I loved Prakash because he was my husband and because he took care of me financially and because he was what I’d wanted so much. I loved him because not loving him would mean I had been foolish to believe he was the perfect man.
Life in the army was a series of parties, just as I had imagined it would be. The parties were boring—I had not counted on that. Prakash kept to himself, and our marriage was just like the many I had seen growing up. We were strangers living in the same house. We talked once in a while, but it was superficial conversations that gave us something to do besides chew our food at the dining table. We watched television the nights we didn’t go out and he always went to bed before I did.
It started to get to me. I was sitting at home all day long with nothing better to do. I cooked and I cleaned and I did the laundry—but I was always bored. I started going to the library and picking up romance novels to fill the time, and it was on one of my trips that I met Harjot Dhaliwal.
Harjot was eighteen, in medical college, and was back home for the summer vacation. She was studying to be a doctor and she was everything I used to not like in a woman. She was intelligent, well educated, and wanted to be independent. She didn’t want to get married anytime soon because she wanted to build a career.
We met at the EME Center library where she was going through magazines and I was piling up Mills & Boon romance novels in a plastic bag. She looked at the title of a book I was holding and whistled softly. “Prisoner of Passion?”
I laughed when I heard the title read aloud. The books were silly, but they made the time pass. They gave me something to do when Prakash went to sleep and I couldn’t. They gave me a fantasy world to walk into. The hero was always cruel and insensitive to the heroine in the beginning, and in the end he was nice to her and in love with her. I had the cruel and insensitive hero; I was waiting for him to become nice and fall in love with me.
“You are Colonel Singh’s daughter,” I said, stuffing the book back into the shelf.
“You don’t have to put it back because of me,” Harjot said.
I straightened and smiled sheepishly. “Well, I’ve already read it.”
“You live down the road, right under Major Malhotra’s house,” she said. “Malhotra Auntie and Mummy are very good friends,” she added.
I nodded, not knowing what to say. She was only three years younger than me, but I felt much older. I was a married woman and, in the hierarchical system of society, that made me much older than the years warranted.
“How are you enjoying your summer holidays?” I asked.
“I am bored.”
That was exactly how I was feeling, so I invited her over for tea. And that became a ritual.
She came over at around ten every morning and spent the day with me. Prakash came home for lunch sometimes and Harjot stayed, and she noticed how things were between us.
The first time she broached the subject, I wanted to get defensive, but I had no other friends in Bhopal and I was dying to tell someone what I was going through.
“I think he didn’t want to marry me,” I said. “I don’t know why he did. No one forced him to.”
I later found out that Harjot had known all about Prakash’s problem with women. Apparently several people in the EME Center knew and they all hoped that a beautiful wife like me would keep the good-looking and promising captain from straying.
“Why don’t you do a postgraduate?” Harjot suggested.
“But what will I do with it?” I didn’t want to go back to college; I had just gotten out of there. “I mean, what job can I hold as an army officer’s wife with all that moving?”
“You could be a teacher,” Harjot said. “Come on, you could teach in the army schools and there will be one everywhere Prakash gets posted. It could be really nice for you.”
“But I don’t want to work. I want to be a wife and a mother,” I protested.
“You can be a wife and a mother and have a job.”
I couldn’t believe it then. My mother had always been home, and that had been nice for my younger brother and me. Even though Sanjay was in college and I was married, I liked the idea that my mother was at home. I could visit anytime I wanted to without worrying about her not being available.
“I think it is expecting too much from life to work and be a wife and a mother,” I said. “I mean, you will have to stop being a doctor when you have a baby.”
Harjot gave me a look reserved for the stupid. “And why would I do that?”
“How can you take care of your baby and work? Babies need their mothers,” I said simply.
Needless to say, Harjot was not like me. She wanted equal rights and said that women had to believe in themselves before society would change. I told her that I didn’t want society to change. I liked the way things were. I liked the idea of having a husband take care of me while I made a home for him and his children. I didn’t want to enter the crazy working world.
The summer ended and Harjot went back to college. By then I had made more friends through her. Mrs. Dhaliwal played rummy with some other wives and I was invited to the card games. It was a lot of fun. There was Mrs. Malhotra who always complained when she lost money, there was Mrs. Khatre who was never on time and made the worst samosas, which she insisted were perfect, and there were a few more wives who like me were trying to find a way to pass the time. We spent our afternoons playing cards, or just gossiping about this and that.
Life was not boring anymore. I started paying less attention to Prakash, though he didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t complain about having toast and jam for breakfast instead of the stuffed parathas I used to make, and neither did he complain when I sometimes heated leftover dal and curry for dinner. Our life continued as it had before, with us barely talking to each other or spending time together. Earlier I had made the effort to cook what he liked in order to please him; now I had stopped doing that.
We were comfortably apart and, unlike before, I didn’t really care anymore.
That changed.
It was in August and a big party was thrown to welcome a visiting brigadier general of the EME Corps. That was where I met Major Vijay Reddy, who had come with the brigadier general. We instantly started talking because he was also from Hyderabad. His parents even lived in Begumpet, just a few blocks from where my parents lived, and his younger sister had gone to the same college as I had.
He was charming and I was charmed. After being neglected by my husband, this attentive man made me feel feminine and attractive. He noticed me, which was more than Prakash seemed to do. We had been married for over three months now and we had never really talked to each other. We were unlike the newly married couples I had known. We had had sex just a few times and we had never gone out together to the city for dinner or someplace else, just the two of us getting to know each other. In the darkness of my current life, Vijay was a perfect and irresistible diversion.
He spent the entire evening with me. The first spark of attraction was ignited that night, though I wouldn’t admit it— I was a married woman and married women did not find other men attractive. It was a cardinal rule, which I was fully prepared to follow. But Vijay was tempting and, after all, I was just speaking with him, I rationalized. Just talking to a man didn’t mean anything.
I didn’t think anyone noticed me with Major Reddy. After all, wives talked to other officers all the time. And indeed, no one noticed, no one except Prakash.
When we got home, I was floating. Vijay had told me I was beautiful and how lucky Prakash was. It was innocuous flirting and I had smiled and laughed with him. What else could I do, when my own husband wore a permanent frown on his face?
“What were you and that Reddy fellow talking about?” Prakash asked, as I unraveled my sari in our bedroom.
I shrugged and didn’t answer.
“Well?”
I started to fold the sari and wondered what I could tell him. Vijay and I hadn’t really talked about anything tangible, it was just chatti
ng.
“Hyderabad,” I finally answered.
“Why such a long time to answer me?”
“What?”
“What?” Prakash yelled. “You were sitting close to him and laughing. It was disgusting. You are my wife, not some ten- rupee whore.”
For a moment I couldn’t believe he had said that. “How dare you call me a whore?” I turned to face him. My eyes glistened with angry tears. This was not happening to me—decent middle-class women were not accused by their husbands of being whores because they had spoken to another man. I was attracted to Vijay, but Prakash had no way of knowing that.
“I dare to call you a whore because you behaved like one,” he accused. “Other women might do this kind of thing and get away with it, but my wife will not.”
“And other men might doubt their wives, but my husband will not,” I retorted forcefully. “I have done nothing, nothing at all to make you say these things. Why would you even think it? I can’t talk to anyone else? Is that it?”
“You were talking to him?” he said sarcastically. “Is that what they are calling it these days?”
“I don’t know what it is that you are talking about. How about when you sit and talk with those girls? Priyanka Mallik and you seemed to be extra friendly with each other last Saturday at the Tambola party.” I didn’t really think he was doing anything but talking with Priyanka Mallik, but I wanted to hit back at him.
His face turned red. His hands, which had been unbuckling his belt, stopped, and I took three steps back. I had seen this in the movies and I would be damned if my husband would hit me. That wasn’t going to happen, I vowed.
His hands fell from the belt and he sat down on the bed wearily. “What are we doing to ourselves, Anju?” he said, his voice hoarse, traumatized.
My relief was obvious. “I don’t know,” I confessed, and sat down next to him. This was my husband and I loved him. I put my hand on his shoulder to soothe him.
Prakash sighed and took my hand in his. “I am sorry. I don’t know . . . I was jealous seeing you with Reddy.”
“I am your wife,” I said, even though I was flattered that he was jealous.
“And I am a terrible husband. Right?”
“No,” I lied.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
He kissed me then, warmly, gently. It was like a kiss from a romance novel. With that kiss our marriage finally entered a tentative honeymoon stage.
He spent the evenings with me and we went to the movies they showed in the EME Center Open Air Theatre on Wednesdays and Fridays. We spent more time together and he even took me to the city to shop for clothes and jewelry.
Bhopal was about ten kilometers from Bairagarh, where the EME Center was, and we would go away on a Sunday morning and come back late in the night. Prakash even found a restaurant where they served good South Indian food. Ethnically I was North Indian, but I was raised in South India and loved South Indian cuisine. Prakash thought it was too bland, but he came with me and I convinced myself that he did so because he loved me.
I thought that because he was being so warm and gentle, our sex would also take a 180-degree turn. That didn’t happen. We were both still uncomfortable. To me it was new. I was shy and scared. I didn’t know what his problem was. And I didn’t care. I was glad he was having sex with me, because that meant he probably wouldn’t go looking for it elsewhere. My mother had warned me about that: “If you don’t have sex with your own husband, he might go somewhere else to get it. Men need sex.”
Our lives became normal. We talked, we played, and we were the picture-perfect young couple. Behind the picture, I was always perturbed at how scared I was to disappoint Prakash in any way after the night of the party. Our life was going well and I didn’t want to do or say anything to tip it off balance.
The honeymoon, as I had anticipated, lasted only a month. Things changed all of a sudden. They changed the day Colonel Chaudhary was posted to Bhopal and came to our house for dinner.
Colonel Chaudhary had been Prakash’s commanding officer in Udhampur and Mrs. Bela Chaudhary was a perky, attractive woman who I liked at first sight.
After Colonel Chaudhary’s arrival, everything changed. Not just at home, but also amongst the wives. They were gossiping as usual, only I kept getting the feeling that they were gossiping about me.
THIRTEEN
ANJALI
"I am sorry that Sarita brought ... Prakash up,” I apologized to Sandeep as we lay in bed. “I told her, and I—”
“That’s okay,” he said in his calm voice. He was lying on his back, reading a book. I was lying on my side, running a finger over his arm.
“You are angry about something.” I could tell he was holding something back.
“Why should I be angry about anything?” He sounded amused, but I wasn’t buying it.
“You’ve been angry ever since . . . we saw his wife.” Sandeep put his book aside and turned to face me. “I am not angry.”
“Something is wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong.”
“I know you, something is wrong.”
He sighed and lay on his back again. “You can really nag sometimes, you know?”
“I am learning from Komal.”
Sandeep grinned. “She is pretty good at it.”
“So, what’s wrong?”
Sandeep closed his eyes and didn’t answer. I poked him in the stomach with a finger. “Tell me.”
He took my hand in his and brought it close to his lips. “I am happy. I am content. I am not angry.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
I turned off the lights and snuggled close to him. His body was tense and I lifted my head. “Something is wrong.”
He laughed, this time uncontrollably, and I joined him. He never did answer my question.
Sandeep was not the most open person I knew. His feelings were locked within him, nothing gave him away, and I never knew how he was feeling unless he told me. He didn’t express his emotions as freely as I did and it sometimes bothered me. It was a compromise—I got a close-mouthed clam, who was loving, affectionate, and understanding.
A few days before the Dussehra holidays I received a letter from my parents. I was shocked—the letter said they would come to Ooty for a week. It had been just a couple of weeks since I had written to them inviting them to our home. I had written several letters like this in the past. They had always politely declined my invitation with a reasonable if hastily contrived excuse. This time, however, I had written to them on Sandeep’s insistence about Amar’s failing condition, and the results were quite different.
Sandeep went to pick them up at the railway station and I crossed my fingers, praying that my parents’ visit would go smoothly, without any unnecessary emotional upheavals.
I gave Amar a bath and dressed him up in a nice silk kurta pajama, which my parents had sent for him on his last birthday. Amar liked my parents and they adored him. Whenever we took Amar to Hyderabad, they treated him well, despite his illness. They took him on outings to the zoo, the planetarium, and the Birla temple that sat high up on a hilltop. Amar was inundated with gifts and trips to the ice cream parlors. I was thankful for their attitude toward Amar. He gave us a thread, a connection that was almost severed after my divorce.
I hadn’t seen my parents for almost two years. The last time we were in Hyderabad we’d had a fight. I couldn’t remember what the reason was—one reason mingled with another and one fight faded into the next. My parents never adjusted to my new life. They had found me a good-looking husband, an army officer with great prospects. I had blown that away and now had to settle down with a professor and a sick child. This was not the life they had planned for me. This was not the life I had wanted for myself. But I wouldn’t change a thing—besides making my son healthy if I could. When they arrived with Sandeep I noticed that they had aged in the two years I hadn’t seen them. They looked old and tired. As if they were ready to die.
My father seemed to have lost a lot of his domineering attitude. We’d never had a great relationship, but that was expected. Daughters didn’t have great relationships with their fathers. He had thundered and raged when he found out I had filed for a divorce. He had wanted me to hang on to a bad marriage because their “noses would be cut off in society.” I told him my life was too high a price to pay to save his idea of honor.
Now he seemed quieter, beaten.
Komal was a well-behaved woman with them. I probably appeared like a regular Jezebel, in contrast to Komal, who always wore white in deference to her widowhood. Komal was soft-spoken in front of them and very respectful, unlike me, and she followed all the religious rituals and had not left her husband or disgraced herself after his death by marrying again.
I was sifting the wheat flour for dinner when my mother finally tore herself from Amar, with whom she had spent most of the day in the living room playing, and came to talk to me. I knew she was going to talk to me instead of throw accusations on my face because she didn’t start her words with “How could you . . . ?”
“He seems better,” she said. “What do the doctors say?”
I ran my fingers through the soft flour. “His lungs are not getting any better and the heart operation . . . well, the valve is malfunctioning again.”
“So . . . ?”
“We’ll see.”
She couldn’t ask the question I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t even think it. He was sick and in pain, yet I wanted him to live just another day because in another day maybe science would catch up with his disease and cure him.
“Sandeep takes very good care of him,” Mummy said. This was probably the first time she was saying something nice about Sandeep.
A Breath of Fresh Air Page 9