A Married Woman Read online

  ‘Coming‚’ Astha shouted back, but she didn’t like the tone of her mother’s voice. She hid behind the curtain dividing the room and listened.

  Mother: ‘That was my daughter.’

  Young man: ‘Does she like sports?’

  Mother: ‘Very much.’

  Dread filled Astha. Her mother was lying. She had somehow found a groom without a studio photo. Did her father know? She locked herself in the bathroom.

  ‘Astha.’

  No answer.

  The door rattled. ‘Come out beta. Hurry up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There is someone here to meet you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Someone.’

  ‘First you tell me.’

  ‘Oho. A boy.’

  ‘Why are you so interested in a boy meeting me now?’ asked Astha bitterly.

  Bang, bang, bang – the wooden bathroom door shook against the onslaught of the mother’s rage. Astha watched the towels hanging from the hooks shudder, she heard the tap next to the toilet dripping into the tin can below it.

  ‘I’m not coming‚’ she shouted.

  ‘You don’t object to seeing boys otherwise. Suddenly you become so high and mighty, and refuse to even be polite to someone who has come all this way.’ The mother dropped her voice to wheedle, ‘Now come, what is the harm? It is just a meeting, nothing else.’

  Astha stared at a tiny crack in the old wood of the bathroom door. She was about to humiliate her mother in front of a stranger. She took a deep breath. ‘I can’t‚’ she whispered hopelessly, ‘I can’t meet anyone like this.’

  The mother finally gave up, leaving Astha collapsed against the bathroom door, tears falling, crying, crying for Bunty, crying for the lack of love in her barren life, crying because she didn’t want to see a dull stolid man in the drawing room who advertised for a wife and asked about sports.

  She remained in the bathroom long after the suitor left. The bathroom represented her future; she had better start getting acquainted with it now.

  Hours, years, later her mother banged irritably on the door, ‘He has gone, fool that I was to try and arrange anything for you, you are just like your father, thinking everything is going to happen on its own. The food has gone stone cold, you can reheat it and clear up everything after you have finished.’

  One month after this the boy appeared. In his final year of college, he was a bit older. They had been introduced by friends of friends at the University Coffee House. Like everybody they knew, they were missing classes in order to haunt these hunting grounds, their gaze sorting through the tables speculatively.

  Astha began to be included in groups that included him, at cinemas, restaurants, appointed meetings at the Coffee House, instead of casual ones. A boy was interested in her. With every visit he made to the back gate, her stock grew in college.

  She began to lie at home about where she was going, and what she was doing. Most of the girls she knew who were seeing boys lied. It was the routine, self-protective thing. And how necessary, Astha had already seen.

  Now every evening Astha took a walk in the colony, announcing her intention of dropping in on old school friends on the way back. My head gets so tired with studying, she complained, I need a change.

  Go, beti, go. Take some exercise, and remember, walk briskly, swing your arms, and breathe deeply from the stomach, said the mother, glad that her daughter was at last beginning to understand the value of fresh air.

  And Astha would dash out of the colony, down the main road to the corner where Rohan was waiting in his old

  Vauxhall. A quick check to make sure no one was looking, then she would jump in and they would roar off.

  It was the first time in the old Vauxhall, side by side, in the front seat. The car was parked in a narrow empty lane, next to a Minister’s house in the Lutyens part of New Delhi. Rohan had shut the windows, and locked the doors. It was late November and dark. The car smelled of Old Spice, Rohan’s aftershave lotion, and the musty scent of ancient leather.

  Astha glanced at Rohan sideways. He was twisting the car keys in his long slender hands with the hairy fingers, tapping them restlessly on the steering wheel. Finally he turned and reached purposefully towards her.

  ‘Do you want to marry me?’ she asked breathlessly, anxious to get this thing out of the way.

  ‘What?’ he asked distractedly.

  ‘Marry me. Do you want to?’

  He took his hands away and stared at her. ‘Isn’t it a bit early to decide that?’ Astha felt she had offended him.

  ‘Well, you know, otherwise—’ she trailed off, trying to look as cute and disarming as possible.

  ‘Good God, is that what you are worried about? I’m not the type to let a girl get pregnant, what do you think I am?’

  Astha realised she was sounding very un-hep, but she couldn’t help it. She had to know how safe she was. ‘Marriage‚’ she persisted, ‘you know—’ She inched a little further away from him.

  ‘Oh God, all right. We might get married. One day.’

  His mouth closed on hers, his tongue was exploring, while Astha choked and wriggled frantically.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked letting her go. ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘I don’t know‚’ she mumbled non-committedly.

  ‘Well, let’s find out.’ Rohan was beginning to sound impatient.

  Astha had volunteered to go with him in the car. Her body had registered excitement when he had parked in the dark lane. When he bent close to her, she had been overcome with dread and longing. There was no going back. She offered her lips, trying not to shrink into the seat.

  ‘God you’re so stiff‚’ said Rohan shaking her a little bit.

  ‘Sorry‚’ she mumbled.

  ‘This is not some kind of torture you know.’

  Astha didn’t know what to say. Rohan let her go, also silent. Finally he said, ‘Give me your hands.’

  She held her fists tensely out. Slowly he moved his thumb around her wrist, stroking the closed hand open. He kissed the fingers, nails, palms, he felt the small hair on the back with his closed lips. Astha felt something flow inside her as she stared at his bent head. She had never been so aware of her body’s separate life before. After a little more of this he dropped her at their secret corner.

  She got out of the car reluctantly. Something hadn’t happened. But then again, something had. On the whole the encounter left her anxious for more.

  When Rohan at last slid his tongue into Astha’s mouth she was putty in his hands. Her neck, her ears, her throat, eyes, chin, lips, all had been explored, and this time her strongest feeling was gratitude.

  *

  This was the start of numberless kisses in the car. The only problem was in finding a place sufficiently isolated.

  To Astha all places looked the same, but no, muttered Rohan, his eyes scanning various deserted spots, his fingers kneading the palm of her hand, not that one, not there, that’s not safe, while Astha burned with impatience. Finally before rolling up the windows he always put out his hand and locked the door from outside.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’ Astha asked.

  ‘Precautions.’

  ‘Against what?’

  ‘Just.’

  Astha was not really interested. All she wanted was for him to start, so that the world could fall away, and she be lost. This is love, she told herself, no wonder they talk so much about it.

  One evening, they had parked in their usual dark corner in a by-lane off Akbar Road. Rohan liked Akbar Road, he considered it among the safest places he could find.

  Astha had slid as far down the seat as she could go without dislocating her hip. Rohan was lying as much as he could on top of her without dislocating his own. Their eyes were closed, their breathing audible. Absorbed in what they were doing, they did not hear footsteps approaching, did not see faces pressed against the windows on either side, eyes peering down at them.

  The car shook,
hands banged violently on the glass, rattled the handles. Astha and Rohan jerked upright, the whole car was swarming over with threatening bodies trying to get in.

  ‘Oye, oye‚’ they shouted, leering and grimacing, furiously working the handles. Rohan frantically turned the key in the ignition, pressed the accelerator, the old Vauxhall shook and roared. The men fell off as he sped in reverse down the dark lane, lights off. They ran after the car for a while, then couldn’t be seen anymore. Some distance down the main road, Rohan stopped.

  ‘Who were they? And why—?’ stammered Astha, shaking with fright.

  Rohan took her hand. ‘Some fools. I’m sorry‚’ he said.

  She started to cry.

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘Take me home.’

  ‘Calm down first. Look, nothing actually happened.’

  Astha felt worse and worse. Those men had wanted to attack. Suppose they had managed to break the car window, gang rape her because of her shameless behaviour in a public place, and beat up Rohan when he tried to intervene? And all the while her parents would be thinking she was breathing in fresh air. If her mother knew she would first kill her and then herself. Astha’s tears grew copious and she began to choke in her dupatta, while Rohan took sly glances at his watch. ‘Come on‚’ he said at last, ‘it was bad, but now it is over. Don’t cry, for heaven’s sake. We won’t go there again.’

  ‘Hoon‚’ sniffled Astha.

  ‘You are all right, so what exactly is the problem?’

  Astha only knew she felt terrible. Finally when Rohan dropped her off, she sensed eyes hidden in every bush, eyes that saw and condemned. She pulled her dupatta around her head, and hurried home trying to concentrate on the various lies she would have to tell as to why she was so late.

  The day Astha’s mother read her diary dawned cool and clear, beautiful like all winter days, with the flowers blooming in the garden, and the promise of basking for hours in the sun.

  She was deep in a book when her mother called, ‘Come here, I have something to show you.’

  Reluctantly Astha marked her place, and went inside. When she saw her journal in her mother’s hands, she wanted to instantly erase herself. There she was, with her skin ripped off, exposed in all her abandoned thoughts and deeds.

  ‘Is this you?’ the mother’s voice quavered, her grip like iron on Astha’s arm.

  Astha shook her head nervously.

  ‘Then, what is it?’

  Desperate silence while she tried to think of something plausible.

  ‘Answer me‚’ screamed the mother in a whisper.

  ‘I–I don’t know‚’ stammered the daughter, ‘I mean, I don’t remember.’

  But she did, of course. All her secret fantasies, the things she did with Rohan, painstaking details of the furtive, exciting moments in his car.

  ‘Well, look at it‚’ the mother waved the offending notebook in front of Astha’s nose, an innocuous old brown paper covered thing with St Theresa’s Convent School in a half moon on top. It had been hidden behind her college books, how had her mother discovered it? It looked awful in her hands, soaked in sin.

  ‘You have no right to read my diary‚’ she weakly muttered in self defence, averting her eyes.

  The mother ignored this remark and continued leafing through it gingerly.

  ‘Here, what does this mean?’

  The usual scene of passion. Astha went through puzzled motions of glancing, page turning, furrowed brow.

  ‘These are notes for a story I am writing‚’ she said, inspired at last.

  The mother’s body sagged as some of the tension went out. ‘This is your imagination?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it is my imagination.’

  The mother was silent for a moment, then sighed heavily and held the tender young body of her innocent daughter close to her. ‘My child is too sensible to do anything like this‚’ she whispered. The girl remained rigid, arms by her side.

  They avoided each other for the rest of the day.

  *

  There were three consequences to this.

  One was that Astha stopped being able to write in her journal. She tried a few entries in an elaborate code, but an audience was now branded into every page, and she could inscribe nothing beyond a casual account of her day in college.

  The second was that Astha’s parents took an annoying interest in her reading matter. Her father began diligently to bring her books of moral and intellectual substance. ‘You need a sense of your cultural background‚’ said the bureaucrat. ‘Of what made this country great. Know your artistic heritage, since your interest lies there.’

  Her mother decided that the virtues of tradition needed to be made more explicit. ‘Our shashtras teach us how to live. You will learn from the Gita, the Vedas, the Upanishads.’

  ‘I can’t read them‚’ protested Astha violently. ‘My Hindi is not good enough, you know that. It is your fault for sending me to a convent school.’

  ‘Your father happened to think that a convent gave the best education. That doesn’t mean we can’t broaden your base now‚’ replied the mother. And she began getting Hindi books and magazines from her school library, so that Astha’s Hindi could improve and the sacred texts of the Hindus be made available to her.

  The third consequence was that the parents tightened their surveillance. Getting to meet Rohan proved more and more difficult.

  *

  She didn’t want to tell him of what she was going through. He was preoccupied with his final year exams and seemed to have less time for her.

  ‘Why do you keep phoning all the time?’ he complained one evening when they met. ‘I have to study.’

  ‘I don’t phone you all the time. Once or twice a day to ask how’s it going.’

  ‘It distracts me.’

  ‘If you don’t want to talk to me, just say so. Don’t look for excuses.’ Astha’s voice shook. Rohan sighed and put his arms around her. Astha snuggled into him and slid her hands under his shirt.

  ‘Baby, don’t be unreasonable. A man has to do well. Get a scholarship. Go abroad.’

  This was the first time he had talked of going abroad so definitely. Astha shifted herself out of his arms.

  ‘Hey, little one‚’ cooed Rohan, reaching out for her. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing‚’ she said forlornly.

  ‘Do you think I’m going to forget you?’

  Astha did think exactly that, but how could she admit it?

  ‘Let me just finish my exams, little one, and then—’

  Rohan’s words helped bolster Astha’s illusions, it was all right, she was still safe, their affair was going to end in marriage. But the cold feeling did not go away, though each time Rohan spoke, Astha clung to his assurances.

  *

  Rohan did very well in his exams, and on that stepping stone began the process of his going away. Away to the West, where ordinary mortals cannot go, where even the words PPE and Oxford showed Astha how great the distance was between them.

  ‘Oxford‚’ she breathed in awe. Suddenly her life seemed very small.

  Rohan looked nonchalant. ‘Might as well follow in the family tradition, keep the old folks happy. My father is an Oxford man, you know.’

  No, Astha had not known. ‘How lucky you are, Rohan‚’ she said.

  ‘Well, my father is keen‚’ continued Rohan, his gaze centred on the middle distance.

  ‘When are you going?’ she asked, and then hated herself for being in a situation where she was forced to prise answers from the man she had been so intimate with.

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘Doesn’t it cost a lot of money?’ asked Astha tentatively.

  ‘Lots‚’ said Rohan, lighting a cigarette and breathing the smoke sexily out. ‘But we are trying to manage something.’

  Astha thought it might seem rude to ask for more information, and waited for Rohan to tell her. Rohan did not. He looked at her briefly and smiled. ‘Come, let me drop you home‚�
�� he said, ‘There are a lot of things I have to do.’ He hadn’t touched her once. As he turned the key in the ignition, Astha thought, he was going to Oxford, he had the resources, his father was an Oxford man. What was her father? A minor bureaucrat, who had never studied abroad, whose sole possession was 280 square yards in the wilderness beyond the Jamuna.

  ‘Wait, Rohan‚’ she said, ‘I hardly get to see you nowadays, you are so busy, and it is still early.’

  Rohan continued drumming his keys against the steering wheel.

  ‘How come you never mentioned your family traditions before?’ Astha went on carefully, scratching and poking at the leather so hard, she could smell the car on her hands long afterwards.

  ‘Well, there was no point talking about things, until things got certain.’

  ‘Yes, but you might have told me that there was a possibility of your going away.’

  ‘You knew that‚’ said Rohan coldly, not looking at her. ‘I never tried to hide anything. There is no need for me to hide.’

  ‘No, no, of course not. That is not what I meant‚’ floundered Astha. ‘But you just mentioned once or twice, like people do, you know, about going abroad, and I didn’t know … Why, your results are just out, and you must have been trying since last year if you are going so soon.’

  ‘Sending applications is not something to make a song and dance about. I would look very stupid afterwards if I got neither admission nor funding.’

  Astha felt hopeless. She sat in silence, next to this boy whom she had thought she knew. The hands that he had used on her body were now clenched around her heart, slowly squeezing, slowly hurting.

  ‘What about us?’ she asked abruptly, drawing a deep breath.

  ‘We will see‚’ said Rohan briefly. He was waiting to take her home, waiting to get rid of her. He started the car, while Astha stared out of the window all the way to the edge of her colony.

  ‘Bye‚’ she said, closing the door carefully, feeling it would be her last time in the Vauxhall, which was just as well. Old cars were so ugly, so useless, so slow, why did anyone bother with them?

  ‘Bye‚’ said Rohan. ‘Be seeing you‚’ he added, a remark which her dignity threw back silently, with all the coldness and contempt her falling to pieces self was capable of.