke her childhood into pieces. ‘When you get older, you too will be able to go out and play. So, grow up already’ she would hear each time she passed. It had been long, she would smile sadly at the irony. Each time.
Even years later she would wish. ‘Burn the house that buried my childhood…’ In the following rains, a little heart missed many dreams. Shinu grew older, she understood the world and its workings. She understood her past and learnt to release herself from the shame she carried as a child.
Over the years, life taught her many lessons. The past is the story that makes our present, she realised in her late twenties, therefore, only we carry the power to release our past from the story of our present.
Shinu changed cities, grew older but she never told daddy about what happened. Once in a while, she bought herself a herself a five-star chocolate. Its sweetness hadn’t changed in all the years.