The Mad Witches of Modera
In a modern Colombo suburb, three long-suffering housewives decide to punish and reform their errant men using black magic, a daring plot that has unpredictable results.
CHAPTER ONE
Resting Witch Phase
Really-what kind of man can cut off his dead lover's head? It's not easy. You need muscle. Your arm aches for days afterwards. The spinal column in an adult female can not be easy to sever. I wish I could find out from that girl, what she saw in him. What do we see in any of our abusive South Asian men?
That is what I was thinking while I ran to meet my writing deadline at the Weekend Financial Review. I had an idea about this because I had once cut off a dogs head. When it was dead of course. It took some time. That is an old story.
Once upon a time in Colombo there were three forty-plus women who were friends.
One was an actress, let's call her Bibi, one was a journalist, that's me and the third was a social worker and animal rescuer named Faa.
We were what you could call Bad Wives because it was a South Asian country, and we were not obedient and did not do whatever our husbands expected us to do. We are too bossy and independent. Me specially because I ride a motorbike and I don't need a man.
For example bad wife number one didn't like it that her ex husband (Lord Ravensport) who did business kept mistresses in various towns and spent money on them and didn't look after his family. He also insulted, hit and abused her. So she kicked him in the nuts, divorced him and went away. She found some other men. But because she was thirty plus by that time the only available men were the rejects. Sri Lankan women don't easily let go of their men. They tolerate a lot and stick to them. Because there are disadvantages of being man-less. By the time you are thirty in Colombo all the good men are taken. You can only find married men, impotent fellows and weirdos that all the other women just could not tolerate. So Chubs found a man she liked, whose dick worked well too, but he turned out to be drunk every evening. And he could not hold down a job. But he was entertaining, so she kept him.
Bad wife number two didn't like it that her husband wasn't with her and only came home to eat and bellyache about life. He insulted her often and took her stuff and gave it to his girlfriend. When she had an accident and really needed help, he wasn't there for her. Then he wanted a divorce. But in Sri Lanka being divorced is rather third grade. You get the feeling that people cross themselves and cross the street when they see a divorced lady. He walked away anyway. So she found another man. But it turned out he wasn't really ideal either, because he was rude, loud and racist and she had a strong suspicion that he was actually married.
Bad wife number three dumped her man because, among other things, he was a proven child molester who had groped one of his own daughters (from a former wife).
Maybe he had other good qualities, but she didn't want to find out. She was the most beautiful of these bad wives and she had been an actress so it was easy to find men. Again since she was like forty by the time she searched, she found only married or odd men. This one turned out LATER to have multiple wives whom he hadn't even bothered to divorce because his Eastern religion and Muslim Law allowed it. He convinced her that it was ok. But he took her money and turned out to be a control freak. Strangely the things that Allah had said about women, were just what he too wanted, which might even make you think that Allah though divine was male. Bibi was convinced most of the time that if she was a good wife and did what her religion wanted, she would be rewarded in the afterlife. In the meantime this life was completely impossible at times.
Looking at these three ladies you would agree that they really didn't seem to be able to work out this holy matrimony thing. Instead of being a dreamlike condition of bliss it seemed to be a trap they had fallen into.
Today I was writing a story about another marriage that had gone wrong and ended up in homicide and suicide. It was now called the Midlands murder because the killing happened in a motel named Midlands.
"No, you cannot interview the wife, she is just too tired to talk anymore," says my editor. I stare angrily at him down the phone. I can picture him running around the office with his sleeves rolled up and his collar awry. He has nice grey eyes. He does not take leave, even on his birthday or on Ramadan. He goes home at 2 am, after everyone else has left the evening shift. "Ill get you the number of the Officer in Charge of the investigation,"
Boring. Taking to a cop about a murder. There wouldn't be any human interest in it. How will I write my piece on the Midlands Murder? All I can think about is this buff mutton headed ole cop dude who has now hung himself in the middle of the jungle.
He had annoyingly taken the mystery with him. A mystery that has the entire island talking.
"How do you know the wife didn't have anything to do with this?" says my mango friend Faa, in the middle of feeding her cats, in a rather baggy dressing gown. Through the WhatsApp video call, I can see them ploughing restlessly through her house, on her laundry, on her countertops, on her washing machine, in her armchairs, on her bed. There seem to be cats everywhere. I know the next time she sees a kitten or some geriatric dog she will feel sorry for it. A crow popped its head in at the window and cawed raucously for food. Faa had named it Rasta.
"How do you know- she must have got fed up with this old bugger messing around with the girl and she must have done something. Like a hooniyama," said Faa. "Go away Rasta, I gave you your breakfast!'"
Hooniyama is the Sri Lankan word for Voodoo. There is a God in charge of this process, named the God in Charge of the Village. I'm surprised at her conclusion because Faa is a Muslim.
"What kind of hooniyama can you do?"
"Sue knows we should ask her, there are lots of things… that can be done" says Faa, evasively. I feel that she has already consulted Sue-Lakshi and is not ready to discuss it yet. Faa was creative.
Sue-Lakshi wrote horoscopes. This was a lucrative occupation in Sri Lanka where most people had one. But she couldn't get her head around doing it for money. She felt sorry for people who were in pain and ended up doing their horoscopes for them free of charge. This resulted in her never getting anywhere as a businesswoman. She also did mantras. To heal people. To keep them safe. She had studied all of this in an actual course with a famous gurunnanse and she did it with good intentions. Would she help with Bibis' problem? She was also a medium and she could speak to the dead. There was a spirit who helped her, a kid who had died in the time of the JVP.
Maybe I could get an interview with the SP himself? Through a medium? Radical. This is interesting. Why didn't I think of this kind of solution before?
As a journalist and an ex-wife myself I can begin to imagine the drama behind this murder story. And feel compassion for us all, the dead man, the murdered other-woman and the grieving wife and children. No one plans these things they have a way of happening. Well, sometimes wives plan things. But we will come to that later. I needed to finish my article. My petrol tank has corroded and I'm without transport too, which is bad in the middle of a pandemic. I have to get through all of this without getting this damned virus and spreading it at home. Colombo was under lockdown and I would not be able to go meet Sue-Lakshi for some time yet.
So till then I can continue the story of the Three Bad Wives, who could not get matrimoney right.
Their current men could not figure it out either. They did not agreed to professional counselling or mediation, saying that this was a stupid Western idea, along with concepts like women's rights and support for Gays.
The women decided to look Eastwards for answers. But, tediously, Eastern religious books and old wives in the neighborhood would advise them to give in, and do what was expected of them. And to tolerate the cheating, drinking, wife beating and whoring. For the sake of the family. Cos family comes first.
They were supposed to do what their husbands said, especially the kinky sex, and to bear up with anything for the sake of the children, and to be good obedient housewives and do their duties, like fucking, cooking and laundry. In other words to not really have lives of their own. And what would they get in return? Protection. From what? Tigers? Invading armies? Not in 2020. Other men, apparently.
For a short while they did try all of that too. Working hard, earning giving their men their money, cooking nice stuff for them, ignoring the toxic language.
But it still didn't work out the way they wanted. Their men still did whatever they wanted- they kept mistresses in comfort, they got drunk daily and they went to screw their ex-wives in secret. Not only that they did it without shame and were quite bold about these things too and added verbal and physical abuse and mind control into the mix because Eastern culture accepted that men could do all these things.
This was annoying.
Something had to be done about this.
You have been reading the first chapter of
THE MAD WITCHES OF MODERA
Three frustrated Sri Lankan housewives trapped in dead-end marriages decide to take revenge on their unfaithful, abusive husbands.
Working with a combination of undercover investigation, hi-tech solutions and local witchcraft, they do the unthinkable, in a last desperate attempt to make their men conform; A high school friend has studied the occult formally for years on the side. To convince her to help they must tell her everything and tell the truth. But unless they come from a place of honesty, their hexes will have dangerous and unexpected results . And, things can go very wrong.
A tangled web of love, betrayal and revenge set in the volatile background of the Covid 19 pandemic.
Not for Sale in Sri Lanka
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