It is the unexpected intruder who cares that the girl is in that state. Her skirt is muddied and ripped into shreds flapping in all directions as if ashamed to be part of her. Someone would think a knife did the ripping. The girl’s blouse is missing all the buttons. Her pubescent breasts with sore nipples heave rapidly on her chest.
The air she has brought in swallows Mine Mine’s hiccups. Her lips are swollen. Her white bra is cut in half and the two halves have been sucked in blood and are scarlet. Her face is puffy and bruised and her hair is rumpled and dusty.
Tears have dried on her chin but more flow from her eyes. Her thighs are exposed and bruised and there is a scar closer to the pelvic.
How can she not feel a jerking human pain?
How can she not feel an overwhelming maternal groan gather in the pit of her stomach impatient to burst out?
Who cannot?
She smells the foul stench of un-consensual sex. Bitterness wells up from somewhere exotic in her. When she was a child in her mother’s house and when she did not know her husband she would have wept. But not now-the intruder shall not weep. She is not in her mother’s house. She has found herself in her husband’s posho mill. She is a grown woman now and she knows the man better than himself so much better than herself.
“I have caught you today.”
That is all she says at first.
Uncle Punglu Punglu is in a trance. He is stark naked. Mine Mine is the other naked evidence. He can only plead guilty and wait for amnesty. Amnesty? Such are the times for a man never imagined that the intruder can intrude and amnesty can be bought cheap. People say he is the grandmaster of trickery but now he looks like a crafted pencil image of himself that has been rained on.
The intruder morphs into a possessed executioner. There is no room for amnesty. She pounces at it and with all the strength of her pent up years of waiting for this moment she yanks it off. He is caught by surprise. Dismembered, he totters like a falling tree and crashes onto the floor writhing in pain, howling.
“You have killed me!”
She is stunned for a moment then regains the will of her wrath. She grabs the stool on which a beer bottle stands frothing. The bottle falls and crashes spilling its contents. The intruder is unfazed.
“Die, you must bleed to death.”
She stamps her feet onto the cement floor gyrating the stool wildly.
“Infernal swine.”
She swings the stool. Blood from the wound she has inflicted is flowing like a rivulet. His chest is panting. His heart is beating on his rib cage harder each moment he howls in excruciating pain. She smashes the stool on him.
“Incestuous animal. Die. You must die.”
She smashes it in his belly. He winces and shudders. She smashes it in his hands splintering bones, kicks him in the chest then the head. He gets a kick in the mouth. His lower lip lacerates. His blood continues to flow all over the place. Her irreversible rage fires up as she sees the blood flowing into Mine Mine’s drying blood on the floor.
“Die you swine, die. You have gone and put your thing in Mine Mine. Your own brother’s daughter! The world is turning downside. The grave is waiting for you. Die.” she shrieks
The intruder rages in a further orgy of violence over her husband. This goes on until she is exhausted and storms out, completely submitting all her reasoning to anger and violence.
*********
She is still holding it in her hand. There are three men and two boys but they fail to contain her and call for reinforcement. With the addition of two other men, they finally manage to pin her in the rubbish heap where she has taken herself away from her orgy. The intruder has stirred a whirlwind of mystery around her. Her clothes are tattered and soaked with bloody spots mixed in sweat streaking all over her body.
Other intruders arrive.
They don’t touch it.
It is taboo.
Children are not supposed to see it but some naughty boys and curious little girls peer from behind the adults who have now formed a distorted ring around her.
The intruder clutches at it like it’s a trophy earned in a bruising long contest. Pinned on the rubbish heap she talks to apparitions beyond the faces of her stallers. Her language is tattered gibberish. Her hair is soiled. She stops muttering her gibberish when she hears sounds of a car’s engine. She bites into the rubbish and spits.
“Punglu Punglu shaaitan!” she shrieks.
She is bound in sisal ropes. Her feet and hands are straight and she looks like some kind of mummy. She still holds on to it and nobody touches it. She is now helpless. They toss her in the car and she is gone. Punglu Punglu is dead.
First published on writingisonthewall
