To object, is not your subject.

 "I have forgotten the last time I kissed fresh air and saw the pigeons fly, 

I have forgotten how the wet earth smells and how the worm burrows,

I have forgotten how the baby cries and how the rattle pacifies,

I have forgotten... I have forgotten... I.. "

Lakshmi stopped the scribbling and started fiddling with a grain of rice lying on the bare floor, beavered away from its morsel. The rice grain giving her company in solitude. It too was estranged from a full meal of prosperity and lay there like her, lone and trapped, not knowing it's value and purpose now ahead in life. 

She stopped and again went into a trance of another world. She stopped for it was becoming difficult to recollect what she wanted to write. So much so, that she couldn't remember what she had forgotten! Sometimes it was a blessing in disguise, at other times a slow poison evading her survival. There were abrupt flashes of her past that blasted her memory but the explosions were frugal and didn't ooze anything materialistic from the dead scars. The scars failed to gap or bulge to divulge the reason of their existence and experience of their birth. They just lay there with her like the rice grain. Symbolic of a struggle but not telling the story of it's battles. 

All that now floated in front of her stoic stare was a sky behind the bars, staring back at her from the corner of the cell. The Yerwada Jail was her home for months now and the cell her space to enjoy freedom. 

The prison authorities had secluded Lakshmi on charges of brutally killing her husband and son. 

"My Lord, a mother cuts herself to give life to her mass of flesh and blood but as you see this woman, she has outlined all laws of nature and cut her son to save her own flesh and blood. Who in logical senses would believe a barbarous witch killing her own progeny?" The public prosecutor Adv. Nikam pushed his version of the story to a court of masses awaiting a judgement. For according to Lakshmi, the justice was already done. From behind the railings, she tried had to remember what had happened that fateful evening about which the trials condemned her and contemplated her life sentence. She had even forgotten how they three looked as a family. A happy family that was always her goal. 

More recently, when she had seen them, she could only recall their grisly, grim, gluttonous faces, harassing her to sign the property papers. The face of humanity too was lost when they had locked her in a musty godown, without food and water. 

Unable to bear the atrocities, she had fought with all her residual might, killing the husband and son in a frenzy. The outcome, unexpected and unplanned, and now so was here destiny. The prison and acute dementia was a huge relief. At least there was the rice and sky, with no bondage on hunger and longing to hope to fly free one day. 

"I'm trying hard to tell you all what happened that night. I have not killed anyone in my sound senses. Please believe me how could I throttle my own son!" Lakshmi pleaded to the mawkish crowd in the judiciary. 

"My Lord, this woman is misguiding and wasting the precious time of the court. She is a greedy, characterless, mean woman who refused to share her money for the growth of her son. And when he pleaded to her for the same, in a fit of volatile anger and false pride, she killed him. SHE MURDERED HIM! SHE STABBED HIM TO DEATH! A HEARTLESS WOMAN! SHE.. "

Before the accusations continued, Lakshmi exploded, "I OBJECT, MY LORD. I OBJECT!" 

But what was she to object to? Women are believed to be epitomes of sacrifice and resilience. Objects of use and throw. Pain bearers and not inflictors. The gangrene may invade her depth but she was not allowed to remove the thorn jabbing her skin. How could Lakshmi breach this aggreement? 

'Woman kills husband and son and forgets the apathy in a fortnight.'

The newspapers went on board. What Lakshmi could never understand, was why her own family forgot her to be part of whole? Why they dragged her to this cruel altar? None answered her. Nor the society, nor the judiciary, nor the dead family. 

Like the rice grain, she had to live till someone crumpled her endurance with object of fallacy!