CHAPTER SIX

As soon as the car reached my house, I jumped out of the seat. Even before Abhishek Bhaiya could park properly. I was thrilled to see my family. Those glowing faces of the people with whom I’ve spent my life, my younger days, they just made me too excited. I put my arms around my mother and my sister and pulled them toward me in a long embrace at the gate. My father was also there.  He had taken a day off from work, just for me.

“Come, child, let's get inside.” My mother invited Bhaiya in for tea, but he refused.

“No. I've to go.”

We asked him to at least come inside and chat with us for a bit, but he refused saying, “Aunty ji, please, I am tempted to stay but I’ve to get to Shreya’s school. There’s a parent teacher meeting today. Arunima must be waiting for me. I just came to drop her off.” He patted my head.

The day passed chatting with my mother and Betu. When Daddy eventually joined us, it was to ask about Arnav’s new restaurant in Indore. I didn’t know much about it so I shook my head and explained, “Arnav ji’s going to be here in the evening. Ask him, Daddy.”

I told Mumma about everyone. “Maa is more of a social person. I really am so impressed with her that, at her age, she maintains such huge social circles. She actually manages an NGO supporting children’s education. Chachi ji also volunteers but her participation is not as active.”

Mumma’s eyes lit up at the information I was relaying. “That’s so nice. I think it’s great that they’re doing something and not just sitting at home.” I could sense pain and amusement in Mumma’s voice. It was a surprise for me when Maa and Chachi ji first shared about the NGO, most of the married women I’d met so far had no specific career. The only work women were assigned, was to look after the house, the kids. It’s really only recently that people have actually begun to accept working women.

“Yes,” I affirmed. “At least Maa and Chachi ji are.”

I dug out my bag as I took out a chocolate bar and passed it to Betu. I thought about how lovely Maa had been with me since the first day, and then I suddenly remembered the reminders Mumma had given me.

“And Mumma, what was all that crap you and Sharda Chachi were going on about before the wedding? Were you trying to scare me?” A cruel kind of sarcasm belied my hurt at being misled by the two women I trusted most in this life. “It’s nothing like that with her. They’re all really nice people. They all treat me like a member of their own family.”

 “Then, you are very lucky. Your Sharda Chachi and I both tried for years and still your Dadi could never see us as anything more than intruders.”

My Daddy heard the comment, heard the hurt in my mother’s words. He didn’t defend Dadi. Instead, he reacted as if he hadn’t heard anything at all.

Food, clothing, and shelter; all of it has been provided to the daughters-in-law of the Tripathi family for ages, but, are these things really enough for a woman? Don’t we need anything else from the men and women who become our new lives, who ask us to leave our parents and our homes? Or maybe they think that we don’t deserve it just because we are, in fact, women, and that makes us lesser human beings in their opinion? These questions have always confused me. But I just kept them to my diary because I was too scared to ask them.