Mohan Lal, was one name that never failed to raise fear in Sujata’s heart. He was talking loudly, in that all-important voice he used whenever he was speaking on his newly acquired second-hand mobile phone. He was walking towards where she stood, any moment he would be upon her, she looked around frantically and ducked behind the open kitchen door to escape notice.

As she squinted through the small gap between the roughly hewn boards of the door he walked into the courtyard, not finding anyone looked around with a frown and then roughly shook the charpoy on which the old woman was sleeping.

‘Where is Sujata?’ he asked as she tried to understand what had happened. She finally realised and cursed him roundly refusing to answer his question. He wasn’t to be dissuaded and kept repeating his question, his voice rising threateningly each time.

Finally, the old woman gave up and turning her back to him grunted, ‘if you can’t handle your woman and she runs loose, am I to blame? Don’t know where she is, isn’t back from wherever she goes to. God’s curse will fall on you for harassing an old woman like me.’ Muttering some more abuse on the world in general she promptly went to sleep again.

‘I will be back in some time, she better be here by then’ Mohan Lal threatened and turned to leave.

Heaving a sigh of relief, Sujata waited for him to go a fair distance and willed the thudding of her heart to subside. She wondered what moment of madness had induced her to say yes to his proposal of marriage.

Perhaps the claustrophobic existence she led in her home, had made any reason for escape welcome and she had quickly agreed only to realize within a few days that she had exchanged one kind of confinement for another. Her family bound her physically and he sought to bind her mind and heart to the slavery of one man. Him.

She finally found the courage to come out of hiding and quickly climbed the stairs to her room, which she shared with her brother’s three children.

Once inside, she headed straight for the trunk that held her belongings and took out the ghungroos, which her guru had given as his blessing and a mark of the special place she held amongst his disciples.

She had taken out a few of her well-worn clothes and was planning what to pack them when a sudden commotion in the courtyard alerted her to the possibility of her brother returning home. He was singing loudly and seemed in a jolly mood. A thing the entire family had learnt to dread, for it was always succeeded by the sounds of his wife screaming in pain either as he ravished her or mercilessly beat her up for having refused him.

Sujata dropped the clothes, there was no way she could walk out of the house with them without catching her brother’s eye. She tucked the ghungroos into her sari and the money in her blouse and with a last look at the room she had grown up in walked back to the courtyard.

Her brother was sprawled on a charpoy and didn’t seem to notice her as she slowly walked past, trying not to hurry as her heart felt like fleeing as quickly as possible. Just as she placed a foot outside the main door a voice boomed, ‘where do you think you are going?’

She turned quickly and saw her brother looking at her, ‘Arunatai is making some sweets she wanted me to go and help her. She promised to give me some if I went’ She replied as coolly as possible. Her brother’s eyes glazed over with greed, food especially sweets were something he could never resist.

‘Come back soon and make sure that miserly woman gives you enough and don’t eat it all on the way, you are expanding into a buffalo, and that Mohan too won’t marry you at this rate.’

Sujata nodded and walked out to find her newly found friend Ramprasad waiting patiently around the corner. He got up and wagged his tail at her and the two set out at a fast pace back the way they had come, towards freedom.