(The background of this story is the rural India, popularly known as cow belt area, where the land owners control the society. The land owners, generally known as Thakurs are very powerful and ruthless and they dominate the rural society, particularly those who are either economically weaker or in the lowest rung of caste hierarchy. The story has some scenes of reluctant and forced sex. Readers should use their discretion in reading. The conversations were all in Hindi dialect of the region, which have been converted into English for the readers not conversant with the language.)
I am Brijesh, who grew up in the family of a landless agricultural labourer. Since childhood, I and my siblings felt secluded in our village as it was dominated by one landlord family. Only ten families of landless agricultural labourer lived at the outskirt of the village. We couldn't transcend the class hierarchy that prohibited our entrance beyond a certain point.
My father decided to send me to town for education as I was good in studies since my childhood. But it was not easy, both my family and I had to bear considerable financial burdens. However, I completed my academic career successfully and at the age of 28, I joined as a lecturer in a college in one of the villages of the cow belt state. But the village where I joined was far away from my native village. It was a bit different from my native village as it had a salaried class working in banks, schools, colleges etc. But basically, here also a local landlord family dominated and controlled everything. Civil administration, political power, other govt officials all were under the indirect control of that landlord. But as a college lecturer, I was hardly bothered. After about three years of service I got married to Nisha, who was then only 20 years.
Nisha was also from a rural area of the same state and was from the family that was slightly well off than my own. Her father and grandfather were woking as postmen. She was not much educated; just went to school and was promoted to Class X. It was more than enough to find a girl of our class and caste in rural area who studied up to tenth standard. My own sisters read up to class VI only.
Though Nisha wanted to study further, her parents did not dare to send her to school that was nearly four kilometres away because her beauty and youthful physical growth had already drawn the attention of rural goons. My parents had reservations about finalizing our wedding considering the fact that she was just Class IX passed. But once they saw her, they were charmed by her beauty.
At 20, Nisha was 5'4" tall, had a very bright complexion, she was slim and slender and had a very beautiful facial appearance with sharp chin and sparkling eyes. But she was very shy. As per custom, she grew up covering her face in veil like other women of her village. After marriage it took time to convince her to show her face to me. Once I saw it, I fell in love with her immediately and considered myself lucky. She was an exquisite piece of beauty with bright complexion, youthful growth, long and dark eyelashes, a sharp nose, well shaped chin, petal like pink lips with a black mole on the right upper lip. The black mole on her bright skin added further to her sexy look. Her glances were restless like those of a young doe.
Nisha was very conservative and before marriage had not spoken to any other male person except her relatives. It took much effort and time to convince her about the importance of physical intimacy between husband and wife. For months, she passively responded to my needs on bed though gradually she opened a bit and started sharing her needs but always with much reservation. But she satisfied my physical needs very well. Nisha was quite hot and during the first two years we often had sex more than twice during the night. On holidays and rest days we mated during daytime also. By the time she was 22, she gave birth to our little son.
It was one and half years after the birth of our son that this incident took place. Nisha was almost 24 years then. Married life and birth of a child had slightly added to her weight and her bosom and buttocks became plumpy enough to draw the lustful attention of males. Though being rural area, there was hardly any scope of her going out except sometimes to pay social visits to the houses of my colleagues. But as per the rural custom, she mostly used long veil covering her face.
It was the examination season and I was on invigilation duty. During the Higher Secondary Mathematics examination, I warned two students repeatedly for discussing the answers. They pretended to stop but started again the moment I turned my back towards them. I knew these students: they, along with a group of similar students, had no interest in studies, disturbed the sincere students of their class. They were about 15 or 20 in number but by their hooliganism they controlled and dominated other students. Common students preferred to stay out of their way to avoid unnecessary troubles.
Most of the hooligans of this group failed in their exams year after year but due to their social influence they were not turned out of the college. Particularly, Satish's greater grandpa had donated the land to the college and so he and his hooligan friends thought it to be their paternal property. Satish's parents had died in a car accident and was brought up by a doting grand father who gave him such indulgence as to spoil Satish in every respect.
Satish's greater grandpa was an influential landlord of the area having intimate connections with police and political leaders. Moreover, he belonged to Thakur community and was the undisputed and uncrowned king of the village. He owned lands not only in that village alone but in the adjoining villages as well. Rumours were there that he had grabbed many acres of land by foul means using his connections and many poor families lost their lands to his treachery and left the village forever. If his eyes had fallen on any land, he would grab it by any means. His tradition was followed by Sanatan Thakur, who was Satish's grandfather. Sanatan was as ruthless and contriving as his forefathers in grabbing lands of the poor and the weak. Apart from his links with police, Sanatan Thakur maintained his own musclemen to tame anyone who dared to be disobedient to him.
On the day of the examination, after the second hour, I caught Satish and his friend adopting severe unfair means. When I went near Satish, I found that he was openly copying answers from the answer script of his classmate, Chandan (the other one with whom Satish was discussing). In fact, Chandan's answer script was with Satish on his desk. I seized both the answer scripts and asked them to leave the examination hall for the day. Satish snatched the copies from me and in a defying mood started writing again. I forcibly collected the copies and as there was an altercation, Satish tried to snatch the answer paper again. I slapped him hard across his face and hearing the commotion, the External Invigilator appeared and recommended the expulsion of Satish and Chandan from rest of the examinations.
The Principal, who knew about Satish's grandpa, came rushing to strike a compromise but the external invigilator was very strict and finally both got expelled and they held me responsible for their expulsion. But while returning home, Satish and his gang were waiting beside the road. They did not do anything but were discussing excitedly among them and I heard them discussing, "Someday he will pay for it."
Obviously, it was said to me though they did not address me.There was no further problem. I too had forgotten about the episode. After about a fortnight since the examination was over, we were assigned evaluation duty of the answer scripts at the sub-divisional headquarter. It was about forty kilometres from our village and I used to go by my own motorcycle.
On that day, in the afternoon while returning home from the evaluation centre, my bike met with a minor accident. Someone had threatened a bull from the nearby wheat field and it came running to the gravel road and hitted against my bike. I was running at a moderate speed and saved me from falling but the bike was severely damaged. I had mild bruises at my legs. I was looking for another means of conveyance in the rural road when a car approached and I signalled it for help.
The car stopped and agreed to give a lift. But from the halfway, it took a different route and when I asked them about it, they told that the car belongs to Sanatan Thakur (Satish's grandpa) and hearing about the accident he had ordered them to take me to his nearby farmhouse for treatment. Somewhere my sixth sense was warning me and I told them that I wanted to go home and as the bruises were mild and I didn't need any immediate treatment. But the Thakur's men in the car told me that Thakur would mind and consider it as an insult if I didn't go to his place.
