At mausi's home

I felt a little strange and unbelievable when it was leaked in the class that one of my classmates called Yogesh gets his punishments at home after getting all his clothes removed. It was told to me that his dad beats him up with a stick, after making him remove all his clothes. But then, another classmate endorsed that he too gets beaten up the same way, and gets himself locked up in a room overnight. It was not unusual for me to get punished at home, but it sounded illogical to me for parents to get the clothes of their children removed. But, the same year, I saw my mother also making my brother murga and getting his knickers and underwear removed before spanking him. More surprisingly, one day Richa also disclosed that she also gets spanked by her mother in the same state, and she also told me that it is done by the parents to ensure that the child feels maximum pain and maximum humiliation. That is supposed to deter the children from repeating the same mistakes again. I actually saw it most explicitly when at the end of that academic year, my brother and myself stayed at my mausi’s home in Ambala for about a month. We knew mausaji was a real ‘danger’ man, but we saw his discipline then. My cousin, Ashu bhaiyya was a frequent victim of his. On earlier occasions as well, we had seen him getting punished by his father. But, on that particular visit, for the first time, we had seen him removing his clothes and getting ready for punishment by his dad. In their home, they had a concrete floor with no roof in the very middle of their house. There were some rooms behind that space, and some rooms between the entrance of the house and that space. Whenever, mausaji was annoyed of him, he used to tell him to get naked and arrange all the sticks in the home on the table of the drawing room, and shall wait in that open space for mausaji to arrive. Mausaji deliberately used to make him wait for 5 minutes, and by that time he already used to be in surrendering mood. Mausaji used to pick any one of the sticks and used to badly beat him up.

One day, Veeneta (Mausaji’s youngest daughter) and myself were made murgi in the veranadah. We both were wearing the suits. Mausiji were sitting on a chair in front, supervising us, and Aparna didi kept a steel glass on our heads, which we had to balance during the punishment. Fan of the room was also switched off. This was for the first time that I was wearing a salwar suit and chunni during the punishment. It was really hard to take care of chunni. We were frequently told to take ourselves to the standing position, “buttocks upar karo”, but were never really forced us to do so. Because it was June, it was already very hot. I was completely wet with the perspiration. I was thirsty as well. From the beginning itself, I decided to keep my butts down, and no one forced me otherwise as well. But that too is not a comfortable position; I got severe pain in my neck due to that. Within five minutes, it appeared to me that I would fall down, and would not be able to go through, but somehow I kept going on and on. Further, unfortunately for me, Richa called on their landline for me, and mausiji handed over the phone to my bhaiyya. He made things hard for me, by telling her “wo to abhi murgi bani hui hai, tum baad me call karna”. That little devil called RIcha replied, “ theek hai, use disturb mat karo, main baad me call kar lungi”. Bhaiyya did not even tell me afterwards that there was a call for me. Embarrassingly for me, she called up again after some time, when I was still bearing the punishment. This time bahiyya told her to call me after 8 pm. She was delighted to know that I was still standing in the punishment. By the time punishment was over, I was half dead.

Finally, RIcha called me again next day. As soon as I said, “Hello”, she said, “ye murgiyon ko ‘hello’ bolna kisne sikha diya, kukdoo koo bolo”. It was only then that I came to know that she called for me twice in the day, and both time I was in an awkward position. She was enjoying, making fun of me over the phone, and I was blushing, as if somebody had made me stand without my clothes in front of her. Among the many things she said to me, one of the comment was “chal achha hai, murga ban ne ki practice karti rah, jab school khulenge to tere kaam aayengi”.