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In the bridal suite, Nisha’s family has augmented the flower arrangements of the hotel. Rose petals are strewn everywhere, strings of jasmine and lily of the valley hang on the footboard of the bed. The wedding presents have been taken to the house in Daryaganj.

The bride can hear her husband in the bathroom gargling and spitting. He comes out, sighs, belches, and scratches his belly. He sits down on the edge of the bed, unwraps the hotel paper from the glass, pours himself some water. Nisha sits on the edge of the bed, ill at ease, not sure what to do with her eyes. He turns to her, points to the other paper-wrapped glass on the tray, asks, ‘Want some?’

She shakes her head. All power of even drinking water is removed from her. As he drinks she can see his bared teeth through the bottom of the glass. She remains still – each move, it seems, he must direct – and now he gestures to the bathroom.

‘Would you like to use?’

She picks up her things and locks the door behind her, to spend a long despairing minute staring at a white, pink, unfamiliar face in a mirror uncompromisingly surrounded by light bulbs. Slowly she bends her head to wash the mask off.

She can’t help it, Suresh comes to her mind, and how different it had been. With Suresh the initial alarm at his touch had been mixed with excitement, longing, pleasure. Now it is dread hoping for gentleness, with love not even a guest on the horizon.

When she comes out, in a pink, lace-beribboned nightgown, he is lying on one side of the bed, hands folded on his chest. She can see the brown of his skin through the thin cotton of his kurta. He does not embarrass her by his gaze, merely gestures to her side of the bed. She gets in, he puts off the light, inspiring gratitude. Street lights filter through the curtains, she can make out his shape across from her. He doesn’t say anything. Were they just going to sleep? Her chest tightens, she is perspiring despite the air-conditioning. The smell of flowers is strong in the room, the sheets are crisp, draped cool and light about them.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are not tired? You did not eat very much.’

‘I was nervous.’

‘You must not be nervous,’ he murmurs.

Her heart expands. Obliquely she refers to her skin. ‘You may not like me.’

‘You are my wife,’ he answers, venturing beneath the material. ‘There is no question of not liking.’

‘I have waited so long for this,’ she tells him at the first tentative touch of his mouth on her face.

He does not respond directly, she wilts a bit – perhaps he has not been waiting, it is only she. His weight shifts on top of her, her arms are around his back, his knees push her legs apart, and it is over.

They lie there, arms across each other, simulating an intimacy which their bodies express with more confidence than their thoughts. Half an hour and her husband’s snores draw some of the tension out of her. He is sleeping. She is alone. She relaxes and slowly turns on her side. Her feet twitch against the stiffness of the sheets, the hum of the air-conditioner continues as the steady background noise to her first married night.

The next morning Nisha is escorted to her new home by a carload of relatives belonging to her husband. At the threshold she puts first one foot then the other into a tray laden with rice, wheat, and cloth, and with those feet she enters the house, bringing food, clothing, and prosperity to her married home. Some older women sing in the background, the mother-in-law sobs. Nisha is led to her, she takes her by the hand, crying, crying all the time, while it is whispered that Ammaji feels too much, but such is her nature.

Ammaji now places her before a framed black-and-white photograph surrounded by a garland of sandalwood flowers. The group sighs. The mother-in-law laments brokenly, ‘Your father-in-law. Pay your respects.’ Nisha bows her head and raises her folded palms. An aunt thrusts the girl down towards her mother-in-law’s feet. Obediently she bends and touches the feet she has touched countless times in the last few days. The mother-in-law pats her head. ‘Blessings upon his son’s wife, and their sons,’ she sighs, tears in her voice. ‘Come, come,’ says her sister’s daughter. ‘Now your daughter-in-law has come into the house you must not be sad. Everything is going to change.’

Nisha is seated on the bed, barfi pushed into her mouth, to sweeten your married life, now and for ever.

‘Your mother-in-law insisted on giving up this room,’ a cousin whispers in her ear. ‘They both slept here after … you know, the accident. We were so worried about Ammaji, thank god Bhaiyya agreed to marry at last. There will be someone in the home at least.’

‘Arvind put tube lights everywhere when he got engaged. Thanks to you we have modern lighting – before, it was so dark,’ reveals another cousin.

Nisha, still a bride, can barely look up, let alone notice tube lights.

For lunch the whole group descends the narrow stairs to go to the newest South Indian restaurant in Daryaganj. Dosas, idlis, vadas, uttapmas later, the family take rickshaws back, distribute themselves through the house, on the marital bed, on Ammaji’s bed, on the sofa, on chittais on the floor, and gossip, chat, drift off to sleep. At four-thirty they get up for tea and pakoras, served with the help of the new maid, and then, towards evening, replete and satisfied, a good job done, Arvind married, the new bride settled, they slowly disperse.

The couple are left alone for the second night. Nisha notices Ammaji’s bed in the covered veranda just outside their bedroom and declares her discomfort.

‘I do not feel nice about her sleeping out there,’ she says.

‘What to do, there is no other place,’ he sighs.

They get into bed. She wonders if he will do it again. She does not have to wonder long. Ten minutes later he has done it and this time they lie awake a little longer before he starts snoring. Embarrassed, she speculates if the mother outside has heard anything, and it is only much later that she can bring herself to use the bathroom.

After breakfast the next day, the bride’s brothers come to escort her back home. Raju, Vijay, and Ajay laugh and joke with Arvind, call him their Jijaji. Nisha feels odd hearing him addressed thus. Sister’s husband.

At home everyone crowds around her. How was it? Were they nice to her? What was the mother-in-law like? What was the house like? What had they done after they left the hotel? What were the other relatives like? How many were they? Did they comment on her clothes? Did she tell them she was wearing a Nisha Created suit? Were there any pictures of the first wife in the house?

She hardly knows the answers to so many questions. As at the engagement she resorts to tears, tears they understand and expect.

Then they enquire, ‘Happy? Are you happy?’

She now knows when brides are asked if they are happy that the sexual aspect of the marriage is being delicately investigated. Had a bride ever shook her head and said no, she was not happy, she wonders.

Briefly she nods, then gets up. ‘I must see my tailors. Two days and I am sure they have slackened.’

‘Arre, now you are married, you don’t have to be so serious,’ counter the family, slightly shocked.

But how can she explain? Of course she has to be serious, even more than before. Orders will not wait because she is married.

Nisha was home two weeks. The husband phoned once a day. With her family listening to every word, she answered his questions: how was she feeling, how were Mummy, Papaji, everything all right? She asked the same of him: how was he, Ammaji, and the shop, was he eating well, had the maid settled down, was she doing whatever Ammaji wanted her to? She waited for him to ask about her business, but he didn’t, and she did not bring it up.

She had a talk with her parents. She was not going to sacrifice her work to her marriage, she was not sure how clearly they had conveyed this to her in-laws. Had they stipulated she had to visit her workshop every day?

‘Beti,’ replied her father, ‘we made enough demands. The maid for one, we were very firm you do no washing, no cooking, especially in the heat. We mentioned your work, we said you wanted to continue; they showed themselves willing to accommodate, how could one ask for more?’

Nisha tried not to feel cheated at what she suspected was insufficient emphasis on this aspect. She now repeated, if she did not get the necessary support, she would hire someone. The mother looked scandalised, wasn’t she helping already?

When her husband arrived to take her back, Nisha could feel her increased status in the respectful goodbyes.

‘My mother was very keen you come home,’ Arvind said shyly in the car. ‘Kept saying where is my bahu?’

Nisha could not respond. She felt she was leaving a part of herself behind, and this time there was no coming back. At the thought of Mohseen Bhai and Nisha’s Creations, tears came to her eyes.

‘We will visit Mummy Papaji often, very often,’ soothed her new husband.

XXVI

A new home

The house in which Nisha now found herself was very different from the homes she had known. In Karol Bagh, the little park they faced had offered trees, birdsong, a few scraggy flowering shrubs, and a semblance of openness. The noise and chaos of the main market, three lanes away, did not penetrate their world. All its commotion came from within.

Her new home was above her husband’s shop. Its entrance was from the back gully, dumping place for rubbish. The paving was rutted and uneven, the foot slipped between the debris of eternal construction, loose brick, piles of sand, bajri, and puddles of stagnant water. Down the gully, rows of doors led to identical steep, narrow staircases that darkened as they rose higher. At the top a narrow entrance let into a small angan, bordered with plastic ropes stretched across for clothes to dry. The household bathed, peed, shat, cooked in cubby-holes on opposite ends of the angan; the eating was done in an alcove adjacent to the kitchen. On the left of the entrance were two large, old-fashioned, high-ceilinged rooms, one to sit in, one to sleep in. Beyond them lay a covered veranda with a bed-cum-divan.

‘Now you are home,’ said Arvind as they climbed the stairs, he carrying her suitcase, she following on gold high heels.

Home.

Nisha first touched her mother-in-law’s feet, then moved into the kitchen to see how the maid was managing. She was now a daughter-in-law, she had to anticipate responsibility, not wait for her lack of involvement to be pointed out.

That night as Nisha served dinner, moving from kitchen to alcove in two steps, taking, bringing, fussing, anticipating, her mother-in-law kept up a steady patter: ‘Now he is married, how much more life there is, everybody kept saying, Arvind must marry, the old mother must have someone to look after her, it is not right the place is so empty, son is busy in the shop, someone should be there to see, notice, care, and where are the children going to come from?’ Myriad relatives were quoted, all of whom had said the same thing year in and year out. Their words eddied gently around them, while Arvind went on eating and did not look up.

He did not need to. He now had a substitute, one who was getting acquainted with what was expected of her, one who was uneasily wondering if this was compatible with her own longings. She looked to her husband, but the silent man was digging into his teeth with a toothpick, and did not seem to realise that a response was required.

After dinner, she got her mother-in-law the glass of hot milk she said she always drank before bed. As she was reheating it – ‘soon you will know exactly how I like it’ – she wondered if it had been like this for her mother and her aunts. Definitely not for Pooja, but then Pooja had Raju behind her. That made things different.

In the next few days Nisha figured out what comprising half the female population in the house entailed. Her mother-in-law claimed her attention morning, noon, and night, in the kitchen, in the bedroom, in drawing rooms, theirs and others, as visitor and visitee. She received and gave attention, care, concern, and food, with little time left over for anything else.

Ten days later Nisha decided to take the plunge. Neither Arvind nor his mother had enquired after the health of her business, it was clear she could not depend on them to preserve its well-being. As Arvind got dressed in the morning, she said, ‘I will be going to Karol Bagh today, I can’t do everything on the phone, I will be back by lunchtime.’

‘Just tell Amma,’ he said.

Nisha stood still. He had not dealt with his mother. It was going to be left to her. Though her parents had laid down her working as a condition for marriage, she could see the conditions melting into nothing before her eyes.

Besides, she herself saw the difficulties of leaving her mother-in-law, duty towards whom had been bred into her blood and bone.

She tried to sound firm. ‘I have to go. Remember my parents also said.’ She stopped as she heard the independent ring of her words, and hastened into conciliation, ‘For a short time, two or three hours.’

‘Yes, yes, tell Amma and go.’

‘Can’t you inform her? As it is, I am worried she might feel bad.’

‘Then why are you going?’

‘Please tell her, nah.’ She needed him to make it easy, couldn’t he see that? ‘I thought you liked what I did,’ desperation allowed her to accuse.

‘I do.’

‘Then why don’t you say something to her? From me she will misunderstand.’

‘She won’t. She really wants you, I have never seen her so affectionate,’ he faltered, and Nisha could not go on. So the mother-in-law hadn’t been like this with the first wife, was she trying to make up now – was it guilt, and if it was, did it mean her Creations had to pay the price?

The mother called, his breakfast was ready, and Arvind lovingly approached his morning cool salty lassi, crisp fried potato parantha, and sour mango pickle.

Arvind did tell his mother and she responded by silence and withdrawal. Still Nisha went, but without the support that would have made her comfortable and secure. She saw every inch of the way to Karol Bagh covered with fragments of her broken future. Working was not going to be easy. She had better initiate Pooja into the pricing she so wanted.