Bitter Chocolate by Pinki Virani

Author:Pinki Virani [Pinki Virani]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

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.

‘My father is now fifty-three, he is not as professionally active as he used to be, he was an important person in the travel industry, he still has a travel agency which does well. I was in awe of my father, sometimes I was frightened of my father although he was very playful and rarely ever drank alcohol. It took me all my strength to confront him when I grew up; I confronted my father, he said, “I was playing with you, Jennifer. I thought you enjoyed it.” He told the twin, “I was soothing you. Remember how you got convulsions?” I left my father’s house after that, I lived with an aunt, then mother called me back. I returned because I wanted my father to understand that I would no longer be giving in to his patriarchy and power games.’

Honor thy father and mother, every Sunday morning Mass Jennifer hears this in church. It is an important thing to believe in as the sun shines on a week-weary world renewing its faith in itself on its day of rest.

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