Evening — Kitchen

"Jaldi jaldi haath chalao."

(Move your hands faster.)

My mother-in-law's voice cut through the kitchen, and I pressed the rolling pin down harder, faster, over the dough.

It wasn't enough.

"Kya kar rhi ho ye. Dhyan kaha hota hai tumhara aaj kal."

(What are you doing? Where is your mind these days?)

I looked down at the roti on the tawa and felt my stomach drop. The edges had gone dark — past golden, past acceptable. Burned.

"Maaf kar dijiye" I said immediately, pulling it off and setting it aside.

(I am so sorry)

I tried to focus. I told myself to focus.

But my hands remembered every task they had done since morning. The kitchen we stood in was not the cramped, coal-smoke kind — it was large and marbled, fitted with a gas range and proper exhaust, the kind of kitchen that belonged to a house like this one.

A house with twenty-six rooms, three drawing rooms depending on which guests were coming, staff quarters at the back, and a garden wide enough that you couldn't hear the road.

The house of a Chief Minister. My father-in-law's house. My husband's house. My house, they called it, though nothing in it had ever felt like mine.

The counters were Italian stone. The steel containers on the shelf were polished and uniform.

The calendar on the wall was not faded — it was this year's, from some party-affiliated printing company, with Babuji's photograph on it, garlanded and smiling in the way powerful men smiled in photographs.

None of it changed what I was.

I turned another roti on the tawa.

"Cut this fruits—" Chachi's voice came from behind me, directing one of the house staff toward the salad.

Her silk saree rustled as she moved — Banarasi, deep green, the kind worn by women who knew exactly what their position in a household was and guarded it accordingly.

I kept my eyes on the tawa.

I am feeling suffocated in this kitchen.

The thought pressed against the inside of my chest with nowhere to go. Breakfast. Lunch. Snacks for the guests who never stopped coming — the party workers, the local leaders, the men with files and requests, the relatives who appeared whenever there was power to be near.

And now dinner. Even with a full staff, the women of this house cooked. It was a point of pride for Babuji. His daughters-in-law cooked. His wife cooked. Modern conveniences were for the servants. Tradition was for the women who mattered.

I sighed quietly and kept working.

"Set this on table," Chachi ordered one of the staff, gesturing toward the silver containers with variois dishes ready to be served.

Then her voice turned toward me.

"Tumhe har din kuch n kuch ho jata hai. Tumhare pati se hi shikayat karni padegi abhi."

(Something or the other happens with you every day. I'll have to complain to your husband now.)

My blood went cold.

I looked at her — helplessly, the way I had learned to look at people in this house when there was nothing safe to say.

"Fir se jala di roti," she said, shaking her head.

(Burned the roti again.)

"Jyada hi sar pe chada Rakha hai tumhe."

(He has put you too much on a pedestal.)

She kept going. I turned back to the tawa and pressed every other thought flat. Don't burn another one. Just this. Just the roti.

Then Maa entered the kitchen.

She looked at the tawa, and then at the three rotis I had set aside — all burned. Her expression moved across them quietly, without drama.

"Maaf kar dijiye," I said, my voice barely reaching her. The words I couldn't say lived just behind the ones I could.

(I am sorry.)

Please don't tell him.

Please don't let anyone tell him.

"Thik ho tum?" she asked.

(Are you okay?)

I was so startled by the question — the simple, direct weight of are you all right — that for a moment I said nothing.

She reached over and took the rolling pin from my hands.

"Mai kar longi," I protested — weakly, and I heard how weak it was.

(I'll manage it.)

Before either of us could say anything more —

"Khana milega aaj ki nahi."

(Is food coming today or not.)

His voice came from the corridor — unhurried, but with that particular quality that did not need to be raised to reach every corner of a room.

The voice of a man who had learned authority by watching it exercised his entire life, and had grown into it the way a plant grows toward whatever light it is given.

Every woman in the kitchen went still.

"Jii… aa rhi hu," Maa called back, loud enough to carry, her voice trained to the particular steadiness of decades spent in this house.

(Yes… coming right now.)

She turned to me and held out the hot serving pot.

"Go and serve them."

"Ab waha koi tamasha mat kar dena," Chachi warned as I moved toward the door.

(Now don't make a scene out there.)

I carried the hot-pot out.

Dining Room

The dining room was what it always was in the evenings — the chandelier lit, the long teak table set with the kind of crockery that came from Delhi shops, the smell of food layered beneath cigarette smoke and the particular heaviness of men who were accustomed to being waited on.

Security personnel stood in the corridor beyond. They were always there, two or three at any given hour, silent and present the way furniture was present.

The landline on the side table had rung four times already since I entered. Somewhere in the house, a television played the evening news — the one Babuji watched every night without exception, the channel that ran his photograph whenever there was a story about the state government.

This was an ordinary evening here.

I went to Babuji first. That was the order of things — had always been, and I had learned it the way you learn which step on a staircase creaks, by the consequence of getting it wrong.

I tried very hard to keep my hands steady.

They shook anyway. They had been shaking since Chachi said his name.

He was sitting beside Babuji. I didn't look at him directly. I kept my eyes on the plates, on the pot, on the small and manageable geometry of serving.

Just breathe. Just serve. Don't make a mistake.

After serving Chacha ji, I moved towards my husband's plate.

He was on the call, as he almost always was at this hour. The voice he used for these calls was different from the one he used inside the house — faster, harder, salted with words I had learned not to ask the meaning of.

Commands issued like facts. Names of people being moved from one place to another the way you moved pieces on a board.

I set the roti on his plate and moved away. He had put the receiver down by then and was moving towards the dining table.

My brother-in-law was next. Younger, unmarried, cut from the same pattern — he had the same jaw, the same way of occupying space as though it were owed to him.

He was not yet what my husband was, but he was learning. He didn't acknowledge the serving. It was not expected either.

I fell back into the rhythm alongside Chachi — kitchen to table, table to kitchen, watching levels, anticipating needs.

Maa was still making rotis inside. The sound of the tawa carried faintly through the door.

Then —

Babuji set his empty glass down on the table. Not loudly, exactly — but with a particular firmness. The firmness of a man who had spent thirty years having things appear before he finished wanting them.

I moved quickly.

Too quickly, or my hands were still unsteady from before — I don't know which. I only know that the water didn't reach the glass. It went into the plate.

I took a step back and closed my eyes.

My heart stopped. Every sound in the room contracted.

I felt his gaze on me before I could make myself open my eyes — that specific awareness, like standing in the path of something large that hadn't yet decided to move.

The words for sorry dissolved somewhere between my mind and my mouth.

"Sir, wo school ki building gir gyi thi — 27 students ki maut ho gayi hai. Baki abhi bhi aashanka hai ki kareeb 6 bacche aur hai. Aur abhi itna jyada time ho gya hai to wo jinda bhi na mile."

(Sir, that school building that collapsed — twenty-seven students have died. There is still the possibility that around six more children are trapped. And now so much time has passed, they may not be found alive.)

His PA's voice, from somewhere close in the room.

I opened my eyes.

Babuji looked at me for a moment — one long, measuring moment — and then looked toward the PA who was moving close to dining table.

From beside him, my husband spoke.

"Babuji—"

He passed his own glass across to his father. Quietly. Without looking at me.

Ohh. Understanding arrived slowly, the way it does when you've been frightened enough that your mind stops working quickly.

"Mai dusri plate laga deti hu," I started.

(I will prepare another plate.)

"Rehne de. Ho gya mera," Babuji said, cutting me off. Flat. Final.

(Leave it. I'm done.)

The specific shape of it — not shouting, not a scene, just dismissal — sat heavier than anything louder would have.

When he was finished, he set his glass on the table and looked at my husband. Something passed between them — I had spent seven months in this house learning to read those silences, the language of expectation between a father who was CM and a son who was MP, a father who believed in the order of things and a son who had been raised to uphold it.

He didn't look at me. Not once.

Babuji stood, and the PA fell into step beside him, still talking.

"Maaf kijiye sir, lekin log gusse me hai. Aur hamse ummeed kar rhe hai ki ham kuch kare."

(Forgive me sir, but people are angry. And they are expecting us to do something.)

Babuji paused at the edge of the dining room, wiped his hands with the cloth the staff brought forward. "Subah bata dena, sabki family ko 1-1 lakh milenge karke."

(Tell them in the morning, each family will be given one lakh rupees by way of compensation.)

Then he walked out, PA in tow, and the conversation was over — twenty-seven children, one lakh rupees per family, next morning, done.

I stood there holding the serving pot.

"Roti."

My husband's voice came, sharp.

"Hmm—" I turned toward the kitchen, but Chachi was already coming through with the roti pot. She moved toward my husband's end of the table — and then his hand came up, flat, over his plate. A small gesture. He pointed toward his uncle without looking at her.

Chachi redirected and served Uncle rotis.

She understood what had happened. Her expression settled into something I recognized — the particular tightness of a woman recalibrating.

"Ab saaf kon Karega ise."

(Now who is going to clean this up.)

I stepped forward quickly, picked up my father-in-law's plate and glass, and carried them back into the kitchen before she could say anything further.

Kitchen — After

"Kya hua tha?" Maa asked when I came in.

(What happened?)

"Wo pani gir gaya tha," I said apologetically, setting the plate down.

(The water spilled.)

"Jeet ki plate me?" she asked.

(Into Jeet's plate?)

I shook my head.

I watched the fear move across her face — quick, almost imperceptible, the way these things moved through women in this house. Her hand went to her forehead.

"Maaf kar dijiye," I said.

(Please forgive me.)

"Muze hi serve karna chahiye tha," she said, half to herself, returning to the tawa.

(I should have been the one serving.)

She was worried now. Worried about what he would say to her because of what I had done.

Why do men blame women for whatever happens in their life? The thought came and went before I could stop it. Will he say something to her? Will he hit—

I pushed it down.

Chachi came back in, collected more dishes and rotis from the stack, and went out again without looking at me.

And then — a wave. It came without warning, rising from somewhere in my lower stomach, climbing fast. I bent over the sink.

"Kya hua beta?" Maa's voice came immediately.

(What happened, child?)

Another wave. I gripped the edge of the sink.

When it passed, I rinsed my mouth, splashed cold water on my face, and straightened up slowly. The marble counter was cool under my palms.

"Baito beta." Maa gestured toward the chair near the side counter. "Eat something first."

I sat. She put a glass of water in my hand. I drank.

"Since when is it happening?" she asked, studying my face. "Are you pregnant?"

"No," I said. "It is the first time."

"Hmm." She looked at me the way mothers look when they are assessing rather than accepting. "You didn't have lunch properly either."

She turned and told the kitchen staff to serve me a plate.

"They are not done yet," I said quietly, automatically. In this house, the women ate after the men had finished. That was simply how it was. It was how it had always been.

"It's okay. You can eat," Maa said.

I still hesitated. The plate was in front of me and I wanted — I wanted desperately just to eat — but the wanting felt like something that needed permission.

"They are done," Chachi announced as she came back through the kitchen door, setting the serving pots down.

"This will be enough for us then," Maa said, quickly assessing what remained, already calculating portions.

"Why can't you do one single task without creating a mess?" Chachi's voice landed on my back like a flat palm.

"It's okay, Suman. Bacchi hai wo," Maa said.

(......She's still a child.)

I knew Chachi was angry at me. I knew it would sit in the air between us for days. But after that, we had dinner together — the three of us and the kitchen staff, around the smaller table in the kitchen the way the women of this house always ate, late and quickly and without ceremony.

Night — Room

After dinner, the clearing and restoring of the dining room, the putting away of serving dishes, the checking of the kitchen — it was well past nine by the time it was done.

I moved down the corridor toward our room. As I passed his study, his voice came through the half-open door — that same voice, commanding, clipped, the cadence of a man who had not stopped working simply because the hour had turned.

I didn't slow down.

I hope he would not do anything tonight.

The thought arrived the same way it always did at this hour — not quite prayer, not quite reasoning, just a small internal bargain made with no one in particular.

I got fresh, and came out of the bathroom.

He was already in the room.

I had known he would be. I always knew, the way you learn to read the sound of footsteps in a corridor, the particular quality of a closed door. I had simply hoped for something different tonight.

He was on a call, standing near the window. The curtain was the heavy embroidered kind — his mother had chosen the furnishings for this room before I arrived in it, and nothing had been moved since.

"Arest him and keep him in police custody. Akal thikane aa jayegi uski."

(Arrest him and keep him in police custody. That'll straighten him out.)

Arrest. Custody. Police. Murder, kidnap, law, court, judge, contractor and so many bad words.

I had stopped flinching at those words months ago — or I had tried to.

The vocabulary of this house included things that in any other house would have been extraordinary. Here they were ordinary.

Judges. Cases. Land disputes settled in ways that did not involve courts. Names spoken on phones at midnight that I never heard again.

He cut the call and threw the receiver onto the bed.

He crossed the room to the side table. A cigarette appeared between his lips and he lit it — the small orange flare in the dimly lit room, and then the smoke, curling slow and grey around him.

"What invitation you need now?"

My throat went dry.

I moved toward him — a little, a few steps — my voice barely assembling itself.

"Uhm… not today…"

He looked at me. One look. Long enough to make the meaning clear — DON'T.

I lowered my eyes. My fingers found the safety pin at my shoulder without me thinking about it. My hands shook as I unpinned my saree, unwound it, stepped out of my petticoat and set them aside.

I lay down on the bed in my undergarments and felt — for one brief moment — the relief of my weight being taken by the mattress.

But it wasn't over.

Through my peripheral vision, he was still standing. Still smoking.

The receiver rang on the bed — his second call. I flinched at the sound before I could stop myself. I reached for it and held it toward him.

He took it. Listened.

"Utha lo use bhi. And don't disturb me now," he said, and put it on the side table.

(Pick him up as well.)

The cigarette finished. He pressed it into the ashtray beside the lamp.

He came to the bed.

I closed my eyes.

He removed my panties and spread my legs wide. When his two fingers entered suddenly, I whimpered — the sound small and involuntary; I fisted the sheet tightly in my fingers — and he moved them briefly and then pulled them out, wiped his fingers on my thigh, and settled himself between my legs.

He entered me in one movement, making me cry in pain.

I lay beneath his weight and thought about nothing. Or tried to. The ceiling. The sound of the ceiling fan. The curtain that didn't move because the window was closed.

The pain was not letting me think about anything else, except his movements inside me-hard, fast, brutal as usual, not giving me a chance to even breathe.

Why is he like this?

The thought surfaced before I could stop it.

After what felt like an eternity, his pace slowed. It ended. I felt him release inside me. Both our breaths came rough and uneven in the still room.

He stayed. He always stayed — this was one of the small things I had learned about him in seven months, one of the things that didn't fit the shape of everything else.

My fingers loosened around the sheet.

Three or four minutes, without moving. I didn't know why. I had never asked. I had never asked him anything after that first question I had dared to ask him in my naivety.

Then he pulled out and left the bed. The bathroom door closed behind him.

I took a deep breath and reached for the blanket and pulled it up over myself.

I lay there. The pain in my lower stomach was the particular deep ache that I had learned not to think too much about. My legs felt distant from me — connected, but barely.

I can still shiver in my body.

I should get up. I should drink water, clean myself, do the things you were supposed to do. I knew this.

"Arhhh—"

The sound left me before I could decide to make it. With great effort I pushed myself up to sitting. My stomach contracted with the movement. I reached for the glass on the side table, drank a few sips of water, and then lay back down.

I did not hear him come back.

I was already asleep by then — or something close enough to it that there was no difference — by the time he returned to the room, or didn't return, or went back to his study where the phone would ring again before midnight with someone needing to be arrested or moved or paid/bribed.

I didn't know.

I was gone by then — into the one part of every day that still belonged entirely to me.

How was the chapter?

Thank You 💜

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