As the slanderers advanced towards her with their arms outstretched like knives and stiffened like rods, glaring at her, she recoiled and stepped back. She looked at the masters and raised her voice to plead.

“Please, don’t do this, Sir. May your blessings be with you. Give me one day’s time. When my husband comes, we’ll look for a unknown place and migrate there.”

“Hey, you worthless fellows, don’t you hear what I ordered! Strip her naked, right now!”

“No sir! Even animals like goats and cows hide ‘it’ in hidden place. Isn’t it the same for humans? Will you do this to a woman from your caste?”

“Hey, There is no place for threnodies in a war zone. She has come here to destroy the social order. She will incite the lower classes against us. She must be nipped in the bud. Strip her!”

The servants became like Dushasana-s. One person bent Rasamma’s arms behind to restrain her while the other tilted her head to the side. The third one pulled down her saree covering her chest. The fourth assailant dug his spike-like fingers into the front of her blouse and tore it. Another one inserted his arms at the back of the blouse and ripped it in two.

In the meantime, Poomari fell to her knees and begged everyone to leave her daughter-in-law alone. Whether they considered it a violent act or not, two of the villains stepped on her neck with their sandaled feet. They didn’t take their feet off her neck until she was motionless. Meanwhile, the single-clothed women ran near by and then scurried away, shouting, “Eyyo… Emmo…” The accountant stared off into the distance as if nothing had happened.

Rasamma gazed at her mother-in-law lying motionless. She glared at the old woman with wild eyes. She didn’t cry seeing an older member of her family like that. Instead, her eyes filled with fierce, instead of tears. The tattered bodice clung to her body like an iron coil. She shook those around her with the same force as she had shaken her aunt’s son in her brinjal field. In that moment of surprise, she bent down and picked up the boiling pot of kuppani (a caramel-like liquid of palm nectar in a semi-solid form) with her bare hands, straightening up and raging.

Tilting the pot slightly around her neck, she shook it and poured the hot, boiling kuppani in the face of each of the assailants. When all of them screamed and scattered, she hoisted the pot above her head and poured it directly onto the twin-headed figures of the accountant and the Maniyam Kacheri. She then threw the pot onto their faces with force. The hot kuppani piled up on their heads and ran down like a waterfall into their eyes. Those officers and their evil bodyguards screamed, “Oh… amma…. ayyo!” without shame. They jumped around in agony. At the same time, they did not forget to shout, “Catch her, catch her!” As they opened their mouths to say that, the liquid seeped into their swollen mouths and burned their tongues.

(to be continued…)

This post is a part of the Blogchatter Half Marathon 2023 by https://www.theblogchatter.com/