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Manimala Chitrakar
Paintings: Communal
Harmony, Tsunami
Artist: Manimala Chitrakar
My name is Manimala. I was born in Peora, not far from Naya. My mother used to tell me stories about the hardships that she endured in her past. As a child, it seemed to me that not much had changed for her. I am lucky that now our lives are much, much better. But my youth was difficult and sorrowful. We worked and worked—always for others. We made other people rich but never improved our own livelihoods. We begged in villages, we sowed and harvested other people’s crops, we were masons, and we built roads. I have spent hours laying asphalt for highways and cutting into the earth to build dams. We worked and worked, but we remained suspended in a state of great sorrow and poverty.
When the time arrived, my mother arranged my marriage. This is a shameful history to retell. My husband was so impoverished that his first wife had left him and returned to live with her own family. I moved away from my mother and joined my husband and mother-in-law in their village. The condition of his home was disgusting and our lifestyle was outrageous: he would spend hours collecting rubbish with the intention of selling it. One time, he was arrested for allegedly stealing old train parts. During these years, I gave birth to four children—two boys and two girls. Also during this time, I began to endure the abuse of my husband’s family: my mother- and brothers- and sisters-in-law often beat me. Sometimes, they would do it out of jealousy, and sometimes senselessly. My husband and I decided to move to escape the abuse, so we chose to move to Naya.
Soon after, when my marriage was in trouble and I returned home to my mother’s house, people told me that my husband was about to get remarried again. Everything had been fixed, and I had been deceived to think of being secure in my marriage and of my relationship with him. How could his re-marriage have been fixed within such a short time? When I returned to my husband’s village to find out what was happening, the physical abuse resumed. On one account, my mother-in-law pulled my hair and bashed me with a broom. She asked me why I had returned, and then she threw me to the ground, choked me, and continued bashing me. All I managed to utter was, “You can kill me, but I won’t leave.” I decided not to leave my husband despite all the suffering. I had hopes, dreams, and expectations for myself.
It was at that point that I learned of the lucrative nature of the scroll business. The scrolls seemed to appeal to foreigners, and I thought that the income might help to stabilize my family situation. So I spent a lot of time observing painters and listening to their songs. I painted at night, and I begged during the day. Oftentimes, I wouldn’t even sleep—I’d splash cold water on my face and keep painting into the next morning. My grandfather Dukhushyam said it wasn’t enough simply to paint—we had to learn to sing, too. My aunt, my mother and I learned from him, and eventually he invited me to several different fairs to display and sell my work. If I hadn’t learned this craft I couldn’t have gone to the United States. I tell all of the young people in Naya to learn this skill if they want to travel and earn a living. My abilities have allowed me to develop a broader sense of the world—my life has not been restricted to the confines of Naya.
Since then, I have divorced my husband. It was difficult, but I did it for a number of reasons. He never trusted me and always wanted to be manipulative and be in control of my life and actions. He started to abuse me with useless talk about my morality. He told others that I was in trouble with the government. But who will care for my family if I don’t? —my ex-husband doesn’t earn anything. He is capable of nothing. He doesn’t know any scroll work. All the same, he used to tell me that he is going to paradise and I am going to Hell. “This family is your family, these are your children. I go out and earn money and endure a lot of pain doing so. Instead of helping me, you are demeaning and disrespecting me. What sort of husband are you?”
Now, I live in this home in Naya with my children, and I have cut off all contact with that man. All of us do scroll work, and my daughter-in-law helps us, too. My kids produce the scrolls, and I sell them. It is our only means of survival—our medical and educational expenses rely on the sale of our scrolls. We still struggle financially, but my life has greatly improved over the past few years since the absence of my ex-husband.