Rag Dolls

She lay still on the nuptial bed, a bride of fifteen dressed in red but stripped of choice, resigned to her fate. The smell of wilting mogra flowers lingered in the room, the marigold garlands sagged on the walls, and the bangles on her wrists clinked softly as she clenched her fists. The celebration was over; only silence remained.

They had warned her that the first time would be painful. It was not merely painful; it was brutal. Brutal not for the tearing flesh or the blood on the sheets, but for his indifference. He did not speak. He did not meet her eyes. He simply undressed, tugged at her clothes, thrust, heaved, finished, and rolled over. She flinched, wept, but no sound came out.

And it did not end that night. It returned every night, as predictable as darkness. Even after many nights, the pain had not dulled; it had only shifted deeper inside her, heavy and permanent. Each time, she closed her eyes, clenched her jaw, and fled into memory. Her memory of her father’s courtyard, to the rag doll waiting in a corner. She had carried that doll with her when she left her father’s house, tucked in her bridal trunk. It was the only fragment of childhood she was allowed to bring. In her new home it lay folded at the back of a shelf, its stitched smile waiting, its silence keeping hers.

The doll whispered to her, reminding her how often she had married it off in play, how carelessly she had burdened it with roles it never chose. She wondered what pain the doll must have carried, what it must have endured in silence.

She wished she could undo what she had done to her doll. She wished she could undo herself. But life was no movie on the VCR, no magical rewind where actors walked backward, laughed backward, fought backward, married backward. Here, there was only Play; relentless, merciless Play.

She understood this was her life now. Until someone, somewhere, pressed pause.

When she was younger, she had heard the stories of princes riding horses, fighting demons, conquering lands, and winning maidens. Girls her age dreamed of boys swooping them off their feet. She did not. She had seen her elder sister married. She had seen her belly swell with her first child, skin stretched tight like a drum. She had seen her bent over in the kitchen with swollen ankles, coughing in the smoke. She had seen her at night, sitting half-asleep, the baby clamped to her breast, hair matted with sweat, milk soaking her kurta. And she had seen her broken; the brightness in her eyes dulled, her laughter thinned into silence, her face hollowed; all in three years. She saw her weep quietly when no one was watching, tears wiped on the edge of her dupatta before returning to the grind.

And yet she was told that motherhood was a blessing, a most pious and beautiful experience! She saw nothing divine in it. Her sister’s youth had been bartered away for duty. And in those shadows, she recognised her own future, waiting for her like the snarling dog at the end of their gully.

She could not imagine a different fate for herself. She had become an instrument, lifted every evening, strummed without care, played until she ached, then abandoned on the bed. The player enjoyed himself, but the instrument lay hollow, strings loose, skin bruised.

She had thrown up many times during the nightly acts. He never flinched. He never scolded or consoled. He simply waited, silent, until she cleaned herself, then turned her body back into a stage for his performance.

Her mother used to say that God had carved everyone’s destiny in stone. Why was hers carved in suffering? Was there a chisel sharp enough to erase it, to write it again? She never found an answer.

Sometimes she thought of telling him, rehearsing in her mind how she might ask him for kindness. In her thoughts, her voice was steady. In her thoughts, he listened. She even rehearsed with her doll. But when night came, the words dried in her throat. She lay down quietly once again, resigned.

“Women are meant to suffer,” her mother had said.
“Why?” she had asked.
“Because we are women.”

She understood now what her mother had meant. Marriage, for women, was not a promise; it was a sentence. Her mother had endured it, her sister had endured it, and now she too carried the same burden.

She had not come from poverty, nor had she married into it. Her father’s fields were fertile, his accounts always balanced. Her husband’s house too had its share of land and servants, silk sarees folded in chests, brass vessels polished bright. Wealth was never scarce in either home. Yet for all their comforts, the women lived in silence. They cooked, bore children, fetched water, tended to men’s hunger and tempers, and lowered their eyes when spoken to. Wealth clothed them, but it did not free them.

Once, when she was small, she had played with her rag doll in her courtyard. She had married it off in a mock ceremony, fussed over its veil, placed bangles on its tiny cloth wrists. Her brothers had laughed, one of them snatching the doll and flinging it into the dust. She had cried and rushed to pick it up, brushing the dirt from its stitched smile. Her mother had said only, “Hush. It’s only a doll.”

Only a doll. But now she knew better. The doll’s silence was her own. Its stitched smile was her smile, forced and permanent. Its fate had always been hers.

When her daughter was born, no one rejoiced. The courtyard stayed quiet, no sweets distributed, the colourful dresses of celebration remained unworn. Her husband barely looked at the baby, her in-laws muttered of misfortune, and even her own mother shook her head. “It is hard to raise a girl,” she said softly, as if repeating a wound passed from mother to daughter. That was the moment she understood fully what it meant to be born female; to arrive unwanted, to carry the weight of silence from the first cry. Just like the doll on the shelf, dressed, adorned and forgotten.

Her days blurred into silence. Servants bustled in the kitchen, the courtyard hummed with routine, yet she moved through it like a shadow. She tended to her child, bowed to her husband’s indifference, sat through meals where her presence was scarcely noticed. She gave what she had been taught to give. Her obedience, patience, her body, her silence and yet there was no recognition, no kindness, no word of thanks. Only indifference. Only cruelty. At times she thought of her rag doll, dressed, placed, and forgotten, tucked away on the shelf, its crooked smile as empty as the life she lived.

Sometimes, she took the doll from the shelf and looked at it. It was the only witness that remembered she was once a girl. She whispered her sorrows to it in the dark. The doll never answered, only stared back with its crooked smile.

Then came the news of her sister’s death in childbirth. It hollowed her out. She remembered her sister’s dulled eyes; her laughter drained in only a few years. Now she was gone, leaving behind her two children and a newborn. The cycle continued, unbroken, and she knew it would claim her too.

When she found herself pregnant again, terror took hold. Would she survive? Would the child? Would it be another girl fated to suffer? Her husband’s words were colder than the winter air: “We are going to the doctor tomorrow. If it is a girl, we will abort it.”

The words echoed in her ears. If it is a girl.

She could not sleep. Her heart hammered against her ribs, insistent, unrelenting.

If it is a girl.
If it is a girl.

At last, she rose.

The courtyard was silent, engulfed with fog. The neem tree at the corner seemed to vanish into the mist. Her eyes pierced through the drifting fog. The kerosene can waited beside the stove.

She had thought of every detail. Flames leapt eagerly, licking the walls, racing along the beams. The reek of kerosene and burning cloth filled the air, sharp and suffocating. Neem leaves crackled in the blaze, sparks lifting into the dark. Somewhere inside, glass bangles burst in the heat, shattering like brittle laughter. The curtains, the quilts, the cots, the windows, the people inside - all surrendered to fire. Their cries rose, fists banged against doors, screams tore the air. But the latches she had fastened from outside did not yield.

In her hands she held the rag doll. Its stitches were loose, its smile crooked, its body limp from years of keeping her secrets. She stared at it one last time, then flung it into the flames. Cotton popped, the cloth shrank, the stitched smile dissolved into ash.

She lifted her daughter into the curve of her waist. The doll was gone, and with it, her silence.