My face and half my body on the right side is still numb. However, my dreams are better and I am sleeping more.
With that said, an abusers goal is to knock one off of their center. To distort their reality and replace it with theirs. They keep you away from friends and family and from anyone that doesn’t share their point of view.
After the panic attack where I reached out for help online, I was monitored, told to stay inside of the room and to keep off of facebook. Because “nothing online is real, it is a fake world and nobody cares for anyone.” Every hour between 9pm-4am that Tuesday night, Malabika “Brahma” Bhattacherjee would come in or message me online saying “I hope you are asleep.”
In the village I was asked over and over every night if I wanted rice beer. She explained it as a village drink that is good for kids and for the digestive system, “children drink it,” she explained. The last night I had to say no more than 5 times. ” I do not drink anything fermented when I have a choice.”
I remember the tales of tragedy she told. Before I came Torsha had typhoid and was on bed rest, which the issue was the loss of money for her pills, NOT the fact that she was sick. When I arrived she had a friend dying from cancer who has no family. She stated a student committed suicide in Kolkata while we were in Shanti Niketan on the last day October 10th after we left the AIIS office. This was to explain her behavior of laughing and having fun with everyone and leaving me out of discussions, groups travel arrangements and the grant funding meetings.
I remember after they received their checks, they both got dressed and explained they were going to see long lost friends. They were gone for the majority of the day. This happened every week during the day. They have no job so I was wondering why they kept leaving me at the house alone.
So my symptoms showed. I shook everywhere I went. If I passed a bidi, I shook so bad I almost burned the other person. A villager asked, “Why does she shake so badly?” She told me she said ” because she is a breakdancer and breakdancers shake.” But in hindsight I wonder what she said about me.
I have always been interested in learning a language. in fact, my goal is to learn more than 17 languages. I have been learning Hindi and bengali. I’d ask for the meaning of words and for them to translate. She got annoyed and yelled ” I can’t translate everything for you.” Which everything for Malabika is nothing. I found out all the words she told me had the wrong meaning. She told me deliberately the wrong pronunciation of a woman’s name. She would do things like this to me through out the trip.
As the 3 weeks passed that felt like an eternity, she stopped speaking English and only her husband Sanjay would speak to me and inform me of what was going on. But again, I had to ask. I would get yelled at if I was not ready to go but they wouldn’t tell me we were leaving until right before we left. So you can try to imagine. I was wondering why so many people gave me such a nasty look. The jewelry artist I interacted with, according to them, is named Sumoti Murmu. Sanjay Bhattacherjee stated that he gave Sumoti 1000INR for the jewelry I was supposed to bring back to the US and then give her all her profit. But now I am unsure he paid them or portrayed me in such a light. I plan to deliver this jewelry and profit to her in any way that I can.
All I wanted to do was teach. I just wanted to teach 9-5 for four months working with those who don’t get the chance to learn like others. And this was an obstruction of this. And taking people’s right to education away is a crime against humanity. And I will not let her win or get away with taking people’s chance to learn and make connections by distorting me to the people of the village and the city.