There she is again, this time her hand all bandaged and medicated. I stop by and enquire – not there is any need to, for I already know how or what happened to maim her – she grins sheepishly and informs me that three of her fingers of her right hand are broken at their joints. Once again, the brute of her husband, a beast really, has subjected this frail woman to a battering.

Fifteen years of hell, yet like a stoic she takes it as is it given. Wiping tears and blood off and getting up back on her feet and work – someone has to, she has two children to cater to. Last year, when I bumped into her, as she labored up the slope in the blue mountain range tea holdings, her head was swathed with dressings. Her man has nearly scalped her, thirty six surgical sutures were needed to hold the split edges of her cranial aponeurosis in position.

Why does she go through this hell? Never ask the question, not in interior rural India – kismet, fate, vidhi are terms that are bandied about, not to forget the dictum that he who did this, is lord and master, yejaman, owner. How can a husband own anyone? Well, just forget it friend, that’s the way India is – and for the impoverished and hopeless, a yellow thread dangling from a scrawny neck still symbolizes ‘mangalya’ – a divinity ordained status.

Her face is crisscrossed with scars, her brown skin shows tell-tale marks of healed or healing burns. I often wonder whether battered women suffer from a extended for of Stockholm Syndrome – where the victim becomes a willing vassal. A modified form of acceptance of slavery and servitude to the all powerful husband as ‘duty’.

When some years ago, one October-November, I saw her, she looked for once , whole. She beamed in the early dawn sun’s glow, her pearly teeth glistening. I slowed the car upslope: seeing my raised eyebrows, she giggled – "Oh, my man is off to Sabarimala".

Now for those unaware, the annual pilgrimage to the shrine of Lord Ayyapan is big business in south India. Thousands, nay tens of thousands of men perform austere penance for forty days in preparation for an arduous trek up the slopes leading to a holy abode. Women are not allowed. The pilgrim who decides to take up the journey is mandated to adhere to many strict norms, one among which is abstinence from tobacco, alcohol and sex. No razor, no shave.

Purity in thought, word and action. For forty days, the devotees wear an all black habit, rising at crack of dawn to sing and praise the Lord in group assemblies of like-minded that dot cities and villages. Even satans turn seraphim during this period. Lore has it that those that defile the code are damned and condemned to pay heavy for indiscipline.

So that was where this cad was heading; and, with his decision to take on the strict regimen and rigors required as preamble to the final climb up Sabarimala – it was nirvana for the woman. For six weeks, it will be peace now.

Further up the bend, I came across the man himself, he flexed his head and torso low, rapidly wrapping a black scarf round his waist and lowering his folded black dhoti to below knees in deference. His forehead and chest were smeared with ash and sandal paste. A paragon of virtue he appeared.

Thence on, I make sure, every October, I send a few hundreds to the fellow – beseeching him to visit Ayyappan and bring back some divinely blessed holy ash and Prasad. He takes his mission seriously and makes sure he mails a small packet of holy stuff after every Makara Villakku event on Sankaranthi, the grand finale of the pilgrim calendar.

Not that I have turned religious or spiritual – but if the few hundred and a patent lie can bring peace and relief to a battered woman – the hundred is worth every penny. A holiday from being prey to a predator, a holiday lasting forty two days in three hundred and sixty five. A break that brings back smiles on a bronzed face in the hills.

Swami Ayyappa, on behalf of a slightly built, scared and scarred and simple unlettered victim, I thank you for being there.