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Perhaps it was the anguish in the blood of those who lost their minds to betrayal or ecstasy, or merely the ultimate wish to die, hidden in the garb of insanity, creating private hospices in their own minds. Whatever be the reason, Rajjo never seemed to qualify as the common insane kept away from the world in the murky depths of a women’s asylum.

I always wondered how mad men and women saw the world. Anyone could have figured it out for the inmates, but not for Rajjo. She never differentiated normal from insane, weird from commonplace. All she did was to stray away in the depths of oblivion, may be stars, or newer moons floating in the cosmos of her officially deranged mind. But, was she mad? I guess she had some story to her, like everyone else. For example, there was a woman in her 50s who was dumped here a few years ago. She tried to burn her family members alive. I wonder what could be the circumstances under which she was driven to do something like that. And then there was another, a beautiful and young woman, who tried to kill herself repeatedly. People say she was driven to madness by her in-laws. All of the inmates had a story to validate their present condition. But, what about Rajjo, do they know anything? All they know is that on a warm evening she was found sitting at the asylum’s gate wearing nothing but a flimsy kurta and a pajama.

It was the year 1946, a cold winter somewhere in the Punjab district. India had still not been divided then, the Muslims, the Hindus, and the Sikhs were still living in some sort of assumed harmony, and Rawalpindi was still a small city. It was Rawalpindi where Rajjo lived. We know that because she told the authorities of the asylum herself. Yes! She could talk, make coherent statements, and answer questions as they required to be answered. Then, what was wrong with her? Why was she there?

The story behind Rajjo was small and stark. Her story was similar to that of a million others who got severed at the heart by the Radcliffe Line. But that wasn’t the whole story. Rajjo came from an impoverished Muslim family living in the outskirts of Rawalpindi. A family of only daughters was not a boon to a poor barber in the village. Rajjo was the youngest of all, but not the most loved one. In fact love was inexistent in that family. All they could serve every night over supper was some cold dismay heated to palatable tolerance. Rajjo was beautiful with a dusky, unblemished skin, glossy lips, but with dried up cheeks and a sweaty worried forehead. She cared for her overworked father and her sisters who were to be married off in respectable families. It, however, did not go as planned. She got married off to a rich man in return of some favours. This man was old with three sons and enough assets to feed an entire village, a part of which went to Rajjo’s father too. But Rajjo did not complain. She did not complain when she was reduced to an old mop that lapped up every refuse, or when she was stripped naked by every eye that turned to her in that house. It was not a family, but a barn yard where a lone sheep is left to a multitude of rams waiting to be ravished. She took it all, occasionally calling out to Allah for either ending her or ending her, but that end never came.

Once lying on a hard bed out in the yard, she felt something warn on her neck. When she turned her head she was shocked pale to see one of the sons staring at her. He gave a smirk and walked away. She was not used to that. It was fine when she caught the middle aged men staring at her bosom, and not shying away even when she noticed. But they never came so close before. She could feel it was because the old man was dying and she feared the aftermath of his death. She did not have to wait long to discover the horrors. Her husband died leaving her like a road kill to the vulture like sons. Turn by turn the three raped her, dousing her screams in the grave silence of the night. She stopped screaming later. Even the servant took his chances with her breasts or her hips. She kept quiet because she had a young daughter to bring up and out of the hell she was in, she could not afford insanity. Independence from the British raj was imminent, but that did nothing assuage her personal sufferings, the three sons of the deceased old man, Rajjo and her infant daughter had a last momentous moment in life. In the chaos of the partition when violence occurred outside, some of it occurred inside too. The three sons went at her for the last time, to please themselves, while she fed her daughter.  They were drunk in lust when one of them slapped the child off her breast onto the floor bursting its head. The others pinned her down and started chewing onto the frail remnants of her soul while she witnessed her child bleed. She was stunned to quietude, while the three men ingested her body. Suddenly she came back to her senses and banged a heavy charcoal iron-press onto one of the son’s head. Warm blood splashed everywhere.  She then ran into the kitchen and fetched a butcher’s knife and cut off the phallus of one and the throat of another. Together with her daughter, they all bled to death, and she bled to liberation.

It was the independence of Pakistan and India. She gained her independence too, but like many others, paid a price for it. She did not go mad with that incidence. She just wanted to leave the normalcy of the normal world she was living in. That was her madness.