our God

Ratna has just entered the car waiting for her in the Railway Station when she heard a feeble whimper under the seat. She almost screamed, and then looked under it and saw a young woman clutching a baby to her bosom cowering under the seat.

Before she could open her mouth the girl begged in a piteous voice, “maijee don’t hand me over to them, they will kill both of us.”

Ratna gently turned in the key to ignition, and was about to start the car when a group of her husband’s friends gathered the car, after seeing her in the driving seat one of them asked her to get home immediately because there might be some trouble in the village.

Then he asked her if she has seen a young woman with a child nearby, Ratna denied and drove away.

Ratna parked the car in the garage, opened the back door of the car and asked the cowering girl to come out, the girl straight headed for her feet but Ratna prevented her from grasping it, and tenderly asked her to follow her.

Heerabai’s eyebrows shot upwards the moment she saw the girl behind Ratna, she snapped out in anger, “So, here you are, after setting the entire peaceful village in fire!! What got inside you? You impudent girl! How could you dare to enter the temple?”

She continued her furious lecture, “What if they have caught you and the innocent baby? They would have killed you both then and there! What about maijee? Do you think they would have spared her if she was caught saving you?”

Ratna got half of the story from the furious lecture which Heerabai was dishing out to the shaking girl, and the remaining she got out from both the ladies after the girl, Meera was fed and her baby put to bed after being fed.

Meera was one of the so called dalits, her husband lived outside the state, she lived here with her inlaws, her only son, the baby, was suffering from fever, the local hakim was not able to cure her. One of her friends suggested her to take the baby to the local Shiva temple and ask the priest to bless him.

She went to the temple late at night, but the priest was not there, one look at the serene temple and she was not able to resist herself and after casting her glance around the temple she tiptoed inside.

She headed straight for the shivlinga and picked up a few flowers dedicated to Him, and was thinking that she will be able to make it safe outside without being noticed, when, to her sheer bad luck, some of the village youth thought about visiting the temple after a visit to local hooch shop.

Their faces turned red when they recognized her, and one of them lunged after her, after that all she remembered was blindly running here and there for her life. And finally she ended up in Ratna’s car.

Ratna retired to her room thinking what to do next, her husband Vinay was out in the town, she knew very well Heerabai wont tell anyone, but it was impossible to hide a child, that too a small baby.

She came down again, softly woke up Meera and asked her to take the baby along with her, she drove them off to town again and left them at her father’s place.

The next morning she sent some money secretly to Meera’s inlaws and asked them to meet her in her father’s place. They went there and did not came back.

A few months later when she visited her father’s place again his father told her that he has found a job for Meera’s father in law, they have settled there, they were very afraid to go back to village because they were threatened with dire consequences if they don’t leave the village immediately.