Dark green stalks of paddy shudder as a cold draft blows across the field. I hear the cows softly mooing to the rhythm of their own hooves as they turn homeward. Bells jingle playfully as a calf runs away from the herd. The loud call of a cowherd echoes in response, admonishing and cajoling all at once. The soft bells that follow tell me that the indignant calf’s wild run is over.

I pick a straw from the ground and bend it into two, as I settle down on one of the last steps that lead to the depths of the well in the courtyard. Beneath my dangling feet, I see my bleak reflection. A strand of my hair falls across my forehead, and between my brows, my large red pottu bears semblance to the setting sun at the distant horizon. I watch it disappear beyond the paddy fields and wait until the world hangs precariously between day and night. The vestige of light that remains belongs nowhere; like me.

I pick a small stone lying by my side and toss it into the water. It lands with a dull splash. In the darkness, a frog croaks. I laugh to myself suddenly. There is no one about and I could simply slip from the step and fall into the water. I wonder if I should be more missed than that stone. I try to imagine what my brother would do, what my husband would say. And as I fantasize death, I think of the large rose garlands from my wedding.

***

I sought solace that day in the familiar smell of the roses. The weight of the garland kept my head hanging low and I saw only the dark feet of the man walking before me. I saw his heel was softer than those of the other men, I had known. Father had begun work in the field as a boy of four and I often watched him massage his cracked and worn heels, until he had died a year before. My brother’s soles were so hardened by the age of twenty that no amount of oil my sister-in-law rubbed into them, would soften them.

I suddenly wondered if she was jealous of me. My husband, I had been told was an employee at a government office, as his father had been before him. A sudden thought occurred to me as I saw him walk. I had seen a cousin of mine once with polished leather shoes strutting down the main street leading to the village market like a gentleman come from abroad. My brother has longed for shoes like that for a long time; only in his life they were of no use at all. A sudden vision of my husband’s feet in leather shoes leaving for an important job in an office made me smile and I followed him out of the home, I had been born in fifteen years ago, neither wilfully nor reluctantly. That night as he made love to me I did not as much as breathe. After he fell asleep, I sat in a corner until daybreak wondering about nothing in particular.

Dawn told me that I had duties as a wife. My mother-in-law showed me what I should do in her kitchen and I followed her orders carefully. The sound of running water from the bathroom, told me that my husband had woken up. I paused for a moment at the stove and after a stern glance from my mother-in-law I continued to do my work, until I heard him ask his mother if breakfast was ready. I gave him the Dosas without looking up and while he drank his coffee, I stood by his side wondering if he would look at me.

But it was his mother who he bade goodbye to and I only smiled to myself about my husband’s shyness. I was about to pick a broom up and begin sweeping the rooms, when I suddenly remembered the shoes. I ran to the door and stood behind my mother-in-law to watch him leave. And just as he got onto the motorcycle that my father had presented him a few days before our wedding, I saw his feet. Sure enough, he wore leather shoes and for a moment, my world seemed to brighten up. I had begun sweeping even before the sound of the engine died on the quiet street.

We had conversations sometimes. They were always short and always late in the night as we lay in bed. He told me of nothing in particular about his life, except how tired he felt after the hard work. I listened to him with empathy and made no protest when he wanted to make love.

It did not take many days for me to notice that my husband grew taciturn in the presence of his mother. I never questioned it. I told myself that I would have to accept it. I had never had the opportunity to love a mother and I was not going to rob him of his.

But slowly this robbed me of my husband.

Two years after we were married, I still had no children. In the meantime, my brother called on us to tell us that my sister-in-law had delivered twins. My mother-in-law did not let me visit for long and when I came back from my short trip, said nothing to me. My husband as always said nothing.

A couple of days later, my mother-in-law sent for my brother. When I heard his shuffling feet at our doorway, I rushed to see him. My mother-in-law met him at the door.

‘Did you know she would be so fruitless?’ she asked. ‘Did you know that, when I asked for a girl at your home for my only son? Do you expect him to be childless?’

I froze as I saw my brother’s embarrassment.

‘Take her’, my mother-in-law said, ‘take her with you. I have no need for her, here. I will look for another girl’.

This time I looked up sharply at her from where I stood, my body trembling in disbelief.

‘What are you saying?’ my brother argued. ‘How can you do this to her? It is only two years. Give her some more time’.

‘And watch my son grow old?’

My mother-in-law’s voice cut through the silence in the neighbourhood. Then, in the distance I heard the sound of a motorcycle. I ran to the door, as my husband alighted from his vehicle. I looked at him in some hope as my brother pleaded with him.

‘Take her home now’, he said, hardly looking at me. ‘Have her treated or something and we will see’.

With that he walked into the house, past me and into our room. My mother-in-law went after him triumphantly and I waited with my brother until I heard them move to the kitchen. I packed in the silence of my room, too stunned to cry or to curse. I left without a word; even a word would have seemed superfluous.

The bus rolled into my village a little before dawn and mist clung to our bodies as we made our way through the paddy fields. I shivered as I walked after my quiet brother.

My sister-in-law made us hot coffee and as we sipped it, sitting down in a circle on the cold floor of the kitchen, my brother narrated the story to her. Before she could say anything, the sound of a crying infant took her away. My brother left after her, shaking his head in disbelief. I leaned against the wall and listened to the child’s high pitched cry. Suddenly silent tears began to run down my cheek and long before I knew, I was weeping.

Later in the month, my sister-in-law’s mother came home. She listened to us without a word and then pulled me up.

‘We’ll see a doctor’, she said. ‘And then let us see if your husband will take you back’.

I did not say anything as we sat in the clinic. My sister-in-law’s mother answered every question for me. I left the room only to fill my urine in a bottle and to let a young man, about my husband’s age put a needle into my vein and draw a little blood. The next day as we visited the doctor again, she smiled and handed me a paper. I was two months pregnant.

My brother went to see my husband immediately. I waited with my sister-in-law and her mother at the doorway of our home, watching a few boys play among the fields. My sister-in-law’s mother was in great spirits as she spoke about men and their pet peccadilloes. She fondled her grandsons and spoke to them of the mistakes they would make as men.

‘It is ours to put up with the pain’, she said, combing my sister-in-law’s hair, a little after we had had our food. ‘But look, as soon as he hears of the baby, he will come bounding’.

I laughed immediately at the thought of my husband displaying such energy. And just as the sound of my laughter died, the memory of his reticence descended like a shroud on my naivety. Suddenly I realised that in a world that had comprised of mother and son, I had been only an addendum.

As I was still shaking these thoughts from my mind, my brother returned.

‘They have made arrangements for another wedding’, he said in a tired voice. ‘It is the daughter of an older colleague at his office’.

‘But’, I said desperately, ‘did you tell him?’

‘Yes’, my brother said, barely meeting my eye.

‘And?’

‘And his mother asked if we are not simply making the story up. She said, all arrangements were done and now she could not cancel it in the hope that a girl who had not conceived in two years had suddenly announced herself pregnant’.

I sat stunned on the doorway refusing to look up or say anything. Finally, I felt a hand pull me to my feet.

‘No’, my sister-in-law’s mother was saying. ‘No. We can prove it. Let us go. You must beg him’.

I considered it for a full moment. I considered running to him and holding his feet, pleading him to take me in. Then the sudden thought of his feet reminded me of the leather shoes, the smell of roses, of my fated wedding day, when without a word I had followed this man into another world with dreams of a life better and bigger than this one.

The truth burnt inside me like skin burns after a tight slap to the face. Outside the conjugal chamber, I had no husband. I had no one. My husband had a mother and she had a son. But I? Who was I to them?

‘I will not come’, I said. ’Let him ask me to return. After all, he knows of this child…’

‘He is a man! You should beg… and think of the child! Do you not want your child to have a father’s name?’

I faltered. And yet the memory of leather slippers and the thought of my hand holding on to them pleading for a lease to life filled me with fear and anger.

‘No’, I said more firmly. ‘I will not go’.

When nothing would convince me, my sister-in-law’s mother resorted to a powerful weapon against me.

‘So you will drain my daughter’s life and live like a parasite on what is meant for her and her children?’

I turned to my brother. He looked down wordlessly, avoiding my eyes just as my husband had failed to look at me on the day I had been asked to leave.

At that moment, I decided to return. When I met my husband and his mother the next day, I begged them to let my child have a right to a father. After much deliberation and argument, my mother-in-law drew a deep breath.

‘Go home and have the baby. If it is a boy come back. If it is a girl, then my son deserves better and you know that’.

Her son said nothing and I returned to my brother’s home, to wait for what seemed like eternity.

***

As the last rays of twilight get swept under night’s confident presence, I consider the inky blackness of the well. A sound in the house shakes me awake from my depressive dreams and I climb the steps of the well. As I reach the ground, I pause to look around. Soft moonlight falls on the sleeping paddy and, I think of the child within my womb, now moving every once in a while, restless and anxious like its mother to see what destiny has in store for us. I wonder if that child might want to brave life. I decide to retire my thoughts for the day.

Pic Source: Deviant Art – Unquiet Spirit

---

The Author
 There is nothing Shweta loves more than writing. A graduate from Madras Medical College, she is now a student at the Knight's Center for Science and Medical Journalism at Boston University, from where she hopes to graduate a fine science writer and a nuanced thinker. Apart from experimenting with eggs in the kitchen and paint brushes in her room, Shweta enjoys watching cricket and tennis and just about any movie. She is a voracious reader and enjoys astrophysics, anthropology, genetics, archaeology, mythology and just about anything that will kindle her imagination. Sa, for Shweta is her means of telling the men and the women in the world that there is enough space for everyone. It is also her way of letting people know that no one is more equal than another.

---

Related Articles

• Mahesh – part II
• Mahesh – Part I
• The Murder
• Timestamps