A Breath of Fresh Air (11 page)

The resentment I had been feeling for him since we married amplified with his behavior regarding Harjot’s family. We fought about it for a few times in the first couple of days, but after that he muttered under his breath and I muttered under mine. For the first time in our marriage I was doing something he had explicitly asked me not to do and he felt impotent at making me bend to his will.

Instead of living like strangers under the same roof as we had been, the incident made us even more distant from each other as my slowly building apathy for him was replaced with immense dislike.

Harjot and I became closer as friends in the next week. Army officers and their wives came to Harjot’s house and shook their heads in sympathy and left immediately. No one wanted to have anything to do with the Sikh officer who had celebrated Indira Gandhi’s death.

“If people high up find out, Anju, there might be trouble,” one army officer’s wife warned me on her way out of Harjot’s house. “This could damage Prakash’s chances of being promoted. They will post him in some hell hole next time because of your behavior.”

“I am helping a friend out,” I said, and she shrugged.

“They are Sikh; right now they are the enemy.”

Mrs. Dhaliwal couldn’t believe that her friends, women she had played cards with and invited to dinner and lunch, were turning their backs on her. The line had been drawn. The army was green all right—just Sikh green and Hindu green.

“Thank you so much, Anjali,” Mrs. Dhaliwal said when I brought her a cup of tea. She was sitting in the master bedroom with her sister-in-law who hadn’t spoken since the incident.

“She just won’t talk,” Mrs. Dhaliwal said, wiping her tears. “I can’t make her talk. I don’t know how to.”

I wouldn’t know how to either. This woman had seen her husband being butchered and burnt alive, while she had hugged her daughter close to her, hoping against hope to protect her against the Hindus that were bent upon revenge. This woman who had probably been raped while her daughter watched could not be blamed for not speaking. What could she say?

Bela Chaudhary came around the same time to pay her condolences. “I am so sorry for your loss,” she said demurely to Mrs. Dhaliwal. And then she left. They were all putting on a show of sympathy while most felt the way Prakash did: the Sikh officer threw a party when Indira Gandhi died; therefore his relatives deserved to die.

The whole country was in the same frame of mind, blaming the Sikhs for killing Indira Gandhi and instigating the riots. It was as if Indira Gandhi’s ashes had become a dark cloud and settled on the country.

“I don’t like that woman,” Mrs. Dhaliwal said as soon as Bela left.

“She’s nice,” I protested. “She is so beautiful.”

Mrs. Dhaliwal frowned. “I am going to tell you something I shouldn’t. But you need to know. Do you know why Prakash was posted out of Udhampur?”

“His tenure was up.”

“He had been there just one year,” Mrs. Dhaliwal said. Tenure usually lasted two years, but this was the army. Plans were altered unexpectedly. Prakash had told me so.

Mrs. Dhaliwal, however, told me the truth. “He was having an affair with Bela Chaudhary. That’s why they sent him here. I am surprised Colonel Chaudhary was posted here. It was a . . .” She paused to assess the damage done to me by the revelation that my husband had had an affair with Bela Chaudhary.

I was staring at her, trying to make sense of her words. The world was moving around me in slow motion as I repeated in my mind what she had just said.

Affair? My Prakash? Nonsense!

“Well, everything was hush-hush and no one said anything,” she said, and added, “and he seems to have reformed since he married you. . . . But I have heard some rumors that he and Bela spend time together.”

I could feel each nerve ending in my body, each singing a different mourning tune. Images flashed through my head.

Prakash and Bela talking.

Prakash and Bela drawing away from each other when I had seen them together behind the officer’s mess at a
Tambola
party—what had they been doing?

Prakash and Bela meeting by the
samosa
stand in the Open Air Theater.

Prakash disappearing for the other half of the movie.

Prakash and Bela . . . together!

“The commanding officer of the unit, Brigadier Joshi, asked Prakash to get married so that things would . . .” She patted my hand, understanding the searing pain that enveloped me. “You need to know, so that you can save your marriage. Fight for him and don’t let that slut do this to you.”

I nodded vaguely and left for home without even speaking to Harjot. When I got there, I had to admit the gods above wanted me to know something. It was an omen, a bad one, but an omen nevertheless.

Bela Chaudhary was standing with my husband outside my house. They were talking and Bela was laughing softly. It was a scene out of a B-grade Hindi movie. The wife was catching the husband with the other woman. Usually the wife forgave the husband and he came to his senses. Usually the husband realized his folly and came back to his wife because marriage was sacred.

“Hello,” Bela said with a smile, and I almost choked with feeling. I actually liked this woman. She was screwing my husband behind my back and I liked her!

“Hello. Would you like to come in for tea?” I asked politely.

“Yes, please come in,” Prakash said a little too eagerly.

I made the tea like an automaton, while they sat in the drawing room. I added a plate of fresh
ladoos
to the tray and set it on the center table.

“You have been helping Mrs. Dhaliwal during this terrible time,” Bela said, sipping her tea. I wasn’t sure if she was accusing me of being a traitor to Hinduism, or if she was complimenting me for being such a Good Samaritan.

“Harjot is my friend.”

“Yes, but you have to see the way things are. I mean . . . Colonel Dhaliwal threw a party. Can you believe it?”

Well, that cleared my doubts. She was accusing me and I didn’t like her anymore. It had nothing to do with her feelings about Harjot. I didn’t care what her stance on Indian politics was. I was furious with her for messing up my life. My new marriage! She was the reason Prakash had changed. Since she had arrived in Bhopal—how long had it been? two months, three?—Prakash had reverted to his old self.

“How do you know he threw a party?” I challenged.

“Everyone knows,” Bela said brightly.

“How does everyone know?” I demanded. “It is like saying a married man is having an affair with a married woman— everyone knows, but no one specifically knows anything.”

What I was saying had nothing to do with the party Colonel Dhaliwal had thrown. I knew I was being more blunt then any sensible married woman should be, but I wasn’t in a rational mood. I wanted to vent my anger. I wanted them to know that I knew. The outraged wife would stop the mistress from stealing the husband away. She would not ignore the affair and wait for the husband to be reformed.

“Anju? What are you talking about?” Prakash muttered. He made a motion with his hand, asking me to shut up.

“The only way you can find out if a married man is having an affair with a married woman is if you are under the bed, where they commit adultery,” I said, impervious to his eyes and actions. Nice Hindu housewives usually didn’t talk about “bed” and “sex” this openly. “You would have to be at the party to really know that it happened.”

Bela tittered self-consciously. “You should be a lawyer.”

I almost said that she should be a whore, but I was raised to be polite to my guests—within reason.

After she left, Prakash charged at me. “What was all that about? She is a nice lady. Couldn’t you be nice to her? Colonel Chaudhary used to be my CO.”

I looked my husband in the eye. “I don’t have to be nice to the woman you are having an affair with.”

It was probably just a reaction to what I had said. I don’t think he truly meant to do what he did, but whatever his reasons, it did not reduce the force of his slap. My body swayed a little with the impact, both physical and emotional.

We both looked at each other in bewilderment. He couldn’t believe he had slapped me any more than I could.

I walked into our bedroom and pulled out a suitcase. I started piling my clothes in randomly.

“Anju, I am sorry.”

I didn’t respond.

“It was a mistake. Please . . . don’t go. Please listen to me. Anju, I am so sorry.”

I dropped the blue silk sari, which my mother had so lovingly given me after my wedding, and collapsed on the floor. I hid my face in my hands and sobbed.

Prakash sat next to me and awkwardly took me in his arms. “I am so sorry,” he whispered over and over. And I believed him. And that scared me.

I couldn’t even leave him, I thought desperately. I loved my husband and I wanted to have a happy marriage, not a lackluster one like ours. I wanted babies and I wanted him to love me. And I wanted him to stop seeing Bela Chaudhary.

He promised he’d do all those things, and he even started talking about my getting off the pill so that we could try and have a baby.

For a week, things were perfect. And then they went back to normal.

It was then that I realized I could blame Bela, but she was not the real culprit. Her husband should be the one to accuse her. Prakash was my culprit and I his victim. I married Prakash with a pure heart and he had abused our marriage, our vows, and me. If it hadn’t been Bela Chaudhary, it would have been someone else. Prakash couldn’t help himself. What did wives of men like him do? I didn’t know. But I could guess. Wives stayed home and made babies and ignored that their husbands were making love to other women.

Out of the blue, I asked Prakash to book me a train ticket to Hyderabad. I said I wanted to see my mother. He didn’t discourage me. He bought my tickets and arranged for an army Jeep instead of a taxi to take me to the railway station. He even made sure I was settled inside my train compartment.

I asked him twice if he knew when I was coming back. “You’d better be here. The train gets in late and I don’t want to be stranded at the station,” I warned him.

He promised to be at the station when I got back. He said he couldn’t wait for me to come back. He said he would miss me. But he hoped I would have a good visit and would enjoy seeing my parents again.

He even kissed me on the mouth before he left. I guessed he was going to cheat on me again.

FIFTEEN

PRAKASH

If Mamta, my daughter, had not insisted, I wouldn’t have gone to the parade grounds. But Mamta was just eight and didn’t understand the word no very well. My son, Mohit, at the age of five, wasn’t interested in Dussehra and burning effigies. He enjoyed playing with his Lego blocks, making trains and cars with them for Indu and me.

If Mamta hadn’t been with me, I would have gone and said hello to Anju’s parents. They were good people and had always been nice to me. But I would have said hello for another reason—I wanted to meet Anju’s husband.

He was wearing a
kurta
over a pair of dark pants and epitomized the stereotypical professor. But he looked like a nice man—Indu was probably right, Anju did seem happy with her new husband.

There was another thing I was curious about. The boy in the wheelchair. Who was he? Not her son? A chill ran through me. If her son was in a wheelchair, she couldn’t be
that
happy, could she? I found some perverse solace in that. The fact that even I realized it was perverted made my self-disgust rise.

Mamta told Indu all about the fireworks and the flaming arrows. Regardless of how many fights Indu and I had, with the children she was a perfect ten. I would’ve liked to have a mother like her. Doting, protective, encouraging, yet not overly so.

“She had a good time,” I told Indu.

Indu was pleased. “I am glad you took her. Mohit’s been complaining that you didn’t take him.”

I grinned.

“Daddy wants us to come to Delhi for the December holidays. You think you can get some time off, or should I take the kids and go by myself?” Indu asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know if I can go, I’ll have to see.” “Why don’t you ever come with us on vacation?” she demanded angrily.

I sighed. “Why is everything a battle with you? And you are being unfair. I do come on vacation with you. But I don’t get the summer off—I am not a housewife.”

“What is wrong with being a housewife?” she asked.

“You know, Indu, I am just not in the mood for this,” I said, and Indu left me alone in the drawing room.

Why couldn’t she be happy with me for once? Indu perpetually put me on the defensive. Anju hadn’t done that—but she had changed after Colonel Dhaliwal’s tragedy. When I looked back I was ashamed. How could I have been so insensitive to Anju and her needs? She had wanted to be with her friend, while I had been petty. That was when Anju had really started to leave me. I had been so angry a Sikh had murdered Indira Gandhi that I was taking it out on any Sikh who came my way without considering Harjot’s or Anju’s feelings. Then it had been popular for Hindus to hate Sikhs; now things were different. Now Hindus were supposed to hate Muslims. I didn’t have much hate left in me. I was whipped.

I couldn’t drag my mind away from the boy in the wheelchair. What was wrong with him? Was he sick? Or had he broken a leg?

I knew next to nothing about Anju’s life. She had been my wife; we had stood by the god of fire during our wedding ceremony and promised to be together for the next seven lives. I was still possessive about her—I wanted to know everything about her. I felt I had the right.

Indu was right when she said I was the only divorcé she knew. I was the only divorcé I knew. There were probably one in a million of us and there were no guidelines as to how we should behave if we encountered an ex-spouse. I didn’t know how to approach my ex-wife. For a while I didn’t even know how to address her. Should I say “wife” when I talked about her in the past, when we were married, or should I always refer to her as “ex-wife”? If there had been other divorces around me I might have known. Someone would have come up with a system.

I didn’t think of Anju as my ex-wife. I thought of her as Anju. What possessed me to go back to Bela Chaudhary, I don’t know. But by sleeping with Bela, I ruined a marriage that could have been wonderful. But I did sleep with Bela— many times—after she moved to Bhopal.

This time no one warned me or told me what to do or what not to do. And Bela was discreet. People wondered, but no one could say for sure that we were having an affair. Colonel Chaudhary treated me like a friend—but I am sure he knew. He had to.

Everyone had been silent about it, everyone except Anju. I’d expected her to be the most silent, to save face. But she clearly said how she felt about my relationship with Bela to our faces. I had thought she was a naïve young woman, who would put up with everything I dished out. And she did. But she didn’t put up with the adultery, as so many women would have.

When she asked for a divorce, I thought she was joking. I thought that the gas had damaged her brain or something. But she was serious. Two weeks after the Bhopal gas tragedy I received a letter from her lawyer. I didn’t even know she had a lawyer. The letter said that she wanted a divorce and the reason for divorce was stated as “incompatibility.”

After reading the letter I charged into the hospital where she lay in bed with tubes sticking out of her body.

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” I demanded.

She breathed slowly, and I wanted to be calm and sensitive, but I couldn’t.

“I want a divorce,” she wheezed.

“I figured that out,” I said sarcastically, and waved the letter I had received from her lawyer. “You are not getting it. I am going to make sure—”

She lifted a hand, the one with a tube coming out of it. “My lawyer said that I can get a divorce on the grounds of adultery. Would you like me to do that?”

I stared at her. “I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do. You don’t want me to name Bela Chaudhary in the divorce papers, do you?” Her voice was husky, as if every word took effort, yet she managed to dole out sarcasm.

“I haven’t committed adultery,” I flatly lied.

“You have,” she said. “A divorce case will bring the matter to everyone’s attention—they won’t be able to ignore it like they have for so long.”

She knew my career couldn’t handle another scandal pertaining to the same woman. Mrs. Bela Chaudhary had been a misdemeanor the first time, the second time it would be considered a monumental crime.

I sat down next to Anju on the bed, planning to take another approach. “You are imagining things, Anju,” I said, touching her fingers. “We are fine, you and I. Once you get better—”

“I want a divorce, Prakash. I don’t want to be married to you anymore.”

Her voice was so lifeless that it made me believe her.

“You are just not feeling well. Once you get better you will see things differently,” I coaxed.

“I want a divorce, Prakash.”

I dropped her hand and paced the floor by her bed. “We can’t get a divorce. It is as simple as that. We will be fine. We’ve been married a very short time and things will work out. This time, I will make them work.”

“You slapped me once,” she said softly. “You cheated on me, you treated me with no respect. I want a divorce, Prakash.”

Unaware of Anju’s divorce plans, her parents arrived a day after I received the divorce letter. They had come to visit and take care of their sick daughter, but I changed their agenda. I knew they were going to be my strongest allies against Anju’s divorce plans. I told them what she was doing and swore my innocence. They believed me. I knew they would—I was the son-in-law, I could do no wrong.

Anjali’s parents tried to convince her and finally told her that if she got a divorce, she wouldn’t be welcome in their house anymore.

She calmly told them that she already knew that.

I realized then that she had thought this through. This was not an impulsive decision. She knew the consequences and she still wanted out of the marriage.

She had told me that she didn’t believe our marriage was real. “A real marriage,” she said, “is based on love and respect. We are just legally bound—and that bond needs to be severed.”

I visited her in the hospital every evening, trying to persuade her against the divorce. I hired a lawyer myself, who promised me that we could drag this into court and no judge would give us a divorce. We’d been married only a few months—we could still make it work.

Since Anju had been admitted to the hospital, Harjot had been a constant by her bedside. She left the room as soon as I walked in and came back as soon as I was leaving.

I caught her outside Anju’s room once and thought if I could convince Harjot, she would convince Anju.

“Harjot, I want to thank you for—”

“I don’t want to speak with you, Captain Mehra,” she said before I could even finish.

“Why, what has she told you about me? I am not a demon, you know. I am a good husband and—”

“And that’s why I saw you yesterday with Bela Chaudhary by the swimming pool. Your wife is lying half dead here and you are with another woman,” she said with disgust. “Give her the divorce, or I will testify that I saw you kissing Bela Chaudhary. Then what will you do?”

“I never kissed her,” I said, as my mind frantically tried to remember the places we had kissed and if someone could have seen us.

“How do you know what I saw?” Harjot asked. “Just give Anjali a divorce. Let her go.”

“And what will she do? Roam the world alone?”

“The Hindu Marriage Act allows for alimony. You will help her, of course.”

I laughed harshly. “If she wants a divorce, she can have it. But she doesn’t get a
paisa
from me.”

So I signed the papers and since the divorce was mutual, based upon incompatibility, everything worked out flawlessly. A flawed marriage that ended without any blemishes. The papers were bright white with clean black typewritten words on them, the lawyers were understanding and business-like, and even I didn’t throw a tantrum. Anjali had threatened me and I had been threatened. She said she didn’t want any alimony and I was childish enough to say that I wouldn’t give it to her even if she needed it. Then it had been my revenge. Now it was my embarrassment.

I don’t know how she survived after she left me. Maybe she sold her jewelry, but I wasn’t sure. I knew that she hadn’t gone back home to her parents. They had written to me, apologizing for their daughter’s behavior. They said that they had tried to convince her but she hadn’t listened. They didn’t know where she was, but as far as they were concerned their daughter was dead. At the time I was glad to read that letter. She had gotten what she deserved, I thought.

Now I was old enough to see my mistakes and they were
all
my mistakes.

I looked out of the large French windows that lined our living room—it was dark outside. I glanced at my watch and sighed—it was late. Tomorrow morning, I decided, I would tell Anju’s parents the truth. They probably still didn’t believe her and blamed her for the divorce.