Married Woman (3 page)

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.’

‘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.’