Rakhmabai's Story

Rakhmabai’s depression took a toll on her health and on the baby’s too. She spent the afternoons staring out of the window. The baby would cry of hunger but the mother was least bothered with the desperate cries of her own child. Khashaba couldn’t really understand what was going on. Not that he didn’t want to but he really didn’t have time now. After mortgaging the farmland he had joined a construction site in the taluka place. The heavy duty work was not something he had wished to do but he preferred that to sitting next to his wife and listening to her crap all day long. He wanted to get as away from the village as possible. He was given the responsibility to cut stones for the construction work. He kind of liked his new responsibility.
Baby’s eyes sparkled as she held that rag doll close to her chest. Since that day, the sight of the baby standing at the gate of the hut holding the doll tightly to her chest with her right hand and waving at the women with her left became the favorite topic of discussion for the village women. The baby still didn’t have a name but the village women started calling her Chindhi which meant rag or rag doll. Chindhi didn’t know the meaning of her name and her mother was least bothered to correct the villagers by giving her a proper name. So nobody objected to this practice and ultimately Chindhi was officially enrolled in the village school as Chindhi Khashaba
Khashaba focused completely on his job at the construction site. Now he was promoted and had been given some more responsibility. He was happy to have a distraction from his life back home. Chindhi was growing up fast and the mother was getting more and more anxious about her baby. Rakhmabai was not ready to let Chindhi get out of her sight even for a second. She wanted her baby to be in front of her eyes all the time. This was a little annoying for Chindhi in the beginning but she got used to her mother’s weird behavior. After all, she had never seen her behaving any better. Rakhmabai used to accompany Chindhi to her classroom too; waiting outside the gate until the school was over. Chindhi was not allowed to go out playing to her friend’s place. She was strictly told to play within their own compound. The mother was becoming more and more possessive about the child. But was she being possessive or just selfish? Was she really worried about Chindhi’s security or she was just being jealous of her own happy and healthy baby? Whatever it is, Rakhmabai’s overprotective attitude had become a joke in the