A Married Woman Read online

  ‘I can’t just walk up to him and say give me your address, I want to write to you.’

  ‘It’s not anything so great you are asking. Once you write, he will write back.’

  ‘He may not.’

  ‘Then he is no gentleman‚’ said Gayatri severely.

  Eventually Astha blurted out the request, shoving her diary and pen at him.

  *

  She wrote, and he did reply, weeks later.

  ‘Who is this from?’ asked her mother, holding the letter away from her.

  ‘How do I know?’ demanded Astha.

  She snatched the letter and tucked it into her school bag. It was from him, she knew it was. He had written.

  Dear Astha,

  I received your letter a few weeks back. We do not really get time to write, we are very hard worked here.

  Tomorrow, I am leaving for camp. There is much work to be done; we do a lot of studies on tactics and strategy of defence and attack. We leave early in the morning, first marching 20 miles, from where we will be transported another 80 miles. At the end of it all we will land in some remote village. After lunch, which we carry, we will ‘dig-in’ for the night to carry out a defence exercise. Digging trenches in the Deccan plateau isn’t quite as easy as you might think. Each one takes 3 to 4 hours. We shall also have to climb Simhagarh, Shivaji’s famous fortress, and incidentally the highest one. At night we shall ambush and patrol, the sole difference between this and a real war being that we shall fire blank rounds at each other instead of live ones.

  And so on. It was a soldier’s letter, what else had she expected? If the reality of Bunty was a little flat after her image of him, her love could take it. She re-read it all day and the days to come, till she got his next.

  It turned out Bunty liked corresponding. Through the year Astha heard about his friends, the war with Pakistan, Lal Bahadur Shashtri, his academic subjects, his service subjects, his feelings about the Indian Army in general, and cadets in particular.

  And Astha, Astha was witty, clever, chatty, all the things she could not be when he was in front of her. Her writing was laced with little drawings which he found ingenious and talented. She started flirting. Letters were safe.

  As the correspondence established itself, so did the mother’s suspicions.

  ‘Why is he writing so much to you?’ she asked every time a letter came. By this time there were two people waiting for the post, Astha and her mother.

  Is it a crime?’ Astha replied.

  ‘You are too young to be indulging in such goings-on.’

  She made it sound so sordid. What words could Astha use to a woman who saw the world in terms of goings-on?

  ‘There is nothing going on‚’ she said, lying with great dignity. There was no need to explain the pulpiness of her heart, the wretched and permanent knot in her stomach. No doubt her mother would consider that a going-on too. How she wished she could really be gone, gone in the arms of Bunty, who would hold her close, whisper his love, confide that her letters had made him realise she was his soulmate, they would marry after he graduated, could she wait for him.

  ‘You have got your exams coming‚’ went on Astha’s mother, staring hard and penetratingly at her daughter.

  ‘I know‚’ said the daughter, staring back just as hard.

  Astha’s mother sniffed, a tight cold sniff.

  Astha paid no attention. She was living in a world of her own, waiting for the holidays to come, so that she could see Bunty. It would be different now, no awkwardness or shyness. They were closer, they had shared their thoughts and feelings. Hopefully they would kiss. Where and how? She imagined the places, grew lost in her fantasies.

  The holidays came. The minute the mother knew that Bunty had come, she went to his house and from then on Bunty refused to have anything to do with Astha.

  For a long time she didn’t know what had happened, nor could she bear to find out. She lived in pain and anything that touched it was too much for her.

  *

  The night before, on the phone, she had fixed to see him, this time she would not need Gayatri. She had spent many hours thinking about her hair, her clothes, should she wear casual or formal, new or old? How should she do her hair? Up or down? Loose or tied?

  Dressed in her newest churidar kameez, tight around the hips, loose around the waist, Astha went to Bunty’s house, at eleven o’clock as planned. His father met her at the door.

  ‘Bunty is not at home, beta‚’ he said politely, without asking her in, a slap in the face for Astha, standing awkwardly in her new churidar kameez, so tight around her hips, so loose around her waist.

  ‘When will he be back, Uncle?’ she managed, dread making her voice heavy. Did Bunty’s father hate her? Had Bunty said something to him? On the train home from the Defence Academy had he decided to loathe her instead of like her? Was this his way of letting her know?

  ‘I don’t know, beta. It is his holidays, he has so many friends and relatives to see. You can phone him some time. Bye now.’

  The door was closed before she was even down the steps. No seeing her off, no nothing.

  She walked home, feeling sick. The year of writing to each other, he had said he wanted to see her, had he been lying, seeing how far she would reveal her feelings in those stupid letters before he showed them to his father? How could she have forgotten the little interest he had shown in her when he was actually in Delhi? He was amusing himself, that was why he had written, now when it was time to meet he intended to drop her. How Gayatri would laugh. Was there any way she could stop being friends with Gayatri right that minute? Dump her for ever, and never see her again?

  Astha had not been in the house ten minutes when Gayatri called. ‘What happened?’ she asked breathlessly, as though she had been the one waiting all these months to be kissed.

  ‘Oh nothing‚’ said Astha airily, through gritted teeth.

  ‘Nothing? What do you mean nothing?’

  ‘It’s very sad. One of his uncles died, and he has to go to Bombay immediately with the whole family.’

  ‘But why didn’t he tell you?’

  ‘There wasn’t time to write.’

  ‘Odd‚’ said Gayatri after a pause. ‘He might have met you for a few seconds alone. After all those letters.’

  ‘I’m telling you there wasn’t time‚’ said Astha her voice rising.

  ‘Oh Asu, poor you.’

  ‘Not at all. I found I didn’t like him so much when I actually saw him. He looked very silly. All he could say was “So what’s new”. One tends to build people up through letters.’

  ‘I suppose‚’ said Gayatri, sounding dissatisfied.

  *

  The holidays passed. Astha suffered daily. Neither drawing nor reading could engage her. Her heart felt like lead, her mind like stone. She couldn’t get Bunty on the phone, he was always out. Shyness, reticence, some shreds of self-esteem forbade her from persisting beyond politeness. No matter what had happened, he should also want to see her, if only to clear any misunderstanding. And so pride carried her through each miserable day.

  *

  A year later, when the pain was less, and college had made her feel more a woman of the world, she wrote, a light casual letter, ‘What happened?’

  He wrote back, ‘I thought you knew. Your mother visited us the very night I arrived and told my father that I was distracting you from your studies. At the same time she asked him what my intentions were. My father thought it better if we had nothing to do with each other. Why create complications? I wish you well in life. Yours sincerely, Bunty‚’

  Can one die of shame twice? Astha did. How dare her mother interfere in her friendships? But then Bunty too had given in so easily, not bothered to find out how she felt, no word, no sign.

  Where was the man whose arms were waiting to hold her? Till his arrival, she would walk alone, alone in college, through corridors of happy, independent, bustling girls, through classrooms devoted to the study of English Li
terature, alone in the colony through the dreary lanes between the houses.

  She tried to put Bunty from her mind, though once or twice when girls huddled together, heads bent in the canteen, she brought out his name experimentally, to show she too had lived and knew what love was.

  ‘Yes, these boys—’

  ‘Yes, there was someone, only last year—’

  ‘Yes, he was handsome—’

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t study here. The Defence Academy at Kharakvasala.’

  ‘Yes, we still meet during the holidays, nothing special from my side. I thought it better not to have a long-distance relationship, you know how it is … ’

  The girls listened sceptically, how could they believe in the reality of one who was never seen hanging out at the back gate? Still, they teased her sometimes saying, ‘Astha, tell us more about Bunty‚’ and Astha cursed her need to feel part of a group by making light of something that still tightened her chest with grief.

  Five years after its inception the housing society of the Ministry of Relief and Welfare was awarded a piece of land across the Jamuna.

  The habitual gloom on the father’s face became even more pronounced as he conveyed this news to his family. ‘Other ministries, where the bureaucrats have pull, managed to get allotments in South Delhi. But what do we get? A site across the Jamuna, where there is no water, no electricity, no markets, no bus services, no amenities, no proper roads even.’

  ‘Never mind‚’ consoled his wife, concealing how bitter the blow was for herself as well, so much had depended on the promised piece of land. ‘Once construction starts, things will change. Everything has to have a beginning. How much are the plots going for?’

  ‘How much can they go for?’ replied the father. ‘In the middle of the jungle with thugs, dacoits, and wild animals. 7-8,000 rupees.’

  ‘Size?’

  ‘225, 280, or 350 square yards.’

  Their future home was going to be small and relatively cheap.

  *

  The lots were chosen by draw. On the appointed day, the mother said to her daughter, ‘I hope he draws a 350 plot, in the corner. There is very little difference in price.’

  ‘From?’ asked, the daughter languidly. She had been paying insufficient attention to the family fortunes knowing that wherever they built a house, she would not be in it.

  ‘Don’t you ever listen? After we are gone it will be yours.’

  ‘I don’t want it.’

  The mother trembled with annoyance. ‘Don’t you see our lives?’ she hissed. ‘Have you still not realised the value of land, that once you have it, there is always something solid to fall back on?’

  Astha looked at her mother, at the sallow skin with liver markings, at the carelessly dyed hair, black and white, at the hands gnarled from a lifetime of housework, the veins standing out on the backs, only fifty, despairing, shrivelled, and old. Her dream of a house was coming true in a way that made that dream for ever unrealisable. Her thoughts were now of 225, 280 or 350 square yards, of whether it would be near a park, or near the main road, near a market or bus stop, whether her husband would be happy there or not, because she of course could be happy anywhere.

  Slowly she took her mother’s hands in her own. ‘It will be all right, Mama‚’ she said beginning to rattle off what she had heard so often. ‘Trans-Jamuna will grow, South Delhi too was once like this, it will be different once the new bridge is built. Just imagine, we will have our own house at last. A garden too.’

  The mother looked at her daughter’s young hands holding her own loose-skinned bony ones.

  ‘Yes darling, at last‚’ she sighed heavily.

  *

  The father came home.

  ‘Well?’ asked the mother, taking his briefcase.

  ‘280.’

  There was silence as the family digested this. 280. They were going to live on 280 square yards. But still, that was more than 225, of which there were so many.

  ‘There were only four 350 ones.’

  ‘Only four? Then naturally we won’t get one.’

  The father paused before continuing, ‘One of them the President drew.’

  ‘I’m sure it was rigged‚’ flashed the mother.

  ‘God knows. It seemed fair enough. It was done in front of us all.’

  ‘Of course it will seem fair. These people are not children.’

  They consoled themselves over tea with reflections of the general perfidy of the world, and their own inabilities to succeed in the games that were demanded of life’s players.

  *

  Now that they had their plot, they drove out in the direction of the wilderness to see it. Along with them was the President of the Ministry of Relief and Welfare Group Housing Society, needed to show the way.

  Behenji‚’ he turned around to address Astha’s mother, sitting in the back seat with the reluctant daughter, ‘in ten years time this area will be really built up. The future of Delhi is here. How far can Delhi spread south?’

  ‘It is a long way around‚’ murmured Astha’s mother.

  They were heading north, towards the Red Fort, beyond the ghats for burning the dead, towards Shahadra, across the old British-built double-storied bridge for cars and trains, the lone bridge across the river to east Delhi.

  ‘When the new bridge is completed the journey will be quicker, Behenji‚’ consoled the President. ‘Twenty minutes and you will be in Connaught Place, heart of Delhi.’

  Astha’s father drove without responding to any of these remarks. The privilege of owning a plot in this godforsaken place would come as a result of belonging to a ministry in which he had felt wasted all his life. The bitterness of this kept him silent.

  The roads they were now passing were potholed and badly kept, establishing kinship with the dirt roads of villages. From time to time they caught sight of a brave house standing alone.

  ‘People are already constructing‚’ pointed out the President.

  The road got narrower and bumpier, the trails of dust bloomed larger.

  ‘Nirman Vihar, Swasth Vihar, and there, Preet Vihar‚’ said the President, waving his hand at the bare expanses around him. A gloomy silence filled the car, they were too old and too young to regard with excitement this particular future laid out before them.

  ‘Here, turn here‚’ indicated the President. They left the narrowness of the main road for an indistinguishable little lane, bumped along, turned once, and there they were. The land was dry, dusty, bare, treeless and nondescript. Asman Vihar. Sky Colony.

  What had they imagined? Neat plots, lined with trees, and little lanes, waiting for owners to come and build houses? For 8,000 rupees? Were they crazy?

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Astha’s father pointing to a village they could see in the distance.

  ‘Oh, that will go, we are dealing with them‚’ said the President. ‘They think they have a right just because nobody has dislodged them so far. The land is vacant, so these villagers use it to farm. And the odd group of Gujjars roams around.’

  ‘Is it safe?’ trembled Astha’s mother.

  ‘The more people come, the safer it will be.’

  ‘And water, electricity connections?’

  ‘For water we have to dig our own tube wells. And they have promised a temporary line for electricity. It is only a matter of time when this will be like your Golf Links, Jor Bagh, or Defence Colony.’

  After this trip they did not talk about their dream home anymore. They heard stories of how, in one of the lonely houses there, dacoits had broken in at night, stolen everything, and injured the owner so much that he was in a state of semi-paralysis.

  When the future was taken out and aired they concentrated on the difference the new bridge would make, the changes in infrastructure that would come about once the area became more populated. When the prices went up, they could sell their plot and buy a little flat in south Delhi. They had to trust in God and wait, though with the father’s retirement only six years
away, the period they could wait was limited.

  Now that Astha was in college her mother focused anxiously on their primary parental obligation. Every Sunday she scanned the matrimonial pages meticulously, pencil in hand, circling ads. Later on she would show them to the father.

  ‘You have to take her to the studio to get nice photos taken. One full standing, one close-up of the face.’

  ‘She is only in second year, Sita, for heaven’s sake. Let her finish her education at least.’

  ‘In the time it takes to finalise a match she will have graduated. Good boys are not to be found so easily.’

  ‘She has just turned eighteen. Let her be.’

  ‘You want her to turn out like us? Marrying in her thirties? And everybody wondering what is wrong?’

  ‘Let her settle down to a career, then we will see. I can’t go around begging people to marry my daughter.’

  ‘There is a time for everything‚’ went on the mother. ‘The girl is blossoming now. When the fruit is ripe it has to be picked. Later she might get into the wrong company and we will be left wringing our hands. If she marries at this age, she will have no problem adjusting. We too are not so young that we can afford to wait.’

  Astha, eavesdropping, wondered where this stream of logic would lead. She herself had tasted love and wanted nothing of an arranged marriage, but what did her father think?

  Her father refused to answer and refused to take Astha to the studio.

  *

  The day the mother found a suitor, was a day when Astha came home from college, tired, stinking of sweat, her bag heavy on her shoulders, her red pointed ballerina shoes pinching her feet. All she wanted was to quickly bathe, get lunch out of the way and then lose herself in the Georgette Heyer she had borrowed from a friend.

  Her mother was sitting in the drawing room with a young man dressed in khaki.

  ‘Beti‚’ she called. ‘Come here.’