The baby is about five-months-old and has been moved from hand to hand but never the arms of her mother for a close cuddle. In a deep sleep, she smiles in the world of dreams, oblivious to what the harsh world of humans has left as her legacy.
Her legacy is unimaginable……a mother whose hands have been slashed off with a sword by her own father, leaving her disabled even before the baby’s birth. One of her mother’s hands has been totally severed from just above the wrist while the other is in a wire holder.
“I am now able to move two fingers slightly,” weeps the babe’s mother, Soma*.
A tale of horror unfolds. Soma’s was a life of deprivation for her own father died when she was three years old. She studied up to only Grade 3 and dropped out of school thereafter. While her own mother strove to make ends meet, Soma, as a young teenager of 15 not only fell in love but also fell into trouble.
She was an under-age bride, just 16 and heavy with child. They lied to the Registrar of Marriages and signed on the dotted line. “His parents didn’t like it, but my mother had no other way out,” sighs Soma. Her mother toiled at a coir mill to feed her three children.
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| The young victim: A shattered life and shattered upper limbs.
The picture below shows the severity of her injuries. |
It was only after the marriage that she realized that her dashing groom was jobless. He was selling hooch (kasippu) for a living. But life was not too bad for Soma, who along with her husband was literally living off her mother’s earnings.
The baby arrived, her eldest, a girl. A month after the birth, the troubles began. “Hodatama beela, mata gahawwa. Hemadama gahawwa,” says Soma, explaining that he used to drink and assault her everyday. Why? As he suspected, without an iota of evidence, she says, that she was having involvements with his friends.
Unable to bear the assaults with whatever came into his clutches like knives or sticks, she swallowed poison and was rushed to hospital. Her eldest was 18-months-old then. The hospital staff pumped her stomach and she survived.
It was then that her Bappa (mother’s brother) advised her to go to the Middle East. She was still under-age but through a “hithawath kenek” (someone close) they paid the job agency Rs. 13,000 for forged documents and all.
Leaving the baby in her mother’s care, Soma went to Kuwait and worked hard for Dinars 40 a month, cooking and cleaning. She also sent money home, each and every month, for four long years to her husband, coaxing him to build a home of their own, so that they could have a life together when she came back.
The news filtered back to her that he had begun another liaison and was threatening to kill her if she came back. He had also wasted all her money on booruwa (cards).
Eight years later, the home where she had worked did not want to extend her visa and requested her to go back. “I couldn’t leave. I was told by some Lankawe Aiyyala that women were being kidnapped,” she says simply.
By this time Soma too had struck up an alliance with an Aiyya who was driving a water bowser and he not only found a school for her to work at where she did the sweeping and cleaning but also a home together.
“Thawakalika pavul jeevithayak gathakara,” she says, explaining that they spent a temporary life together as she feared that others may forcibly take her to a house of ill-fame. It was only when she was pregnant again with her second child that she realized that the Aiyya was a mankolla karaya (robber). This time her baby was a son.
Ten years later Soma was back in Sri Lanka. Her paramour had already come back and got married to someone else. Resolutely she lived alone, although her paramour said he would rent her a house and she could live there. “He wanted the child and he wanted to have both relationships, with his wife and with me,” she says.
Soma kept the child with a friend and went to work in a mill. But she didn’t have her correct national identity card as she had left Sri Lanka as a minor. Therefore, she went back to her area’s Grama Sevaka, to get the paperwork done. But the news had spread and her husband came to meet her.
“He wept and cried,” says Soma and she told him the whole story about her relationship in the Middle East and the birth of the baby boy. “Podi ekata hathurukamak karai kiyala thama mama kivve,” she says. (She told him because she didn’t want him to harass the boy.)
Her eldest daughter was “big” then. She too had married under-age. When Soma’s husband wanted her to resume their relationship, the daughter advised her to give him a chance. Her husband promised to treat her son as their own.
Once again life began with promises of a rosy future. He compelled her to withdraw the meagre Rs. 60,000 she had left in the bank, saying that he would get her ID done. This was in 2007.
The troubles began a month after. He was still jobless. The only thing he did was set trap guns for wild boar. One day, he had filled the trap gun with gun powder and left it out in the compound. The rains came but she forgot to take it in. That day he assaulted her brutally with the barrel of the gun until her leg fractured. Even though she was bleeding profusely he didn’t take her to hospital. She was pregnant with the third baby but he did not heed her pleas not to hit her when she was carrying his child.
It was only next morning that she managed to get to the police station and they took her to hospital. “I was in hospital for three days and people advised me not to go back,” she weeps but she had to go back because her little son was at home. He allowed her to come back only after she withdrew the complaint.
Her mother who is suffering from cancer decided to go live with her sister. Soma then went to stay with a friend but as she was going abroad she had no place to call home and she too went to her sister’s home. He then began stalking her.
Seven complaints later, and when the police wanted to remand him, he promised to give her a divorce. That day too at the police station his tears flowed. His plea was that he just wanted a glimpse of the baby she was carrying soon after birth and then he would leave her alone.
The seven-month pregnant Soma, pacified and fears of attack allayed, went home to her sister and mother. But her husband was always hanging around, watching her and the little boy, waving at the boy, bringing biscuits for him.
One day she told him not to bring them anything. “He didn’t utter a word,” says Soma.
Another day, she saw him seated at the foot of a tree, waving at her little son. The boy in anticipation of the goodies awaiting him, bit her hand with which she was clutching him and ran to her husband.
May 5 is etched in her memory and as she relives the horror of that day, the agonized weeping begins. No screams, but sobs, coming from deep within her being. It was 6.30 in the evening and she was feeding her little son balls of rice. But it was becoming difficult for her to run after the little one, for she was seven months pregnant. She handed over her son to her sister who took him inside and sat in the doorway to rest.
Suddenly Soma felt something fall on her head. “As walata monawada wetanawa denuna,” she says explaining that she felt something falling into her eyes. She looked up and it was blood.
It was only then that she realized that her husband with whom she had shared her life was towering over her, heavily bringing down a sword on her head. Even as she asked in stunned shock, “Ei, Ei” (Why/ Why?), he was shouting, “Oya adin ivarai.” (You are finished from today.)
As the third sword blow rained down she held up her hands to protect her head and he slashed at her hands and her neck, also aiming at her swollen belly. Soma still remembers the sound…“toke…toke”
Her nine-year-old niece who came running out of the house then shouted, “Amme, bappa punchita kotanawa”. (Uncle is slashing Punchi.) Understandably, her family fled through the rear door and it was the “gamey kattiya” who ultimately took the battered, slashed and mutilated Soma to hospital.
The rest is a blur. The doctors at the first hospital telling her that her hands are no more, but they would try their best to save at least one. The transfer to the Accident Ward of the National Hospital where she spent 14 days not only trying to recover from the grievous wounds but also get the courage to live on. It was then that Women in Need (WIN), an NGO which supports battered women, came into her life and after being discharged from hospital took her to its shelter. They helped her find a home for her little boy, just two-years-old, on a temporary basis, leaving her heart-broken the day they had to part, with his tear-filled eyes still haunting her.
On July 22, she gave birth to her third child, a daughter. Her sister and her family have to do every little thing for her, feed her, wash her and also look after her baby.
The irony of it all is that not only the victim but also those close to her are further victimized, for they have been chased from hearth and home, while the perpetrator is out on bail with the avowed threat that he will kill her and everyone else as well.
Please help me
Please, please get me somewhere I can live with my little ones and my sister’s family, is Soma’s desperate plea.
Fearing to go back home in the light of threats from her husband (maraniya tharjana), not only Soma but also her sister’s family are on the run. They are the hunted, looking over their shoulder, scared of any footfall. The sister’s husband is a labourer but cannot engage in work because they have no fixed abode.
If a kind person can give me a small plot of land, I could live with my two children and my sister’s family and become self-employed, says Soma.
(*Name changed to protect her identity and her temporary place of residence not mentioned to safeguard her life) |
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