Night

I got my period.

I washed the cloth I had been using, wrung it out, and hung it to dry. I folded a fresh piece of soft cotton, changed, and came back to the room. I was so done for the day that even the act of pulling the blanket over myself felt like an effort I had to think through.

I closed my eyes.

The click of the door opened them again.

He came in with a receiver in his hand, and I knew before he reached the bed — from his footsteps, from the particular way he moved through the room — that he was angry.

Not the loud kind. The other kind. The kind that sat in his jaw and his shoulders and made the air around him feel different.

"Kya hua?" His voice was thick, laced with something that was the precise opposite of care. Those words — care, softness — did not exist in his dictionary. I had stopped looking for them.

(What happened?)

"Aaj nahi. Mahina… chal raha hai," I told him.

(Not today. My period… is going on.)

He wasn't listening. He was already moving toward the side drawer, pulling it open, looking for something. My words had landed nowhere.

When he straightened, there was a pistol in his hand.

The phone rang. He answered it, and while he talked — low, clipped, the voice he used for things I was not meant to understand — he adjusted the gun into his waistband, and left. The door shut behind him with a force that wasn't quite a slam but wasn't anything less either.

Will he kill someone tonight?

The thought arrived and sat there, ordinary and terrible in equal measure. I had learned that about this house — that terrible things became ordinary here if you stayed long enough.

I lay looking at the ceiling.

At least five days. Nothing for five days.

He had always listened, the other times. I told him, and he didn't ask again, didn't push. I had been grateful for that, in the mechanical way I had learned to be grateful for small mercies.

But those days — I never knew where he went. He didn't come to the room at his usual hour, and even on the nights I woke in the middle of darkness I never found him on the bed.

No impression on the pillow. No weight on the other side of the bed. In the mornings I would hear his voice from downstairs — at the breakfast table with Babuji, or with some political contact who had arrived before the household was properly awake — and I would understand, though not be certain, that he had simply not come back at all.

Except on the sixth day. Or the seventh.

He was always there by then. Either already in the room when I came, or arriving just as I did, as though he had been counting.

And those nights were always — brutal was the only word that fit. As though he was settling something. Taking back something that had been withheld from him, through no fault of mine, and which I would pay for anyway.

I always ended those nights sore in ways that lasted for days. Exhausted past the point where exhaustion had a name. Sometimes I didn't even know when it ended — I simply wasn't there anymore, unconscious in the middle of all of it, and then morning came.

I closed my eyes and let sleep take me.

My period felt like a blessing. It was a blessing. Despite everything, it was.

A few days to breathe. The pain of it was its own kind of pain, but it was mine, and it was clean, and it came from my own body rather than from someone else's.

Few days where I can breathe. With pain, but with less pain.

I surrendered to sleep.

Six Days Later

My eyes opened to the sound of water running.

I was still in bed, the blanket pulled close to my chest. I was not wearing anything. I didn't remember the point at which last night had ended — at some point consciousness had simply stopped while he was still pounding inside me, and now here was morning.

I did not have the energy to sit up. I lay there and waited for the sound of the bathroom to change, for the water to stop, for him to come out.

He emerged and started wearing his clothes. I pushed myself upright on the bed and wrapped the shawl around my body.

I gathered what was left of my steadiness and stepped off the bed.

Two steps. That was all I managed.

The floor tilted. My legs, which had been carrying me for nineteen years, simply declined. I felt myself going to collapse on the floor and had no way to stop it —

But it didn't happen.

His arms came around my waist.

I grabbed the shawl before it slipped entirely. My body, without asking my permission, leaned itself against his. I hate him. The thought was clear and present and true. But my legs were not cooperating and his chest was solid and there was nothing else to lean on.

I rested my head against him and hated myself a little for it.

"Baith ja thodi der," he said, and guided me back to sit on the edge of the bed.

(Sit for a little while.)

I adjusted the shawl around myself. He moved to the side table for his watch, fastening it, his eyes still on me — that expression I could never fully decode, the one that wasn't concern but wasn't entirely nothing either.

I tried to get up again.

The sound that left me was involuntary. My hand shot out and caught his kurta — white, pressed, the kind of kurta this house produced every morning without effort — and held on.

"Aram kar le," he said.

(Rest for a while.)

"Khana banana hai," I replied, my voice coming out weaker than I intended. I let go of his kurta and looked at where my grip had left creases in the fabric. I shouldn't have done that.

(I have to make food.)

"Tum khana nahi banaogi to mar nahi jayenge sare," he said, and looked straight into my eyes when he said it.

(If you don't make food, no one is going to die.)

"Lekin Babuji to kehte hai, ghar ki aurte hi khana banaengi," I said.

(But Babuji says, the women of the house will cook.)

He took a slow breath.

"Tum akeli aurat ho fir is ghar me?" His voice wasn't raised, but it was firm in the way a wall is firm — simply there, with no intention of moving.

(Are you the only woman in the house then?)

I shook my head and looked down at floor.

He picked up his jacket and left the room.

I sat there for a while longer. I am hungry too, I realised, in a distant, almost surprised way — as though my body had been waiting for me to notice.

Eventually I moved to the washroom. The warm water helped, marginally.

Then I made my way to the kitchen — the first time in six days I had crossed that threshold. During my period the staff had brought food to the room. The kitchen had existed without me, as it apparently could.

Evening

I brought the clothes in from the line — the ones that had been drying — and ironed them carefully, folded them, placed them in the wardrobe. Then I came downstairs.

"Bahu, chai le ke aa."

My father-in-law's voice reached me before I had fully entered the room. He had noticed me without appearing to notice me — that particular quality powerful men had, of cataloguing the people around them without ever looking directly at them.

"Ji," I said, and went to the kitchen.

I prepared the tea. I arranged the cups on the tray. I carried it back toward the living room.

His voice reached me before I reached the doorway.

"Kab chod rahe ho ise? Maine baat ki hai Pradhan ji se — unki beti ke liye."

(When are you leaving her? I have spoken to Pradhan ji — about his daughter.)

My steps stopped.

Again. The same conversation. As though I am a matter to be resolved, a problem with a pending solution.

"Ye mahine ke akhir me accha muhurat hai. Usi samay shadi kara denge," his father said.

(There is an auspicious date at the end of this month. We'll arrange the wedding then.)

I stood there with the tray in my hands and looked at his back. He was facing away from me, toward his father. I couldn't see his face.

"Thik hai."

Thik hai!

Two words. Perfectly calm. The same voice he used for everything — for political arrangements, for instructions to his PA, for telling me to rest.

Thik hai.

My world stopped inside those two words and didn't know how to start again.

Why did he marry me at all? The thought came slowly, the way thoughts come when the mind is trying to protect itself from its own conclusions.

My family is in debt because of this marriage. Not from dowry — they didn't ask for dowry — but from everything surrounding it. The arrangements. The clothes. The jewellery my parents pressed into my hands at the time of my leaving, the kind of jewellery that was supposed to represent their dignity at sending their daughter into a house like this one.

And now this. And if he leaves me — the social weight of it. What it does to a woman here.

My cousin's face came to me, unbidden. Twenty years old when her husband left her, over a suspicion that she was involved with some other man. A suspicion that was never proven. He left her over nothing.

I had seen what happened after.

The way the neighbourhood reshaped itself around her absence from normal life. The matches her parents found — men too old, men with children already, men who were handicapped or disabled in one way or another, the ones reserved for women the world had decided were already used up. She deserved none of it. She was twenty years old only.

I noticed Maa. She was beside me — she had heard it too. I could see it in the way she was standing, very still, with the particular stillness of a woman absorbing something she has no power to change.

She reached toward me and took the tray from my hands.

"Aur jyada hi tumhe law aur kanoon ki padi hai to talak de de use. Aur nikal is ghar se. Jab bacha hi nahi de sakti to kis kaam ki."

(And if you're so concerned with law and justice, divorce her. Throw her out of this house. If she can't give a child, what use is she.)

I looked at Maa with whatever was left in my eyes. Then I walked to the kitchen and sat on the chair there.

She came in a minute later.

I was already crying. I could feel it — the tears that came not loudly but steadily, the kind you can't argue with. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, but it didn't help.

She came to me and pulled me into her embrace without saying anything first. I pressed my face into her stomach the way I used to press my face into my own mother's stomach when I was small, before all of this, when I was still someone's child and not yet someone's arrangement.

She patted my head.

"Ro nahi bacche. Mai baat karti hu inse."

(Don't cry, child. I'll speak to him.)

"Aapki baat kon sunata hai?" I said, and I couldn't help it — it came out before I could soften it. Because it was true, and we both knew it. In this house, what we said went nowhere.

(Who listens to what you say?)

She was silent.

"Thik hai. Shant ho jao," she said after a moment.

(It's alright. Calm down.)

I pulled back. She handed me a glass of water. I took one sip.

"Kya koi pareshani ho rhi hai tumhe maa banana me?" she asked.

(Is there any difficulty in becoming a mother?)

It was the first time she had asked. Directly, like that. Not around it, not hinted at through other questions. Directly.

I bit my lower lip.

"Tumhare beech pati-patni wala rishta to hai na?" she asked, her voice careful, lowered slightly, the way you lower your voice when you are asking something that cannot be asked loudly in a house like this one.

(You do have a husband-wife relationship between you, don't you?)

I nodded.

"Fir, doctor ke paas jakar dekho. Mai baat karti hu Jeet se aur unse bhi. Pareshan nahi ho. Sab thik ho jayega."

(Then go see a doctor. I'll speak to Jeet and to him as well. Don't worry. Everything will be alright.)

She pressed her palm gently through my hair as she said it. The touch was so simple.

"Tum aaram karo. Mai aur Suman dekh lenge raat ka khana."

(You rest. Suman and I will handle tonight's dinner.)

She moved toward the gas.

I looked at her back. At the steadiness of her. The way she carried everything this house put on her and still turned toward the stove, still found the next task, still said sab thik ho jayega as though she believed it.

"Dard hota hai…"

The words left me before I had decided to say them. My voice was barely there. But in the silence of that kitchen, it was enough — it landed the way a small stone lands in still water, with a sound larger than itself.

Her footsteps stopped.

I looked at the floor. The tile beneath my feet, clean and cold.

"Har raat…" I confessed.

I know she is looking at me. I can feel it.

A tear fell and hit the tile. I watched it for a moment before wiping another from my cheek.

"Shadi ke pehle din se…"

I swallowed. There was more. There was so much more sitting behind that sentence, seven months of it, pressing forward.

(From the first day of marriage…)

"Wo sunte bhi nahi hai. Mana karu to…"

(He doesn't listen either. When I say no…)

The rest of the sentence didn't come. My throat closed around it.

"Chup ho ja, Anu," she said in a hushed voice, and she came to me.

(Be quiet, Anu.)

She pulled me into her arms and pressed her lips to the top of my head, the way my own mother used to, and that — that specific gesture — is what finally broke whatever I had been holding.

I broke.

The sobs that came weren't neat. They filled the kitchen — I was aware of that, aware that sound carried in this house, that walls here had ears that reported back to the men who owned them — but I couldn't stop.

"Bohot dard hota hai…" I told her between sobs.

(It hurts so much…)

"Shhh… koi sun lega, Anu. Chup kar ja." She held me tighter.

(Shhh… someone will hear, Anu. Be quiet.)

I was still able to feel him in my body. Even now — I could still feel where he had been, what he had left behind in my muscles and my skin and somewhere deeper than either.

"Kabhi kabhi to subah tak…"

(Sometimes until morning…)

He didn't leave me early yesterday night, either.

My voice broke before the sentence could close itself. It didn't need to. She understood. I could feel it in the way she inhaled — that long, slow breath of a woman absorbing something she cannot fix — and pulled me closer still.

But her embrace couldn't reach where it needed to reach. Within a few hours I would be there again, under him-crying and sobbing, and no arms around my shoulders could follow me into that room.

"Malkin, wo bade sahab ne kaha hai ki khane me do log aur rahenge…" The staff member stopped when she saw me.

(Madam, the elder sahab has said two more people will be staying for dinner…)

"Haa, thik hai. Tum jao," Maa said, her voice shifting — still composed, still the mistress of this house.

(Yes, that's fine. You go.)

"Bahurani ko kya hua?" the woman asked, her face tightening with something that looked like genuine worry.

(What happened to the young bride?)

"Kuch nahi. Bukhar hai bas. Tum jao, aur Suman ko bula lao," Maa said, firmer now.

(Nothing. Just a fever. Go, and send Suman.)

"Ji."

Her footsteps receded.

I wiped my face. Maa looked at me — the look of a woman who had just been reminded of where she was.

"Sab thik ho jayega," she said again, patting my head gently.

(Everything will be alright.)

"Kaise thik hoga jab wo sunte hi nahi hai meri baat ko?" I pulled back and looked at her helplessly. My voice again became vulnerable, with no hope to lean on.

(How will it be alright when he doesn't listen to me at all?)

"Abhi ke liye chup ho ja, Anu. Yaha naukaron par bhi bharosa mat karna — bhool ke bhi. Jao abhi room mein. Baad mein baat karte hain." Her voice was quiet but urgent, her eyes moving briefly toward the door.

(For now be quiet, Anu. Don't trust the servants here — not even by mistake. Go to your room now. We'll talk later.)

I understood. The servants in this house were loyal to two men and two men only-her husband and my husband. Every small thing that happened in these rooms found its way back to them.

She knew this — had learned it the way she had learned everything else in this house, through experience, through the particular education that came from living for decades inside power that was not your own.

The fear on her face was its own kind of testimony- an answer to every question I had ever had about what her own life in this house had been.

I looked at her helplessly for one more moment.

I couldn’t help but think of my home.

I know society is not progressive, but my family was.

Not too progressive, but it was breathable.

My father made me learn things.

I wasn’t able to attend school regularly. I used to work on our fields and on other people’s fields to earn a little money. But we were happy.

My parents never stopped me from learning. My father himself was a little educated, so he also helped me with my studies.

I gave exams. He himself had dropped me off at school many times.

But then I wasn’t able to continue because of this forced marriage and our financial issues.

But here, the condition of women was so much worse. They were just laden with so many luxurious things—heavy and costly sarees, gold jewellery, and lots of rituals and customs. And most importantly, the burden of producing a child.

My father used to talk to my mother. They used to sit together, laugh, joke, and even fight over silly things.

What kind of house is this?

We were happy.

“Anu… kya hua beta?” I heard her voice. It was laced with care and worry.

(Anu… what happened, child?)

I shook my head, but another lone tear fell.

“Jao, aaram karo,” she said.

(Go, rest.)

I nodded and moved to my room.

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