When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy

Author:Meena Kandasamy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd

VIII

He was a perfect husband: he never picked up anything from the floor, or turned out a light, or closed a door.

GABRIEL GARCÍA MARQUÉZ,

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

My husband is in the kitchen.

He is channelling his anger, practising his outrage. I am the wooden cutting board banged against the countertop. I am the clattering plates flung into the cupboards. I am the unwashed glass being thrown to the floor. Shatter and shards and diamond sparkle of tiny pieces. My hips and thighs and breasts and buttocks. Irreversible crashing sounds, a fragile sight of brokenness as a petty tyrant indulges in a power-trip. Not for the first time, and not for the last.

I hold back tears. I will not become a traitor to my cause. Tomorrow, the clean-up is going to be all mine. He continues smashing things. Try harder, husband. Try harder. I am not going to be tamed by these tantrums.

* *

one two tame

the shrew

one two

just push through

one two

yes thank you

* *

We are supposed to go to a protest meeting.

I’m getting dressed. It’s the first time I’m leaving home in two weeks, so I wear kohl and a touch of lipstick.

‘Don’t expect that you will one day earn the trust of the working-class women if you strut around with your lipstick and handbag. They will mistake you for a prostitute.’

‘Is the prostitute not a working woman?’

I knew it was coming; I knew I had tempted fate, but I just couldn’t resist. He flies into a rage, tearing my bag from my shoulder and hurling it against the wall.

‘Not a prostitute like you, not a petit-bourgeois prostitute like you. Under Communism there will be no prostitution. Under Communism, a petit-bourgeois woman like you will have to give up her petit-bourgeois privileges. The lipstick will not survive the New Democratic Revolution. The lipstick that costs three hundred rupees is not something that society needs. The lipstick that is more than the weekly wage of a tribal woman in Chhattisgarh exists only because it allows petit-bourgeois bitches to send the signal that they are on heat and ready to barter their sexual availability in exchange for favours. The lipstick is a symbol of this transaction and this availability, there is nothing beautiful about it.’

I am on the verge of tears; he sees this and, fearing that we’ll be late for the meeting, he changes his tone. He begins to pacify me, begins to pull out other reasons to support his anti-lipstick crusade. He tells me I am the victim of a cosmetics industry trying to sell me back the confidence it has stolen from me. He tells me that I am a very beautiful woman and that I do not need anything to be added to my face, least of all anything that capitalism has decreed as good. Knowing that this berating and patronizing will never cease, I throw my lipstick in the bin. I rub off the purple of my lips on my dupatta. This temporarily shuts him up. He appears smug and triumphant.

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