Shame, like failure, had two faces. She had been ashamed of her son. But she was also ashamed of herself. She despised her inability to come to terms with his dreams. She loathed her inability to stand up for him. But much as she hated herself, she could not bring herself to talk of him causally.

She knew she had failed whenever she heard Pratap’s name mentioned. She knew it when women talked of proposals. She saw it in her husband’s quiet consternation. But none of these would have scared her had she never seen it her son’s eyes. In his quiet way, Mahesh had let her know that she had failed him.

Footsteps echoing through the rooms devoid of the sound of human voices, computers booting late into the night, the pungent smell of alcohol in parties, cigarette butts still warm in the ashtrays, the aroma of cologne in the bath, wardrobes with silk ties and golden cuffs, the smell of new furniture, the sound of new tyres screeching on the driveway – this was Akshay’s world. And Shalini fit into the scheme of things like icing on the cake – she was the beautiful wife he was envied for; the diva every man hoped he had.

Sometimes I told myself that probably because I had something to compare my husband to the problems were cropping up in my head, what if the only love I knew what that of my husbands, what if the only man I had ever been with was my husband. Then there wouldn’t be any problem. Probably then I would have been happier. But I knew that there was something intrinsically wrong with my relationship. I wasn’t happy, and wasn’t happiness one of the most important things in a marriage. I asked myself this question every day in the 11 years and 4 months that I spent sleeping beside my husband. Answers, I never got.

I heard the word Karuppu for the first time, when I was three. Perhaps I remember it, because it was spoken with such disdain- such disappointment. A pale, bony finger hooked my chin, lifting it upward. Creases spread around the pink lips as they twisted into a frown, trembling as a sigh escaped them. I don’t remember anymore.
My grandmother, to whom the finger, the creases, the frown and the sigh belonged, died just before I turned five. I don’t have memories of her, except for that one. The only photograph that we have of her was taken as soon as my father, her son, turned ten. She stands behind my grandfather’s chair, her sari neatly pleated, a demure smile on her lips, her hooked nose pinched as if she were holding her breath and dark mai decorating her bright eyes. But it is her skin that I look at as I peer into her picture. Fair and radiant, it glistens from the black and white picture.

In part one
‘He is a playboy’, he had said, shaking his head. ‘Such genius but such vice! Too many women. He lives his life on the edge’.
‘Poor Arjun’, Krishna observed. ‘He did not take that failed love affair lightly’.
Sympathy was like a weed. It could grow through the tiniest of cracks on the stone floor. [...]

‘Do you remember, she was just fifteen then and he wanted to marry her? And he had seen her only once. I locked her up then for ten days and fired that boy’.

‘What of that?’ Lakshmi asked.

‘She was so scared after that. She begged me not to lock her up again. I hope she will remember that if she ever runs into him’.

Lakshmi chose not to say anything. She simply sat back in her corner, her back well rested against the wall. Whatever happened she would simply sit back and enjoy.

The bird flapped its wings loudly. Then it fell silent looking around itself before it flapped them again, louder and more desperately. Without, a beautiful, untouched world called out softly to it. Within the cage it pecked at the golden bars that stood between it and that world. But the cage was locked, and the key – the beautiful golden key hung from that large silver belt that the mistress wore around her corpulent waist.