Sindoor

A dystopian future that brings back a 'glorious' past where women were pavitra and men were celibate and everyone followed the rules.

—

I had noticed the woman even before the sudden appearance of the Rapid Retribution Force (RRF).

It was she who pointed out wordlessly with a tap of her forefinger to the parting of her hair, indicating that I was not wearing sindoor in the parting of my hair. Oh my god! I had forgotten again! I normally did not wear it at home as it caused my scalp to itch and break out into a rash oozing a foul smelling liquid.

I had tried the two different products available but the effect was the same. Venerable grandmother-in-law said that in her time there were 116 products available. Imagine! So much variety. There are only two different brands these days. I even tried making a paste out of turmeric and alum though it took a lot of effort, but even that did not stop the rashes.

So, it was my venerable husband who suggested that I stop wearing it at home. There was no danger of anyone seeing me and if anyone knocked on the door, I could hide, then wear the sindoor, while the venerable grandmother-in-law would open the door, he said. Of course, there was the danger of our neighbours spotting me not wearing the sindoor and ratting on us to the RRF.

But then, my venerable husband had thought of this too and had written a 'To whomsoever it may concern' letter and told me to keep it handy and show it to them. In the letter, he wrote that he had allowed his wife to not wear the sindoor for medical reasons and that no retributory action should be taken against her.

In fact, he had made a hundred copies of the letter and insisted that I carry one in my potli, the little money bag, whenever I went out, which was rare, because pavitr naarees, pure women, preferred to stay home. I keep one tucked behind the photos of the gods in case the RRF comes knocking and in my extreme fear I forget where I should look for the letter. 

But even with the letter, in my potli, or tucked behind the picture of the gods, I was in grave danger because the RRF acted first and then asked questions.

Sometimes they just acted. Such was their power. I had heard of several women who had been killed for this or other offences, like the pallu of their sari slipping from their head or not wearing the red and green glass bangles, or dressing in inauspicious colours such as black or white. The RRF consisted of fierce, proud men of immense might gained from the power of their celibacy. 

***

I trembled at the thought of what might have happened. It had been close. I was as usual walking along the road, being very careful about everything— my sari, my walk, my gaze— so no one could find fault with anything. Not that anyone was watching but I always felt like someone was always watching.

The road had abandoned buildings on either side, all empty skeletons, with windows that sometimes winked when a shard of glass caught the sunlight. The road was wide but there was tar only in patches. The Great Celibate said that there was no money and that we had to make do, suffer and sacrifice for the sake of our great land.

Nobody had much money. Venerable grandmother-in-law (my venerable husband was raised by his grandmother) said that this road used to be the main road in this city, full of shops selling different things with so many vehicles rushing up and down that it was difficult to cross from one side to the other. She said there were places where people could go and eat delicious meals for a price.

But then, people misunderstood the Great Celibate for bringing in the ancient Great Book of Rules, and started going to the Wicked Outside World leaving our beloved land. That is why, the Great Celibate said, there was no money, the people leaving had taken away great amounts of money, and slowly the shops shut down and the buildings emptied and everyone was poor. Even the Great Celibate was poor. We saw him on TV often, (it was really nice to watch all the great stories about his life) walking his lonely walk with his cloth bag slung from one shoulder.

Anu, my friend, who stayed near my mother's house, said he had precious diamonds and rubies in that cloth bag. Anu always said things like that after the RRF dragged away her sister for looking into the eyes of a strange man. I was petrified someone would hear her and drag her away too. We went to the Pavitr Naaree Parisheelan Kendr together, Anu and I, when I lived in my mother's house. 

***

When the RRF battalion came riding in their orange coloured jeeps, the strange woman pulled me just in time into a narrow alley between two broken-down buildings. There was only space to walk sideways. She held my hand tightly and we moved fast, careful not to make even the slightest noise, until we reached a stairwell.

The woman seemed to know where she was going. She quickly climbed three floors at a stretch and I followed her, afraid to ask any questions, though I knew I should not be doing so; I was putting my life at grave risk. The RRF shot bhrasht naarees on sight. And naturally, they shot any pavitr naarees if they were to be found in the company of a bhrasht naaree, even if they were wearing their uniform— the sari of the appropriate colour for the appropriate day, the mangalsutra to signify they were married, the sindoor and the red and green glass bangles.

I was sure she was a bhrasht though I had never seen one, only heard of them, in hushed whispers from the women of our neighbourhood. Every once in a while some pavitr naaree from the surrounding areas would be categorised as bhrasht during a lightning raid from the RRF. If they were not killed immediately, they would be dragged away by their hair, screaming and weeping, to be put in horrible jails that the Great Celibate had designed and built especially for bhrasht naarees, we heard.

No one knew what happened to them. No one saw them afterwards. The households from which they had been taken would be asked by the Pradhan Naaree Parirakshak, the chief protector of women, to perform their death rituals. Anu's father had performed her sister's death rituals. That was the first time I had seen a grown man cry. Father never cried. I sometimes thought Mother cried too much because she cried for him too.

I knew the woman was bhrasht from not just the way she was dressed, in what they called slacks and t-shirts, but from her bold and confident stance, from the way she looked me squarely in the eye, from her confident walk. I had heard Mother say once that the RRF had taken away an eight-year-old girl because of the way she walked. Her mother often scolded her for walking like a wandering earthquake but she could not get the little girl to mend her ways. When the mother of the girl pleaded with the head of the RRF battalion, he had looked at her with all the power of his celibacy radiating from his eyes, they said, and declared that she was a failed mother as she had not trained her daughter well. If it had been me, I would have died then and there, I am so scared. It is so easy to frighten me.

I knew about slacks and t-shirts because one day, soon after I got married, I went up to sweep the upstairs room of my venerable grandmother-in-law's house (yes, it is my house too now, I must learn to think of it that way). Normally, no one used this room and it had all kinds of old, useless things lying about in piles on the floor.

I was a new bride and wanted to impress my grandmother-in-law, so I went up to clean the room and found a pile of old magazines. Only later, when my venerable grandmother-in-law told me, I knew they were called magazines. They were so old and yellow that the paper had become brittle. Just because I have this bad habit of curiosity, my mother always said that my curiosity would be my end. I opened one of them and turned the pages.

I was shocked at the way the women in those magazines were dressed; nobody was wearing a sari. They were wearing all kinds of things and big, grown women were wearing frocks like little girls and showing their knees and ankles. I was so frightened that I started trembling. I did not know whether I should go and report it to the Parirakshak Samiti as we were required to do if we spotted someone or something that went against the values enshrined in the Great Book of Rules.

If I reported, I had no doubt the RRF would take my venerable grandmother-in-law or perhaps all of us away. I sat there in the attic, not knowing what to do. Then some time later I came down in a daze and immediately my venerable grandmother-in-law spotted that there was something bothering me and she asked me what it was and I told her.

She said that it was not illegal because those magazines were from the time when she was a young woman, from before the time the Great Celibate had rediscovered the ancient Great Book of Rules which spoke about the pavitr and bhrasht naarees. She said it was from the time when our great land was like the Wicked Outside World. It was not a crime, she told me, because the magazines were from that period.

I was relieved. I did not like to think that I was keeping some dirty secret from our Great Celibate. He was more than a hundred years old, still fit and strong because of his strict celibacy, poor like all of us, still walking his lonely walk with his cloth bag on his shoulders. And, he could see into everyone's heart, into everyone's home, because he had the accumulated power from the celibacy of several lifetimes.

His celibacy was so strict that he did not wish to be dependent even on his mother who was a naaree, even if ati vishisht param pavitr, uniquely, extremely pure, because she had given birth to him. Soon after he was born a gentle, divine cow took him away and fed him her milk. His celibacy is so powerful because he has never once touched a woman, not even his mother.

The Great Celibate had rediscovered the ancient Great Book of Rules which said that the most important people in any nation were its women and the most important task any nation had was to protect the women and keep them pavitr. They taught us in the Pavitr Naree Parisheelan Kendr, where we received advanced training about how to be pure women over and above what our mothers told us, that when he rediscovered the ancient Great Book of Rules, the Great Celibate wept like a child because he had heard his mother's gentle voice, he had only ever heard her voice having never allowed his eyes to be polluted by looking at a woman. He had heard her sweet, soft voice telling him that he was destined to rediscover this ancient Great Book of Rules and protect all the women of his great country.

When our sadhvi, herself an ati pavitr naaree, a very pure woman, told us the story, there were tears in her eyes and her voice quavered. I was crying and so were one or two other girls who learnt with us. I was very fond of listening to stories and laughed and cried when anyone read them out to me. On listening to stories about the Great Celibate at the Kendr, I had decided, even as a little girl, not to learn how to read and write because deep inside my mind I had this great desire to one day be recognised as an Ati Vishisht Param Pavitr Naree just like the mother of the Great Celibate. No one since had been honoured with that exalted title.

***

After running up three flights of stairs, the woman entered a corridor. There were locked doors on either side but at the other end, one door was ajar and she pushed it open and entered. I followed, feeling more and more like I would die any moment. Maybe the woman would kill me. But what choice did I have? I did not want to risk the RRF finding me without sindoor. That would mean certain death. The room was clean and had a roll of bedding pushed into a corner and two wooden benches placed against opposite walls. I had passed this building often on my way to the temple but had not noticed anything because I always kept my eyes firmly down like all pavitr naarees were supposed to.

When I became a big girl, I had to stop going to the Kendr. The leader of the local RRF battalion came to check whether I was being kept in a separate room, because otherwise the entire house would become impure. He was a little angry that the separate room was not like the standard room prescribed in the Great Book of Rules. The room had a small window high up in the wall. The RRF battalion leader ordered my father to board up the window then and there and stood in our courtyard while Father hammered away. And throughout, the leader kept on saying, I could hear his voice though I was not allowed to see him, that every rule in the Great Book of Rules had a reason. There was a reason the room had to be small and dark, he said. It was for our own good. Every time the women were shut up in that small dark room, it reminded them how much they had to work on themselves to become a pavitr naree as nature had not given them the advantage of purity at birth, like it did to men.

I did not want to sit inside that room because the window was gone. I cried all day. Even my mother got fed up with my crying and said that the next time I felt like complaining or crying, I just had to think about the RRF and the combined power of their celibacy. I did not cry or think about the lost window after that. Now, when I think of how I cried that day, I feel ashamed. I also feel grateful that none of our neighbours ratted on me to the RRF.

In fact, I am grateful for a whole lot of things, like my venerable husband for example. A few months after I became a big girl, I was married. I was lucky to get a groom so quickly and to be married to such a kind man and have a sweet grandmother-in-law.

The Pradhan Naree Parirakshak frowns if fathers do not find grooms for their daughters within months of their becoming big girls. More than a year, and the Parirakshak intervenes, which means that he assigns the naree to a groom and sometimes it will be a very senior person with a big title because he has so many pavitr narees to protect. A girl from our neighbourhood did not get a groom for more than a year after she became a big girl and she was married off to a relative of the Parirakshak who was an important man with many pavitr narees under his care. So, Father had been a bit worried.

But then, as I said, I was lucky. Mother often said that getting a good husband was so much luck and so much, just so much depended on whether you got a good husband. When I get really restless and feel like complaining I just think of these words that Mother spoke and then do not feel like complaining at all. Especially when I think of my poor cousin Jagruti whose venerable husband was very annoyed because she had this habit of singing softly while rolling out rotis or doing some other work in the kitchen.

***

The woman looked out through the broken window. I too went and stood at an adjacent window to see whether the danger had passed. Far below, the RRF had surrounded a woman. I could not make out who it was. There had been several women from the surrounding neighbourhoods at the temple today. I did not know any of them, because the Parirakshak Samiti does not like naarees talking to each other if they are not family.

I turned from the window, trembling. I could not bear to see the combined force of their celibacy in action. But why had they removed her sari? Would it not affect the power of their celibacy? The woman looked on at what was going on down below, in a kind of angry daze and I watched her watch them. I sat down on the floor because I was trembling and my feet could not hold me and continued watching her. I felt there was something familiar about this woman. I could not say what it was, but there was.

And I was tremendously worried because that meant that I was somehow familiar with bhrasht narees. When she saw that I was trembling, the woman sat down next to me and held me close like my mother used to, whenever I had a bout of trembling because I scare easily. Everyone calls me Scared Doe. I felt proud when our sadhvi at the Kendr said that pavitr narees, the really pure ones, scare easily.

Suddenly, looking at the woman, I realised why she seemed familiar in a vague way. She walked like my venerable grandmother-in-law! That was the first thing I noticed about my venerable grandmother-in-law after I went to live in my venerable husband's house. She walked like she owned the Earth. My own grandmother and my mother were not like that, though both of them knew how to read and write. Of course, the venerable grandmother-in-law's dress and manners were correct.

Otherwise, Father would not have given me into the household. But I sometimes had this suspicion that things were not like they seemed. Like what my venerable grandmother-in-law said about the magazines, and when my venerable husband tried to teach me to read and write but I insisted that I did not want to learn and had to tell him about my dream, tell him shyly and softly, that is, and he had this peculiar expression in his eyes that I could not make out.

And the next day, the venerable grandmother-in-law also had the same expression. Then, a few days later, my venerable husband started reading to me because I had told him that I liked listening to stories. He read to me about the Wicked Outside World but he said it was a wonderful place and not a dangerous and polluted one like the sadhvis at the Kendr had said. They had always said that we were especially lucky to be born in this great land because the Wicked Outside World did not care for its women and allowed horrible things to happen to them.

I was disturbed by this new story that my venerable husband was reading to me, but I did not tell him he was wrong because a pavitr naree never questioned her husband's wisdom. But I was troubled and confused and when he saw this my venerable husband held me close like my mother used to. And he rocked us both gently this way and that and I almost felt I had my mother back and I was in the house of my birth. And I felt nice and warm.

Though I did not know why, and I worried about this sometimes, I had not become pregnant even though my venerable husband held me close, every time after reading to me and kissed me tenderly on the forehead just like I had seen Father kissing Mother when he thought no one was looking. I did not know clearly, but I had a hunch, that maybe that was not enough to get pregnant, this holding close and kissing on the forehead, maybe not.

***

A gunshot exploded. The woman had left me on the floor. She was kneeling on the wooden bench and taking aim with her long gun firing at the RRF down below! I had never seen such a long gun. I had only seen the smaller ones that the RRF had and wore on their waist. There were screams and shouts as she fired some more shots. In between, in the silence, I heard someone climbing the stairs. Surely, it was one of the RRF. Maybe he had found the stairwell. The footsteps grew closer. The woman stopped firing. She had heard them too. She got up quickly, shouldered her gun and a small bag that had been there in the corner of the room. She unrolled the bed and snatched two bedsheets and ran out into the corridor that led to the rear end of the building.

I had gotten so used to following her that I got up and made it as if to run after her but she turned around and held up her hand. I stopped. She fiddled in her bag and set something rolling towards me along the floor. Then she turned at the end of the corridor and disappeared, running softly, her beautiful, sindoor-red shoes hardly making a sound on the floor. I bent down and picked up what she'd rolled towards me. It was a sindoor stick. Twice, she had saved my life.

I quickly opened it and applied it generously in the parting of my hair, from the hairline right into the middle of the head. I put the sindoor stick in my potli and stood waiting. The footsteps came closer and closer but I did not look up. One does not look up into the eyes of the RRF or any man for that matter. It could get you killed. Why was I not even crying?

The RRF would have seen the woman and any pavitr naree in such circumstances would be upset. But I do not know why I was not crying. Finally, two feet in brown shoes came and stood some distance from me.

There was silence and I knew he was checking me for rule-breaking, sari yes, right colour for the day of the week yes, mangalsutra yes, red and green glass bangles yes, sindoor in the parting of the hair yes. Bless the bhrasht naree! I heard a gruff voice.

"Go home."

I turned around and walked. Something had definitely happened to me and I was walking, not running. Under these circumstances, a pavitr naree would panic and run, or maybe even lose consciousness and lie in a dead faint. I should have, but I did not. I continued walking towards the stairs. I walked to the rhythm of the calm beating of my heart. And because I was walking and not running, the man might raise his gun and shoot me anytime. Maybe I would not even reach the stairs.