Sita by Hanne Lemmens (lightweight ebook reader TXT) 📕

Kids are running around in India, pivoting and dwelling in the crowd and the heat of dusty roads. Eyes are thrown aback in this chaos, anything that moves, lives and begs for rupees. Bare little feet, children holding babies with bobbing heads and plastic bracelets. Red dots and saris, head scarfs and Qu'rans in their hands. Muslims will eat cows, Hindus eat pigs. Christians will eat anything and Jainists don't eat anything with eyes. Reasons suffice to wipe out each others villages. Every week, whole families are decimated because of half truths, quoted from holy books. Muslim men on a bus, reluctantly heading nowhere. Babies thrown into fires. Nuns getting assaulted. Like a fuming elephant, genocide stops for noone. Bright red matted hair that is consumed and dried out by the sun. Like the fruit and meat, glistening on street vendors' tables, rotting away tastefully. Here and there puddles lay on the dry streets, where cows and goats and dogs pass by. Clattering noise resounds against lorries, collapsed brick walls and garbage heaps. Perfumes work their way into my nose, head and memory to take me by surprise again years later, even now still. Cinnamon, gasoline, tea, manure, cyllantro, rice, mango, lysol, festival, lemon with a breeze of wet animal. The streets of Guwahati are an unforgiven attack on your senses. No, I will never forgive you, Guwahati.

Survival of the fittest is a golden rule in this breeding nest. Everyone fights or stares to abide. Need it be proven that three men are stronger than an eight year old girl? Six years ago, Sita's clothes and body were ripped open, showing the supreme powers of the perpetrators. Assuming rape and deflowering are no taboo and Sita would have wanted to share this experience, they cut her tongue out of her head. Would Allah still understand her? When they found her, it was obvious that this child had befouled the honor of her Islamic family. That's one thing that most religions agree on: women are at fault. And also, they should know that men are weak. Sita's mother understandably chose between the familie and her daughter and doused Sita with boiling oil.

Sita’s body had been destroyed, in her early life. Her face now wrinkled in the eternal grimace of that of a victim. Carved up into pieces and chewed up and spat out like a common beatlenut. She came to live with a follower of the biggest religion that holds altruism in great regard: sister Clara. Jesus in the body of an old nun with round thick glasses who runs an orphanage.

That is where I too have arrived now. Albeit in a better position: that of the white tourist. A nostalgic tourist too, since I had given the best of myself as a volunteer in a convent school in nearby Tezpur, two years before. An ungrateful, depressing and fantastic task. One day, when I was visiting Guwahati, I met with sister Clara. Just like that, by coincidence, as most lifechanging meetings happen.

Now I'm back, sitting in her orphanage. Which she had built without the support of her church, who didn't share her vision and thus their money. My gaze focuses solely on her while she holds my hand - I am not going anywhere. I will stay and listen to this woman. Forty years ago she was a naive sister from a small village, when she arrived in the chaos of scorching Guwahati. She had been sent here to work in a convent school. One night, in the first few weeks she lived here, she was walking the streets of the roughest part of Guwahati. She saw a woman, a whore, grovelling in the mud, high off beatlenut and drunk off liquor, luring customers. I'll suck your cock for 50 rupees. Clara took her vow as a sister seriously and decided to help this woman. She took her to the convent, bathed her, fed her and talked to her. The other sisters had little sympathy. But this woman was given no chances and many children (probably STD's too, noone knows the mean secrets that lay underneath a filthy sari). After a whole night of sharing, she released this woman back into the real world, convinced she had changed a life. A day later sister Clara was walking down the same street and there she was again, high, offering her services in the mud. Sister Clara says that people are stuck, from birth. So she decided to shift her attention to children. And this orphanage is a gathering place for runaway (or thrown away) girls. It is also the only place in India where recycling is given a chance.

The forty-two girls living here shuffle their feet, sing and are hypnotised by my white skin. They stare and touch me, which had already proven to be a constant in India. I allow it, they are allowed too little as it is. Clara takes their hands one by one, pushing them toward me and telling their stories. I see few smiling faces, apart from the younger ones, who don't yet realise the misery they're in. It is an old scaly building, where you can catch the dust in the air with your hands and nose. The rooms reek of rancid adolescent sweat and girls' dreams.

I am watching her, Sita, standing before me. She's a tall, thin fourteen year old girl. Her skin and posture show signs of her fateful meeting. I dare to touch her. The arms feel rough like sand paper, almost of a grainy texture. She avoids my gaze. I gently caress her head. Which stands on a long thin neck. Her hair is short, thick and pitch black. I absorb her smell, an unfound, sour and sweaty aroma, like rhubarb that has been laying in the sun for too long.

Sister Clara continues and I listen.
When Sita entered the orphanage a Muslim six years ago, it was against her will and faith. But up to then, everything else had been against her will and her faith hadn't helped her. Now she had to pray to Jesus and eat wafers. She didn't want to belong here. She didn't feel herself any longer. Was this body still hers? Had it been taken away from her? Her body didn't want to smile. It only wanted to fight the other girls and swim against the current. Maybe to make amends, to assert herself - something she hadn't been able to do when it all happened. Maybe to feel something, anything really. Sister Clara tolerated it and understood, because someone had to.

Every day the meals would turn into improvised fighting bouts, verbally (to her extent) and physically, against herself and the girls. She beat and kicked and bit until she bled.

After four years of battering, Sita sat at supper one night. Rice stuck to her fingers, curry dripping down her wrist and onto her plate again. No meat, like always in the orphanage. Beside her sat Preety, her arch nemesis, who was in a particularly nasty mood that evening. "You're eating like a bird, Sita, without that tongue. Go on, swallow it whole!". Sita jumped up, grabbed her plate and threw it against the wall, hissing and roaring like a wild animal. She looked at Preety, who seemed to enjoy this display of anger, and grabbed her throat. Preety remained unphased and shouted out: "Sita's a whore! Sita's a whore!". Sita threw herself at Preety, beating and kicking her with fists and knees and feet, until it rained blood. Sister Clara pulled Sita off of Preety and took her to the dormatory on the second floor. She left her there in the dark, sitting up straight on her bed. She looked out the window. Were the bars behind the window build to nip feelings at moments like these in the bud? Open the window and jump. Then she wouldn't feel her skin anymore, always pulling on her arms and belly. The eternal pain which gave her this horrible grimace. The uncontrolled twitching of the stump of her tongue, burning deep into her throat like long hot needles. And down there, the violently used and ruined spot, of which other girls claim it feels wonderful and exciting. No wonders or excitements there, only a ravaged dump, a useless mess. Completely broken and unfixable. She wás a whore, unmarried and no longer a virgin. Just like that, an unplanned meeting had reduced her to a chunk of gray, expired meat. Tears stung her scratched face, fell on her lap. In the haze of the moonlight she saw fresh marks on her arms, Preety's blood on her sore knuckles and under her nails. She lay down and looked up at the fractures and wet spots on the ceiling.

The next morning she prayed together with the girls in the school chapel. What is praying but comforting yourself, convincing yourself? Nobody liked or loved her, she found, but maybe God did? Or at least sister Clara? She quivered at that last selfish thought.
Morning mass had ended, quietly the girls left the chapel. She descended the high stairs to the refactory. Chattering footsteps as well as sandals resounded against the bricks. The girls stood around the breakfast table. Sister Clara started the prayer, the girls responded:

Bless us, oh Lord, and these here gifts we are about to receive from Your bounty.
Mary help our children -pray for us.
Goodmorning children -goodmorning sister!

Now talking was allowed. Eating as well. It was Preety's turn to hand out the food, bulgur with gravy. She had a black eye and a swollen lip, marks that Sita had imprinted her face with. She served Sita silently, who looked at her lap, head bended over. No word on what happened the night before. Nothing was ever resolved. After breakfast the girls got dressed for school in their rooms. They ran to the playground, just like the decent girls arriving, who had families and homes and money. Sita stood alone, as usual, under the great tree on the playground. Shadows of leaves waved playfully over her face. She was tall. A sudden growth spurt had turned her into a helpless giant earlier that year. A thin, crooked branch that rose high above everyone else, obviously much against her wishes. Out of this lonely oasis she concentrated on her sworn enemy, who was playing tag with her many girlfriends. She was it.
Preety ran toward Sita, her arm stretched out. All girls stood still and awaited the drama. Really? This early in the morning? Sita stood her ground bravely. Her enemy suddenly tripped over a lost root that had exploded out of the asphalt, and landed before her feet, flat on her stomach. Preety moaned and sat up, holding her bleeding knee. Sita squatted down. Took Preety's leg. Everyone looked on held their breaths, nailed to the ground. Sita went down on her knees and kissed the wound. Preety looked at her, trembling. She took Sita's hand and kissed it. Sita was instantly hit by a wave of redemption. She felt her grimace disappear, her face relax. She looked Preety straight in the eyes and smiled.