Winning Essays

The door groans upon hearing his heavy footsteps returning from work, the chair jumps hearing him yell his wife’s name, the clock winces as it watches his hand delivering a sharp blow to his wife’s face, but she does not groan, jump or wince. She stands there, lifeless; just like the door, the chair and the clock, staring into space with her eyes that were once filled with love and hope. After all, she was just a pawn in the game. She is one of countless women in my hometown, a small town in southern India that I visit yearly, a town with a small library that closes every Wednesday, a lake with fishes the size of my palm and a town where some of the strongest women I know live. It is nearly impossible to go against something that you have been taught is normal your whole life. These women grew up seeing other women in their lives go through the same experiences as them so often, that they are unfazed when they face the same signs of domestic abuse. Whenever I hold a conversation with them, I never fail to notice how their voice gets a tiny bit softer, a tiny bit sadder when talking about their abusers; their very own husbands, men whom they trusted their life with, whom they swore to be with till death does them apart. The worry lines on their forehead, along with the scars in their hearts deepening every year I visit them.

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