Maya's New Husband Read online

  Her only afternoon chore was to prepare lunch for herself. Her daughters ate at their workplaces. Eating a simple but delectable fare of vegetables with chapattis and pickles while watching TV was the highlight of her day.

  She finished her chores and sat down on her favorite easy chair and began surfing channels. Her housewifely interests veered towards family soap operas. She could watch several at a time and be passionately affected by all of them. The grandfather clock in the corner told her there was an hour more to watch whatever she pleased. Maya never allowed her to watch her soppy shows once she returned. They curdle your mind, she always said.

  When she was engrossed in watching how the daughter-in-law on TV gave a scathing response to her old crone of a mother-in-law, there was an unexpected ring at the door. In a reflex move, Anuradha changed the channel. If Maya had returned earlier than her usual time, she didn’t want to be caught watching this show. When the doorbell went a second time, she got up gingerly and moved towards the door. It scared her to open the door like this; the peephole didn’t help much as the corridor outside was dark in the afternoons, and the safety chain was erratic at best. She made a note to remind Maya about getting a safety door installed.

  However, her worry was unjustified. It wasn’t Maya at the door, just the neighboring woman. “Is the electricity working here?” she asked, smiling with her dentally-impaired mouth.

  Anuradha nodded, and the woman smiled. She didn’t leave though; it was the unspoken communication between two leisurely elderly women who seek each other’s gossipy company. The electricity had just been an excuse to start a conversation, and it had worked.

  “Come in, Laxmi,” said Anuradha, opening the door wide. “I have some good news for you.”

  Laxmi sat down on the couch, her bones creaking audibly as she sat. Anuradha put her channel back on and lowered the volume of the TV a bit so that they could still hear it but it would not intrude upon their conversation. “Maya got a promotion today. Headmaster of Department!” she said with suitable awe.

  “Oh, that’s great!” Laxmi cackled. “That means Principal, isn’t it? I always knew she will become Principal one day. Our Maya is indeed a talented girl.”

  “This is not really Principal,” Anuradha elaborated.

  “What did you say?” asked Laxmi. “These days it is difficult to hear anything clearly.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. She got a promotion, that’s all! Would you like tea? I was going to make some anyway.”

  “All right,” said Laxmi, “but less sugar, okay?”

  Presently, Anuradha came back with two teacups and the room became fragrant with the aroma of masala chai.

  “Did you hear about the Bawdi Chawl thing?” asked Laxmi after she had taken her first noisy slurp of the tea.

  “What Bawdi Chawl thing?”

  “Oh, haven’t you heard?” Laxmi’s face went grave with the importance of someone who is making a somber revelation. Her wrinkles appeared to have increased with that expression. “There was a kidnapping. A young girl of 16-17 years.”

  “Who?”

  “Who knows about these slum-dwellers? The maid told us. The girl went to college yesterday and hasn’t returned yet.”

  “How do you know it’s a kidnapping?”

  “What else will it be? Kidnapping, rape, murder, whatever. All the same. She’s a daughter of a cobbler, a pretty girl it seems.”

  “It’s horrible,” Anuradha said with sufficient emotion.

  “You have two daughters, Anuradha, you need to be very careful. By the grace of Ganesha, I have only sons.”

  “You cannot be too sure about sons too these days,” said Anuradha, her traditional upbringing somewhat incensed at having been called the mother of girls. She wasn’t narrow-minded—at least she didn’t consider herself to be—but it was conversations such as these that brought a sense of disquiet to her mind. “Kidnappings have become so common nowadays,” she said. “Anyway, my girls are capable of taking care of themselves.”

  The door was slightly open and Maya walked in without warning, worry writ large on her face. “Ma, why is the door open like this?” she asked and then saw Laxmi. “Oh, Laxmi aunty, you are here. Even so, you must keep the door closed.”

  “Heard about the kidnapping?” asked Anuradha.

  “Congrats on becoming Principal, Maya,” said Laxmi.

  “Principal? Oh! No, aunty—”

  “Forget that,” said her mother. “See, there was a kidnapping here today. Nowadays, all one reads in the papers is such criminal stuff. Be safe, that’s all.”

  “You should tell that to Namrata,” said Maya. “She is the one who returns late at night. And, what’s this? Were you watching that stupid show again?”

  Anuradha quickly shut down the television. “Not me,” she said, “this Laxmi here insisted.” She made a sign to Laxmi—a peculiar sign with raised eyebrows that meant she had to play along—and Laxmi quickly gulped the last dregs from her teacup.

  ***

  That evening, there was a small celebration in the Bhargava household. Namrata bought the wine, and the three women cooked a three-course meal together. All three were good cooks, and they could whip up a miracle with their ingredients. The family was vegetarian by choice, quite known in their social circles for their culinary expertise. They prepared their signature dish of cauliflower pakoras to follow up with stuffed eggplant and bhakris and a dessert of carrot halwa.

  They sat at the table and began with the wine and the pakoras. Anuradha refused the wine at first but the daughters insisted. “It’s just fermented grape juice, Ma,” said Namrata. “This much won’t kill you.”

  “It’s the spirit of the day,” said Maya.

  They spoke about Maya’s day at school and about Anuradha’s plan to invest in some gold during Diwali and about how they should contact their relatives in Dadar about a suitable marital alliance for Namrata.

  At that point, Namrata chipped in, “No Ma, I have always told you. No arranged marriage for me.”

  “So what do you plan to do?”

  “That’s my lookout.” At that moment, Namrata seemed every bit like a spoiled younger sibling. She understood that, perhaps, for she braced herself for the inevitable reprimand.

  “No one in the Bhargava household has ever had a love marriage if that’s what you think,” boomed Anuradha. “This love-shove does not work for long. I had an arranged marriage, and see what a lovely life I have now. Even though your Dad left us early, God bless his soul, he made sure we didn’t have any problems after him. Don’t you remember Maya’s marriage—”

  At that, there was an abrupt silence. Anuradha stopped midsentence and looked down into her plate and started playing with the stalk of an eggplant. Namrata looked at Maya’s face and then Anuradha’s. Maya got up with her half-finished plate.

  “Sit down, Maya,” said the mother. “I am sorry.”

  “It’s okay Ma,” said Maya. “I’m not hungry anyway.”

  “Oh, sit!” quipped Namrata. “Come out of it. It’s two years for Samar now.”

  “Shut up, Namrata,” said Anuradha, “what do you understand of these things? It isn’t as easy to take a husband’s loss as you think. Grow up and you will understand. Maya, sit down!”

  Maya sat.

  “I tried everything,” said Maya, her eyes brimming with tears. “I changed myself for him. He didn’t ask me to, but I knew he wanted me to. We kept each other happy. And still, he went all the way there and—”

  Namrata placed a hand on her sister’s shoulder.

  “—gave up. Just like that! Who knew he had such sadness in him? Why, Ma? Do you have any answer? Why did he have to throw himself under the train like that?”

  ~ 1.5 ~

  Kidney Beans on Toast

  The girl opened her eyes with some effort. Her head hurt as though she had been hit. She tried to touch the part that hurt her, but realized that her hands had been tied with a thick rope. The rope—made of pure coir�
�had cut into her fair flesh and even in the near-darkness, she could see the blood trickling down her wrists.

  The fear came over her like a storm. It was an immediate explosion of memories: returning home after her extra practical classes at college… standing at the bus-stop alone at that late evening hour… the shuffling behind her in the bushes… the sudden sharp blow to the back of her head… and then, blackness.

  She tried to yell, but at that moment she became aware of the gag that was stuffed in her mouth. She looked down and was horrified to see—it was her own blouse. Stripped off her body, stuffed into her mouth.

  All her dreams turned to nothing in that one instant.

  Topper in school and college.

  The only girl in the Physics class.

  Will go far; will become an engineer.

  Will marry a wonderful man; have wonderful kids.

  Nothing!—It meant nothing now.

  The only thing she wanted was release.

  To escape from this unknown place where she was tied to the floor, naked like a hog, terrified beyond measure.

  An awareness of pain followed the sense of shame. The pain arose from her thighs, and she looked down at them, frightened of what she might see.

  Her fear wasn’t unjustified. It was a strange pattern—four parallel curves intersecting four other parallel curves forming a crisscross spiderlike pattern. She looked at them, amazed and somewhat fascinated at their artistry, and then realized—the pattern wasn’t drawn on her thigh with a pen; it was cut into her flesh with a weapon.

  The redness was not ink; it was blood. It was the source of her pain.

  Once the consciousness of the pain set in, it refused to go away. She wanted to hold the wound, contain the blood flowing from it, but her hands were tied. She kicked the only free part of her body—her legs—but doing that only made the pain more intense. The cuts were thin but deep, and more blood oozed as she moved her legs.

  She squirmed and tried to break free from the pillar where she was tied by the wrists. They began to bleed too, and trickles of the warm fluid started moving along the sides of her torso and mixed in the pool that was already accumulated below her.

  It was too much blood. She wondered how such a spindly wound could cause so much blood to flow. It seemed unreal, but the slight tinny smell in the air around her told her otherwise.

  The darkness of the night was receding now, but she couldn’t see anything beyond her toes. Then, as her eyes got acclimatized to the darkness, she became aware of something. A figure in the darkness. A man.

  He was seated at the far end of this room or whatever it was. She could only see his head and his naked chest. He sat without making the slightest movement, like a mannequin in a departmental store. But the most frightening thing about the man was his eyes. There was something quite wrong with them. The darkness did not tell her much, but she could sense their oddness, and she could sense their unmoving gaze upon her. She squirmed, trying to break free, or to at least move away from the unflinching gaze upon her. But, the more she moved, the tighter her bonds became.

  Then a rat, of which there was no dearth here, emerged from behind the head of the distant human and darted towards his eyes. Why did the man not move? He stayed put there, even as the rat sniffed all over his face, and then began to nibble, right into his left eye.

  That was when she realized.

  She was staring at a long-dead corpse.

  The blood loss began to take its toll on her, and she was again plunged into darkness.

  ***

  The hapless girl woke up with a start when she felt someone touching her breasts.

  Fully alert now, she attempted to focus her vision, and the shape of a man squatting next to her materialized. There seemed to be a smile on his face, but there wasn’t anything cordial about it. Yes, he was ugly. And the ugliness was not merely of his warty face or his unkempt hair. It came from somewhere within him—from the diabolical look behind those smiling eyes, from the stench of death that underlined his strong odor. For a moment, she forgot the excruciating pain arising from her wounds.

  Pain, like everything else, has a limit. It is acute when fresh. It is at this time—when the aggravation is newly inflicted—that it is the most unendurable. But if it persists for a period of time without being allayed, the nerves of the body get familiarized with it. The receptors still carry the physical impulse, but the effectors do not bring back any biological response. It is then that the pain begins to weaken, or rather the body becomes stronger to bear it.

  However, this also makes things much more frightening. When one can see a gaping wound in their body and the blood oozing out of it too, but cannot feel the pain, that’s when things become the scariest. It’s enough to drive anyone nuts, and this was just a fragile college-going girl.

  “No… Don’t pass out again,” the squatting man pleaded. “I want you to see. Will you do that much for me? Will you stay awake for me? Please?”

  It was a plea, like a beggar beseeching for food.

  Then she saw the weapon in his hand. Not exactly in his hand, but on his knuckles. His fingers passed through its four joined metal rings, the ends of which had sharp, pointed nails. The nails were soaked in blood; and she realized it was the blood of her own flesh.

  Still smiling that vicious smile, he plunged that knuckle thing deep into her body, this time right into her chest. She could not see this new wound, but she felt it for sure. There was a sound too, a sickening crunch, and her educated mind told her what it was. A memory of a twig she had once stepped on came to her—the poor twig had broken into two with the same crunch.

  As warm blood trickled down her torso, she was surprised she still had blood left in her body to flow out of the new wound.

  Then, she reacted. A shriek of the newly-generated pain formed on her lips, but the sound died out before it could emerge. Her weakness overcame her response to pain.

  She looked into his eyes and, as she could not speak, her eyes did all the talking. Her vision was becoming groggy now; and yet her eyes pleaded, implored, begged, made an earnest request to leave her and to spare whatever was left of her—both in body and in spirit—and, for a moment, she thought that he understood. For he took her head in his arms and took it close to his chest and, smoothening her hair, said, “Don’t worry, dear. It will all be over soon. It has to be done, you know? We all have to atone. Believe me, I am sending you to a happier place.”

  There were no more tears, just the ones that had been already let out, drying up on her bloodied cheeks. The last sight of her short life was that of the dead man she had seen before, the one in the distance. His face was still turned towards her in the same manner, motionless in all other respects. But now some daylight streamed into the room. She could see a little more. His face seemed pale; and where his eyes had been, she could only see bloodied hollows, and the tails of rats emerging from them.

  “I’ll get started now,” her tormentor said, holding her chin up as though he meant to kiss her. “I’ll get you out of the misery right away.”

  Her heart was stopping now, her brain still flickering with its last dredges of life. Her vision stilled itself upon the man. She saw now how white his body had become, drained of all its blood. White as a sheet. White as dead. And, on that white skin on his chest, she saw the dried up mark—the same mark of the spider that she now possessed.

  “Oh, him?” her killer looked in the direction of her gaze and said. “It’s been a while since I had him over for dinner. He’s become a bit stale now. Don’t feel like going to him anymore, and why should I? I have you now, don’t I? But let me tell you this—his kidneys! So juicily healthy and wonderful! He made an excellent dish of roasted kidney beans on toast.”

  ~ 2 ~

  Clenched Fists

  Despite her sedentary profession, Maya managed to maintain an excellent physique. She was inching her way towards middle-age gracefully. Her skin was still supple and her complexion glowed, radiating h
er inner and outer good health. It wasn’t a matter of surprise, therefore, that she met several stares every day from her colleagues as well as her students as she walked along the school corridors to her classroom.

  Today was no exception. People stared at her as usual. She wore a light blue saree with a white blouse and comfortable shoes that were meant for walking. Her makeup was minimal and functional, as would befit her dignity as a teacher. But she had no illusions today; she knew the stares weren’t for her.

  They were for the curious object she had in her hand.

  Most people would have considered the object to be downright offensive if they had seen it in any other place. Even here, people moved away as she walked on with the object on full display, as though repulsed from it, giving her a wide berth. However, she did not mind that at all, knowing that everyone wasn’t supposed to understand her meticulousness in her teaching methods.

  So she walked on, oblivious to their nervous stares and whispers, and entered her classroom. A wave of students rose and fell as she entered. Then, standing right in the middle of the platform, she held the object aloft and announced to the class, “Here it is, boys. I am true to my word.”

  The students looked at the purplish muscular object floating in the clear liquid in the glass jar, and let out a collective gasp.

  “Miss, is that it?” A short boy seated on the front bench gasped. “Is that really a human heart?”

  “Yes, it is,” said Maya. “Doesn’t it look radically different from those silly heart shapes you keep drawing everywhere?”

  “It is so small,” he said.

  “Yes. A human heart is the size of a clenched fist,” said Maya and the class got busy clenching their fists and seemed disappointed with the size they saw.

  “But whose heart is this?” asked one student.