Statistics: A Short Story

By Rose Sebastian

Rose Sebastian is a faculty member in the Department of English at Bharata Mata College, Thrikkakara, Kerala, India. Her short story “Statistics” was written in Malayalam and published in the literary periodical Mathrubhumi Weekly in 2016. The story touches upon several culturally specific social issues ranging from competitive examinations that focus on quantitative analysis to alcoholism, domestic violence, the dowry system, and Indian society’s unscientific and insensitive attitude toward differently-abled persons.

The story also addresses the incalculability of compassion. The anonymous protagonist in Sebastian’s story fails to pass her important exam because the “science of turning suffering into statistics” eludes her. The story implies that the reality of human suffering cannot be adequately captured by numbers, and anyone who understands this will inevitably fail an exam, or any other cultural situation that relies only on such calculations.

“Analyze the given statistical table from India’s 2011 Census on people with various physical and mental disabilities, and answer the following questions:”

She read through the multiple-choice questions of the aptitude examination. All one needs to do is to add, subtract, multiply, and compare the given numbers and arrive at more numbers. As per the instruction from the training center, one can spend up to 20 minutes on this particular section. She applied her mind and perused through the table. As the answer to the first question on the cumulative percentage of visually impaired persons who are married, she picked 64.76 from listed options.

But don’t the siblings of disabled persons too have difficulty finding a match because of the taboo? Does a blind person usually get married to another blind person? Is imagination possible even in the absolute absence of a sense of sight, color, and shape? What does a person who is born blind dream of during his sleep? She tried imagining how two congenitally blind people would love each other. They might light up each other’s hollow, deprived eyes with numerous kind kisses…

Damn it, time limit! She tried concentrating on the test. The number of mentally disabled women: 408,743, of which 64.36% are unmarried. That makes 263,066.9948 persons. But how is 0.9948 a person?!

One of her earliest memories is of Ammini the neighbor standing with her mentally disabled baby on her hips, tearfully relating her tribulations to Grandma:

“That demon of a drunkard kicked me on my belly while I was carrying, Sister Eli. I suspected something terrible when my baby did not pick up speech even after age two. Knowing that she is retarded completed my misery!”

Ammini’s tears and the child’s drools were perennial. She tried recollecting Ammini’s child’s name, unsuccessfully so. Ammini’s child doesn’t have a name in her memory, just like on the Government’s database. The villagers used to call the child “George’s retard,” or “it” and “that.”

She remembered her Grandma warningly rolling her eyes at her the time when she loudly wondered, “Why is that kid’s head so unusually large.”

The child’s otherwise lackluster eyes would sparkle with a smile every time Ammini pampered her asking, “Who’s Mama’s cutie pie?” Ammini used to swear that she would get her daughter married, even if it broke her back wage-laboring to pay up the dowry. The villagers laughed at her. Her husband George often came home drunk and beat up Ammini and the girl into pulp, either until his hands hurt, or till the villagers intervened. Ammini took the beatings stoically; the girl cried in scattered syllables. George screamed, “I don’t have a penny on me, and she is hoarding up all her money to get a retard married!”

The day Ammini caught George violating the girl, she set herself on fire. The villagers sighed for the girl’s fate. Grandma did not sleep for days, and kept turning in her bed, chanting “Jesus, Mary, Joseph.” Could Ammini’s death have been a murder? It has been years since she left the village; its faces and lives are long-lost too.

The number of mentally disabled females who are unmarried: 263,066.9948. That faceless 0.9948 slowly took the face of Ammini’s child. And the girl is still drooling from the corners of her mouth.

She failed the exam yet again, as she did not quite master the science of turning suffering into statistics.