A Breath of Fresh Air

by Amulya Malladi

  Mamta told Indu all about the fireworks and the flaming arrows. Regardless of how many fights Indu and I had, with the children she was a perfect ten. I would’ve liked to have a mother like her. Doting, protective, encouraging, yet not overly so.

  “She had a good time,” I told Indu.

  Indu was pleased. “I am glad you took her. Mohit’s been complaining that you didn’t take him.”

  I grinned.

  “Daddy wants us to come to Delhi for the December holidays. You think you can get some time off, or should I take the kids and go by myself?” Indu asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know if I can go, I’ll have to see.” “Why don’t you ever come with us on vacation?” she demanded angrily.

  I sighed. “Why is everything a battle with you? And you are being unfair. I do come on vacation with you. But I don’t get the summer off—I am not a housewife.”

  “What is wrong with being a housewife?” she asked.

  “You know, Indu, I am just not in the mood for this,” I said, and Indu left me alone in the drawing room.

  Why couldn’t she be happy with me for once? Indu perpetually put me on the defensive. Anju hadn’t done that—but she had changed after Colonel Dhaliwal’s tragedy. When I looked back I was ashamed. How could I have been so insensitive to Anju and her needs? She had wanted to be with her friend, while I had been petty. That was when Anju had really started to leave me. I had been so angry a Sikh had murdered Indira Gandhi that I was taking it out on any Sikh who came my way without considering Harjot’s or Anju’s feelings. Then it had been popular for Hindus to hate Sikhs; now things were different. Now Hindus were supposed to hate Muslims. I didn’t have much hate left in me. I was whipped.

  I couldn’t drag my mind away from the boy in the wheelchair. What was wrong with him? Was he sick? Or had he broken a leg?

  I knew next to nothing about Anju’s life. She had been my wife; we had stood by the god of fire during our wedding ceremony and promised to be together for the next seven lives. I was still possessive about her—I wanted to know everything about her. I felt I had the right.

  Indu was right when she said I was the only divorcé she knew. I was the only divorcé I knew. There were probably one in a million of us and there were no guidelines as to how we should behave if we encountered an ex-spouse. I didn’t know how to approach my ex-wife. For a while I didn’t even know how to address her. Should I say “wife” when I talked about her in the past, when we were married, or should I always refer to her as “ex-wife”? If there had been other divorces around me I might have known. Someone would have come up with a system.

  I didn’t think of Anju as my ex-wife. I thought of her as Anju. What possessed me to go back to Bela Chaudhary, I don’t know. But by sleeping with Bela, I ruined a marriage that could have been wonderful. But I did sleep with Bela— many times—after she moved to Bhopal.

  This time no one warned me or told me what to do or what not to do. And Bela was discreet. People wondered, but no one could say for sure that we were having an affair. Colonel Chaudhary treated me like a friend—but I am sure he knew. He had to.

  Everyone had been silent about it, everyone except Anju. I’d expected her to be the most silent, to save face. But she clearly said how she felt about my relationship with Bela to our faces. I had thought she was a naïve young woman, who would put up with everything I dished out. And she did. But she didn’t put up with the adultery, as so many women would have.

  When she asked for a divorce, I thought she was joking. I thought that the gas had damaged her brain or something. But she was serious. Two weeks after the Bhopal gas tragedy I received a letter from her lawyer. I didn’t even know she had a lawyer. The letter said that she wanted a divorce and the reason for divorce was stated as “incompatibility.”

  After reading the letter I charged into the hospital where she lay in bed with tubes sticking out of her body.

  “What the hell do you think you are doing?” I demanded.

  She breathed slowly, and I wanted to be calm and sensitive, but I couldn’t.

  “I want a divorce,” she wheezed.

  “I figured that out,” I said sarcastically, and waved the letter I had received from her lawyer. “You are not getting it. I am going to make sure—”

  She lifted a hand, the one with a tube coming out of it. “My lawyer said that I can get a divorce on the grounds of adultery. Would you like me to do that?”

  I stared at her. “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes, you do. You don’t want me to name Bela Chaudhary in the divorce papers, do you?” Her voice was husky, as if every word took effort, yet she managed to dole out sarcasm.

  “I haven’t committed adultery,” I flatly lied.

  “You have,” she said. “A divorce case will bring the matter to everyone’s attention—they won’t be able to ignore it like they have for so long.”

  She knew my career couldn’t handle another scandal pertaining to the same woman. Mrs. Bela Chaudhary had been a misdemeanor the first time, the second time it would be considered a monumental crime.

  I sat down next to Anju on the bed, planning to take another approach. “You are imagining things, Anju,” I said, touching her fingers. “We are fine, you and I. Once you get better—”

  “I want a divorce, Prakash. I don’t want to be married to you anymore.”

  Her voice was so lifeless that it made me believe her.

  “You are just not feeling well. Once you get better you will see things differently,” I coaxed.

  “I want a divorce, Prakash.”

  I dropped her hand and paced the floor by her bed. “We can’t get a divorce. It is as simple as that. We will be fine. We’ve been married a very short time and things will work out. This time, I will make them work.”

  “You slapped me once,” she said softly. “You cheated on me, you treated me with no respect. I want a divorce, Prakash.”

  Unaware of Anju’s divorce plans, her parents arrived a day after I received the divorce letter. They had come to visit and take care of their sick daughter, but I changed their agenda. I knew they were going to be my strongest allies against Anju’s divorce plans. I told them what she was doing and swore my innocence. They believed me. I knew they would—I was the son-in-law, I could do no wrong.

  Anjali’s parents tried to convince her and finally told her that if she got a divorce, she wouldn’t be welcome in their house anymore.

  She calmly told them that she already knew that.

  I realized then that she had thought this through. This was not an impulsive decision. She knew the consequences and she still wanted out of the marriage.

  She had told me that she didn’t believe our marriage was real. “A real marriage,” she said, “is based on love and respect. We are just legally bound—and that bond needs to be severed.”

  I visited her in the hospital every evening, trying to persuade her against the divorce. I hired a lawyer myself, who promised me that we could drag this into court and no judge would give us a divorce. We’d been married only a few months—we could still make it work.

  Since Anju had been admitted to the hospital, Harjot had been a constant by her bedside. She left the room as soon as I walked in and came back as soon as I was leaving.

  I caught her outside Anju’s room once and thought if I could convince Harjot, she would convince Anju.

  “Harjot, I want to thank you for—”

  “I don’t want to speak with you, Captain Mehra,” she said before I could even finish.

  “Why, what has she told you about me? I am not a demon, you know. I am a good husband and—”

  “And that’s why I saw you yesterday with Bela Chaudhary by the swimming pool. Your wife is lying half dead here and you are with another woman,” she said with disgust. “Give her the divorce, or I will testify that I saw you kissing Bela Chaudhary. Then what will you do?”

  “I never kissed her,” I said, as my mind frantically tried to re
member the places we had kissed and if someone could have seen us.

  “How do you know what I saw?” Harjot asked. “Just give Anjali a divorce. Let her go.”

  “And what will she do? Roam the world alone?”

  “The Hindu Marriage Act allows for alimony. You will help her, of course.”

  I laughed harshly. “If she wants a divorce, she can have it. But she doesn’t get a paisa from me.”

  So I signed the papers and since the divorce was mutual, based upon incompatibility, everything worked out flawlessly. A flawed marriage that ended without any blemishes. The papers were bright white with clean black typewritten words on them, the lawyers were understanding and business-like, and even I didn’t throw a tantrum. Anjali had threatened me and I had been threatened. She said she didn’t want any alimony and I was childish enough to say that I wouldn’t give it to her even if she needed it. Then it had been my revenge. Now it was my embarrassment.

  I don’t know how she survived after she left me. Maybe she sold her jewelry, but I wasn’t sure. I knew that she hadn’t gone back home to her parents. They had written to me, apologizing for their daughter’s behavior. They said that they had tried to convince her but she hadn’t listened. They didn’t know where she was, but as far as they were concerned their daughter was dead. At the time I was glad to read that letter. She had gotten what she deserved, I thought.

  Now I was old enough to see my mistakes and they were all my mistakes.

  I looked out of the large French windows that lined our living room—it was dark outside. I glanced at my watch and sighed—it was late. Tomorrow morning, I decided, I would tell Anju’s parents the truth. They probably still didn’t believe her and blamed her for the divorce.

  SIXTEEN

  PRAKASH

  I placed a call to her husband’s college and asked for Anjali’s address. The man who answered the phone didn’t know exactly where Professor Sandeep Sharma lived, but he knew the general area.

  I hadn’t been to that part of Ooty and I drove slowly, looking around, assessing the status of the neighborhood. When I got there, I asked directions from some children who were playing cricket on the asphalt road, with a worn-down bat and a tennis ball. They showed me the way to the professor’s house. I parked the Maruti a couple of blocks away and decided to walk the rest of the way. Like a thief, I didn’t want to draw attention to myself entering her house.

  It was a nice house; a small wooden board with SANDEEP, ANJALI, & AMAR stenciled on it hung on the gate. I took a deep breath and opened the gate. It made a harsh rattling sound. I wished it hadn’t made the sound because I needed a last-minute escape route. But the people who lived in the house had probably heard the gate opening and closing. They knew someone had entered their garden and were waiting for the knock on the door. The people in the house were probably peeping through the keyhole or looking out of a window by now.

  I don’t have the courage to go through with this, I thought, desperately wanting to run back to my car and drive away. Once I was inside her house, I would have to tell them what I had done and I didn’t really want to do that. I would have to admit that Anju had been right and I had been wrong—my male ego was not prepared to make that admission.

  It was a cool October day, yet I could feel a burn inside my body. My ears were hot and my heart was thumping like I had run all the way from my house to Anju’s. Why was I here? I knew why I was here. I wanted to know about the boy in the wheelchair. I wanted to know all about Anju’s new life as some other man’s wife.

  I raised my hand and gently knocked on the door. Maybe they wouldn’t be at home; maybe they wouldn’t hear the light knock and I could go away, believing I had tried my best to tell her parents the truth.

  I was not that lucky.

  I heard her voice. It was a soft lilting voice, like the voice heroes sang about in Hindi films.

  “Sandeep, can you get the door?” I heard her ask. There was movement on the other side and my courage almost abandoned me. Not her husband, I thought frantically. Not him! Anyone but him!

  I then heard a young voice insist that he would open the door. “I’ll do it, I’ll do it.”

  The door opened and I stared down into the eyes of a boy. I took a step back—he was Anju’s son all right. He had Anju’s eyes.

  “Namaste,” the boy said, holding his thin hands together. He looked weak, as if some grave illness had bested him. This was the boy in the wheelchair. Anju’s son was obviously not a cripple, because he was standing in front of me. But I could see he was not well.

  Indu was wrong, I realized; Anju was not happy. I would be devastated if either Mohit or Mamta looked this ill and needed a wheelchair.

  “Namaste,” I responded hoarsely. “Could I . . .”

  Anju’s mother peeped through the doorway, and her face went white. “Prakash?” she gasped.

  “Namaste, Mummyji.” I shouldn’t have called her that. It was appropriate to do so when I was married to Anju, now it was not.

  “Come in,” she said weakly, and the young boy stepped to the side.

  A familiar head bobbed out of the kitchen and then went right back in. The head and the body came out a second later, with a plastic smile on the face.

  “Hello, Prakash,” Anju said carefully. “Amar, why don’t you get Daddy from the backyard.”

  Amar smiled and walked very slowly, grasping the walls as he moved to get to the kitchen and then beyond. I didn’t know what to say, or how to say what I thought I wanted to say.

  “Arrey, Prakash?” My ex-father-in-law gasped as he walked into the living room from inside the house.

  “What can I do for you?” Anju asked, talking over her father. Her mother sat down on the sofa, her face still pasty with shock. My ex-father-in-law sat down next to her, his expression mimicking hers.

  The sofa was old, but well maintained. The rocking chair next to it looked inviting. The lamps on the tables next to the sofa were new, but the tables looked beaten and old. There was a dining table next to the drawing room in a cramped area. It had a plywood top, and the chairs seemed to have received new upholstery several times.

  I looked at my surroundings in blunt appraisal. They didn’t have money, but the house was cozy. Indu and I were well off, but our house was not cozy. It was a house decorated for parties and entertaining.

  Anju knew how to make a house cozy. She had done it with our army flat in Bhopal. She had grown plants that died when she left. She had sewed beautiful curtains that I had torn in anger when she had lain in the hospital demanding a divorce. She had . . .

  “Prakash, beta?” Anju’s father asked again.

  “Namaste.” I folded my hands together again and cursed the impulse that had brought me here.

  “Prakash?” Anju inquired again, and I lifted my hands a little in frustration. I didn’t know how to start. All my courage and resources had been spent on just getting here and now that I was here, I didn’t know how to say what I knew I had to.

  “I am sorry to disturb you, but I saw you yesterday at the parade grounds and . . .” I let my words trail away. I was a little scared about her husband showing up. But I wanted to meet him, compare myself to him.

  “I wanted to talk you,” I then said to Anju’s parents.

  “Please sit down. Would you like some tea?” Anju asked.

  I didn’t expect her to be so polite, but maybe she knew why I was there. But could she know? Was I that transparent? Had our short marriage given her an insight into me that I was unaware of?

  “No thank you, I just had breakfast,” I refused as politely as the offer was made.

  Anju’s parents seemed unsure of what to do. There was no traditional precedent regarding how to treat an ex-son-in-law. I could see their confusion and I was glad I wasn’t the only one lost in this mire of ex-relations and protocol.

  “Well, I will leave you alone,” Anju said, and walked out of the drawing room into the kitchen.

  I could see that I was n
ot going to meet Anju’s husband. The line was drawn. I was to talk to her parents and take my sorry face out of her house. She didn’t want me here and I didn’t blame her for that. But I had been her husband, damn her. I had some rights.

  “I don’t think we have anything to say to each other,” Anju’s father said. “Except that we are still very sorry for what our daughter put you through. But . . . you are probably settled now and so is Anjali.”

  Did the man have to apologize? By the time I finished what I knew I had to say, they’d be throwing stones at me.

  “Please don’t apologize,” I said. “I came to tell you what really happened. It was not Anju’s fault. I . . . was to blame.”

  Anju’s father shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what you did, she still should have stayed to make the marriage work. Once you had children, everything would have been fine.”

  “I didn’t want children,” I said lamely. “I wanted to wait a couple of years.”

  “And that was very wise,” Anju’s mother chirped, like a nervous bird set in front of a hungry cat.

  Even after all these years, they felt it was necessary to please me. I was not their son-in-law anymore, but they were still being nice to me. I didn’t even want to think what they had done to Anju after the divorce. But I knew what they had done; they had abandoned her and I had refused to give her a paisa.

  “No,” I said, taking a deep breath. “You see, I was in love with a married woman, Mrs. Bela Chaudhary, and . . .” I stopped because they both looked like they were going to have seizures. I licked my dry lips and continued. If they were going to have a seizure, they could have it after I said my piece.

  “I was transferred out of Udhampur because I was seeing a married woman, and the brigadier there suggested that getting married would subside the scandal about my affair with Mrs. Chaudhary. So I got married. I didn’t make Anju happy because I was in love with another woman,” I said, looking at my shoes. They were not polished well, I kept thinking, as the words poured out of me. It was a nice diversion, because I couldn’t bear to hear what I was saying.