Arrivals and Departures

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Chitra - a portrait of the unsung

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Chitra - a portrait of the unsung

Losses we can't compute

Reena Kapoor
Jul 2, 2022
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Chitra - a portrait of the unsung

arrivalsanddepartures.substack.com
“Looking for Horizons” Photo by Reena Kapoor (c) 2022. Instagram @1stardusty

I’ve wanted to tell the story of my mother’s beloved friend Chitra for a long time. But I’ve been dissatisfied by my own skill as a poet in telling it (still am). However on my last visit to my mother before she passed, I read out the poem to her (previous longer version), and she - being my mother - encouraged me to tell it.

Chitra and my mother grew up as neighbors in 1950’s Haridwar. My mother arrived in Haridwar at age 5, when her widowed mother fled Peshawar to escape the violence of India’s 1947 Partition. A relocation meant to last briefly “until things calm down”, turned into a permanent loss of home and homeland. My mother’s mother with only a 5th grade education and life-altering trauma raised her children alone, sending them all - including two daughters - to college.  

In contrast Chitra, despite her substantial home and family, was marked second class by her own Dadi. Tragically, Chitra’s step-mother lived as a veritable outcast for not having borne sons. Chitra’s mother barely escaped this fate by delivering sons after Chitra’s birth. At 16, Chitra was taken off the family books by marriage, my mother went off to college and the friends lost touch until…

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Chitra

Sometimes my mother in redolent mood would talk of her childhood friend

Chitra - a portrait of fortune’s contradictions - who came to live next door 

The left and right halves of a large haveli, two families came to occupy

Neighbors in adjoining homes, two girls in parallel lives

*

As my mother would tell it, Chitra had not one but two mothers!

Step-mother cast aside for her daughter-producing womb,

while Chitra’s mother escaped narrowly offering two sons

after Chitra, to Dadi who ruled the roost

*

Determined Dadi set Chitra’s price in her family’s full view, 

Hai Chitra! This useless mouth will need a dowry to depart

Get her ready, mold her, set her up for marriage!

The baby girl’s debts mounted before she learned to walk

*

Not because Chitra was young - but a girl. An abomination!

Dadi rued the day Chitra was born! Cursing Chitra’s fate,

It’s her mother’s rotten kismet, the crone sat beating her chest

Even with two sons before, Dadi’s grievance was barely assuaged

*

Dadi even locked precious fruit inside her mothy cupboard

The key on a chain around her neck thickened with goiter

Daily she gave out every morsel carefully computed, deserved

Every brother scored an apple, while Chitra drew only a quarter!

*

Fair exchange for the dowry being collected in Chitra’s name

One she would have willingly traded for a simple recognition

Perhaps a morsel of dignity, a few rights, or maybe a whole apple

A rudimentary family membership or even a basic education?

*

Every day my mother went to school, Chitra pined from the window above

Girls laughing, crying from petty annoyances, every burdensome rule!

She begged my mother for her books, her lessons in reading, math and more

What do they teach in Science? Social studies? What’s it like to walk to school?

*

Watching with an archer's keenness her brothers with vigilant tutors 

Chitra sat listening, shelling peas, sewing buttons, darning clothes

My mother took on book smuggling telling no one of Chitra’s voracity

So Chitra the autodidact could satiate her hunger to know

*

Life went on as exacted. Chitra, 16, married off to the Best Available Deal

Thankful the groom’s family wasn’t covetous for a dowry of ruinous volume

My mother sent off to study for her intermediate in another town

They heard of each other from families; their lives’ divergence only grew

*

One score and more went by, another quirk crossed their paths

By then Chitra holding no anger had assumed the calm of a saint

Accepting a life of remnant pieces, shaping shards that came her way 

Life’s irony gave her only a daughter. No one dared ask her fate?

*

More years went by; one day I heard my mother rue Chitra’s too soon passing

from a roguish ear infection! Ear infection? Freak infection, it was claimed

took Chitra who didn't ask for more, never complained

The bug traveled - unchecked like Dadi - to obliterate that unsung brain!

*

I had so many questions and so much fury for this woman I never met…

*

Did she die of neglect? Or did Chitra do it to herself? 

Did her family simply ignore her malady before it was too late?

Did her husband just tell her to use ear drops and be patient with the ache? 

Or by then was she simply imprinted with her own second class fate?

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Chitra - Indian/Hindu name for a girl; it means portrait or picture

Haveli - A traditional mansion, manor house, in the Indian subcontinent, usually one with historical and architectural significance

Dadi - Hindi word for paternal grandmother, often the matriarch

Kismet - Hindi/Urdu word for fate, luck, fortune

Intermediate - Term used for Grades 11, 12 i.e., between school and college, in those times

###

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Whenever my mother talked about Chitra it left me angry, yet flummoxed by two questions: how much talent, ability, contribution, spiritual and material wealth is lost to the world when we concede such double-standards in the name of family, values, safety, honor, peace, respect, tradition, purity, what-else-you-got? and, why do women do this to the girls they ought to be shielding? I sometimes wonder if we hunt the enemy out there but maybe she lies right here within us?

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Extra!

An exciting announcement from EnActe Arts!

EnActe Arts - Bay Area’s leading theatre company telling south asian stories - is running their ReEnacte Series and on Aug 1st-8th, they’ll be bringing back the plays I wrote for the WEFT Showcase (women enacte for themselves). The shows are all ONLINE. Hope you will join to watch.

You can/will be able to sign up for these on-demand shows here!

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Chitra - a portrait of the unsung

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18 Comments
Monita Mohan
Feb 15Liked by Reena Kapoor

Painful but still a reality!!

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1 reply by Reena Kapoor
Anita Ramamurthy
Jul 4, 2022Liked by Reena Kapoor

Sobering truth in many parts of India in those days and probably, sadly, still found in areas where a girl is not respected for her intelligence, curiosity to learn or treated as an equal to a male child. Tragic tale and one that leaves you with many questions about Chitra. Can relate to your anger and frustration and thoughts on the possibilities of what could have happened to her. Eloquently penned.

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