The Dowry Bride (27 page)

Megha’s last image before she fell asleep was of herself reaching out to touch the cool water of the river, but what she felt in her hand was not the ripple of water—instead, it was a delicate string of fragrant jasmine and
marva
and miniature roses. A deep male voice said to her, “Consider it a small and insignificant anniversary gift.” She couldn’t remember who had said that. She tried to jog her memory. For some reason it was important that she remember it. But her mind refused to cooperate and she gradually sank into oblivion.

The doctor’s prescription must have been potent, because the next two days passed in a haze. She spent them in a semi-awake state, hallucinating off and on. Her mother gave her more of that medicine each time she complained of discomfort and helped her to the bathroom. She vaguely remembered Suresh’s visit on the evening following her ordeal. Appa must have informed him.

She recalled Suresh sitting on the edge of the bed for a while and staring at her thoughtfully. Then he said something that sounded like, “So, when do you think you will be well enough to come home, Megha?”

She wasn’t clear about her exact words, but she believed she had said, “I’m not sure. Perhaps in a day or two?”

Suresh had looked at her with very little sentiment in his insipid eyes. He could very well have been gazing at a rag doll. There was no physical contact, no apology for forgetting their anniversary, no mention of being worried about her, and no sympathy for her plight, either. All he cared about was her return home so she could go back to her daily grind of churning out elaborate breakfasts, lunches, teas and dinners for the family. In other words, he wanted the Ramnath family’s unpaid servant to get back to her job as quickly as possible.

She longed for Suresh to hold her, tell her that he loved her, and assure her that she would get pregnant again soon. She would have settled for a mere touch. But she would never get that from him. She had to console herself by thinking she was lucky he had even bothered to visit her. He was probably convinced he had more than performed his husbandly duty by coming to see her and sitting beside her for a few minutes.

Maybe he didn’t even know she had a miscarriage. Perhaps her parents had made up some other malady to protect her from Amma’s wrath. She hoped they had concocted some credible story. Coming so soon after her defiant attitude towards Amma the other day, a miscarriage was not likely to make her popular with the Ramnaths. All at once she felt hopelessly tired and started to turn away from her husband.

Suresh rose to leave. “I have to go now, Megha.”

Even now, as Megha worked in the kitchen, listening to the children’s high-pitched voices across the street, her anger simmered. She had suffered a trauma the night she’d had that miscarriage, and all her husband could say was, “I have to go now.” Damn him! And then, to top it all, he had tried to kill her. She’d get even with him someday. By God, she’d teach that stunted, heartless bastard and his beastly mother a lesson! Their karma would catch up with them, too.

C
handramma lay sprawled on the bed, her head cradled in her locked hands on the pillow. Vinayak cast a brief glance at her. His wife appeared to be deep in thought.

The iron bed with its tall headboard and the four posts that held up the white mosquito net looked a bit cramped for her size. She occupied about two-thirds of it while he had to make do with the remaining one-third. Good thing he was a small man.

Vinayak stood before the mirror hanging over the dressing table, massaging castor oil into his scalp, trying to coax every little nerve and follicle to respond to his nurturing touch. The massaging action,
malish,
was warm and soothing and made him sleep better at nights. He had learned the trick from a professional
malishwalla
or masseur. Even if it didn’t do much for his memory cells or his falling hair as the
malishwalla
had promised, it helped him sleep through Chandramma’s earsplitting snoring. The woman could blow a hole in the roof with her honking and hissing.

He was vaguely aware that Chandramma’s coconut-sized breasts were clearly visible through the thin fabric of her white blouse, and the bright orange sari had hiked up to expose her thick calves. But his eyes remained on his own image in the mirror while his bony fingers moved up and down his scalp rhythmically.

He continued to ignore his wife even when he heard her sharp, dramatic intake of breath. Vinayak had given up looking at his wife with anything but mild disgust for some time now. That episode a while ago when she had spurned him came to mind. Not only had he married an ugly shrew, he was stuck now with an enormous ugly shrew, whose sex drive was all but non-existent. Always a plump woman, she had started to gain more weight immediately upon giving birth to Shanti and hadn’t stopped gaining since. Her passion for food had replaced her passion for her husband.

Well, he wasn’t exactly a handsome man, and then there had been that terrible and near-fatal illness during his childhood that had more or less sealed his fate. The best he could hope for in a wife in those days was someone like Chandramma. In fact, even Chandramma was a blessing then, considering the predicament he had been in. She even came with a substantial dowry, which had made it possible for him to buy this house all that many years ago. Additionally, she gave him two children, one of them being a son to carry on the Ramnath name. The son had turned out to be a major disappointment, but Suresh was his child, nonetheless.

Vinayak felt he really had no right to complain about his lot. His mind went back to his teenage years. He shuddered like he always did when he recalled that miserable period in his life. It had all started with that scratchy cough. At first his parents thought he had a simple cold. His mother coddled him with vile concoctions made of ginger, lemon grass and every kind of medicinal herb and spice she could think of.

When his problem continued she put poultices on his back until his very sweat reeked of onions and spices. The doctors prescribed shark liver oil, nutritional compounds, and
ayurvedic
elixirs. Nothing helped. His cough became persistent; he often coughed up blood and his already thin shoulders and chest began to hollow out and sag. He took to his bed for months after that, too weak and exhausted to go to school. After a while, even getting to his feet became a trial.

When his breathing became shallow, everyone decided he was at death’s door. His mother became frantic. “Oh Lord, why are you doing this to us? Have we done so many bad things that we have to be punished so much?” she often cried as she pleaded with her mute gods and goddesses. They sat on her altar and offered no answers to her pitiful questions.

Vinayak’s parents had already lost a son in infancy and a daughter to typhoid when she was barely five years old. They could not afford to lose this son as well, their only living child. They even named him after Vinayak, another name for Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, the remover of obstacles, so the child’s path would be clear and allow him a full and healthy life.

When Vinayak reached the age of seventeen and very nearly died, a bright young physician, Alphonso D’Souza, diagnosed Vinayak’s illness as the dreaded disease, the ominous T word: Tuberculosis.

Vinayak was promptly dispatched to a sanitarium for intensive treatment. He spent three precious years of his life in that prison-like brick building in a remote rural area forty miles from Palgaum. Life was miserable at that dreadful place, if it could even be called life in the first place. It was more like living death.

The stern, humorless nurses poked and prodded him all the time; the food tasted like crushed blotting paper; and he was never allowed any visitors, not even his parents. “We cannot allow the dangerous germs to spread to others,” they told him when he demanded to see his family. The only pleasure he was permitted was to sit in the sunshine on the small area of grass in the afternoons and read his mother’s letters.

Her notes to him carried more or less the same optimistic sentiments every week.
My dearest son: You are getting better each day. I miss you so much. I pray for you daily. The Lord will hear my prayers and you will come home. You will look handsome again, my little boy. Keep your faith in God and do what the doctors tell you to do.

He read and reread such words and he cried each day—for his lost youth, for his mother’s voice, even his father’s iron fist. He had taken all those things for granted while growing up. If God would make him well he would never again take his life for granted, he resolved. He would never question his father’s authority or his mother’s smothering love.

By some miracle he began to improve. Something was working. Perhaps it was the medical treatment, or it could have been his own will to recover and leave the place he had come to detest. He gained a little weight and could keep the food down. He stopped coughing and gagging. Slightly more than three years later he was discharged from the sanitarium. They said he was cured.

He could go home and start a new life. His mother and father performed a
puja
to Lord Balaji to mark the special day and to offer thanks to the Lord. All the relatives and neighbors came to rejoice and offer their blessings.

Vinayak was convinced that most of them came to see for themselves whether he was truly cured and what he looked like after spending three years in that much-feared place called a sanitarium. To them, it was most likely a case of someone who had died and gone to hell, and come back to tell his story.

After the excitement died down he finished high school and then went on to college to get a degree in accounting. A bit older than his classmates and introverted by nature, he felt like an outcast, but he had promised himself that he was going to make the most of what destiny had given him as a rare gift. Every hour of every day was something to be cherished and he intended to do exactly that.

He managed to find a clerical job with the State Bank of India immediately upon graduation. However, when all his contemporaries got married and settled down with a wife and children, he remained single. But not out of choice. He longed to have a family of his own. Alas, once a tuberculosis patient, always a tuberculosis patient. He found that out soon enough.

Nobody wanted to have anything to do with a former “TB patient,” as one was referred to even after one was cured. The stigma never left him. Prospective brides and their respective families shunned Vinayak. His emaciated looks didn’t help matters either.

His sweet and devoted mother would often try to soothe his wounded feelings. “Why you look so sad,
putta?
There is a nice girl somewhere just for you, no? You wait and see.”

So he waited. But the girl never materialized. God hadn’t made one “just for him.”

His father was a more practical man. “Vinayak, do something with your life, son. Work hard and become a bank manager, maybe even the general manager. It does not look like marriage is in your stars. At times God just overlooks some people. What to do? It is your fate—that is all I can say.”

His father’s words had made sense. But philosophical thoughts did little to alleviate the deep need for love and sex and companionship. With no one to confide in, he became lonely and depressed.

Then one day, a surprise envelope arrived from Bangalore. A man called Mr. Rao had written to his father and sent him his daughter’s horoscope to be matched with Vinayak’s. Vinayak was stunned when his father told him about Chandramma and her parents and their interest in him as a prospective son-in-law. “Are you sure they have the right name and address?” he had asked his father, sure that his luck couldn’t have changed quite like that—overnight. “It could be some silly mistake.”

“It is definitely for you, son,” assured his father. “There is no mistake.”

A rare smile broke out over Vinayak’s face. Here was a girl with a college education, the daughter of a successful businessman from Bangalore, interested in marrying him. Her parents were even offering a generous dowry. There had been no photograph of the girl or any indication of what she looked like. But Vinayak and his parents were so relieved and thrilled that someone at last wanted to marry him, they at once agreed to the match. They didn’t even bother to have the horoscope read by the astrologer.

On the day of the official engagement, the Rao family from Bangalore arrived in a big white Ambassador car. They wore expensive clothes and had a chauffeur. Even the way Mr. and Mrs. Rao greeted them and conversed was more polished and sophisticated than anything Vinayak and his parents had ever heard or seen. However, what emerged from the car behind them was a rude surprise for the Ramnaths. The girl was chubby, with bulging eyes, dark, rutted skin, and a sullen expression. But then the Raos appeared equally taken aback at seeing Vinayak. The boy was skeletal, had scanty hair and yellow teeth, and was quiet as a ghost. And he was smaller than the girl.

Both parties probably came to the conclusion that this was the best they could do under the circumstances. The wedding took place a few weeks later. Chandra, or Chandramma as she was affectionately called, turned out to be a woman with a mean streak and an iron will. Vinayak, already a timid man, withdrew into his shell even further.

It broke Vinayak’s heart to see Chandramma mistreat his aging parents, but his timidity prevented him from intervening most of the time. Whether it was Chandramma’s abuse or something else, Vinayak couldn’t say for sure, but both his parents died within a few years of the wedding, within a year of each other, too. In some ways Vinayak considered it a blessing. His parents didn’t have to put up with their evil daughter-in-law for too long.

But like many arranged marriages of convenience, this one had managed to work. With Chandramma’s constant nagging that he better himself, Vinayak went from bank clerk to loan officer; the dowry money was sufficient to buy a modest house; and two children were born to them. They were born twelve years apart, but that was okay—to Vinayak they were still two small miracles in his pathetic life. Even if he wasn’t blessed with a good wife, God had seen fit to give him the priceless gift of fatherhood.

Every time he felt rueful about the choice he had made in a marriage partner, he reminded himself that technically he’d had no choice. Chandramma was the only woman brought to his attention. If he hadn’t married her he probably would have lived a bachelor’s life. At least now he had a family to call his own. He had a lot more than many other men had—especially men who had TB—men who languished in a wretched sanitarium till the day they died.

And yet, despite the philosophizing, a few misgivings had started to enter Vinayak’s mind, especially lately. He was beginning to feel very restless.

He glanced at his wife through the mirror. Her lips were curved in a satisfied smirk. She had been looking smug like that all evening. Something had gone well for her. She had also been a bit excited most of the day, like a little girl who had accidentally discovered her
Diwali
present before its time, but didn’t want her parents to know that she had.

Vinayak knew his wife well. Too well. The suppressed excitement meant only one thing: she was planning something important. And again, knowing her, she was up to something questionable. Good deeds were not something Chandramma casually indulged in, at least not unless there was something in it for her. Since her attempt to do away with Megha, Vinayak’s contempt for his wife had doubled.

Although he preferred to keep his counsel to himself, curiosity got the better of him. His wife looked a bit too complacent for his liking. Most often that look translated into problems for him. He was not in a mood for more problems. His boss had become quite unreasonable lately and demanded a ridiculous amount of attention to details. “Customer service, Vinayak, remember customer service above all else,” Eric Gonsalves reminded him frequently in his hoity-toity American-accented English.

His boss had the cheek to call him Vinayak, too—not even the courtesy of addressing him as Mr. Ramnath. After all, he was Gonsalves’s elder and deserved at least that much respect. Hah, that American influence again, addressing everyone by their first name! What kind of nonsense was that? Vinayak preferred the conservative British way of conducting business.

He admitted to himself that he was bored with his job, tired of his boss and becoming dissatisfied with his life in general. The last thing he needed was for his bossy wife to start something that would cause him more problems. “Chandramma, you look very pleased. Your errand must have been successful. What was that important errand you had this afternoon?” he asked cautiously.

The smirk vanished from her face. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

Vinayak frowned in disapproval but his voice remained passive. “I know you are making trips to the astrologer lately and it is not to match our Shanti’s horoscope with that of a suitable boy. What are you planning now, Chandramma?”

“I am not planning anything, Ree. I already told you that.”