A Farewell of sorts
The next day, after breakfast, Srini told
Shripad that she and Kshipra were going out to see Kshipra's house near Pune
University. If they found it good enough, they were thinking of shifting there
before the fifteenth of August.
Hearing this, Shripad felt relieved, for he
had been feeling somewhat guilty that the 'We Three' arrangement was being
disturbed because of him. "That should be a good thing," he said.
"If you decide to shift there, I'll take full responsibility for moving
your things."
"Certainly, why not?" said Srini.
Around ten-thirty in the morning, Kshipra
and Srini left for Kshipra's house on her scooter. Srini found it a little
difficult to ride pillion at first, but after a few minutes, she settled into
it comfortably. After a fairly long ride, they reached a medium-sized bungalow
with a small garden surrounding it. Kshipra's maid had already cleaned the house
and was waiting for them.
On entering, they found a medium-sized
living room furnished with sofas and a few chairs. At one end of the hall was a
well-equipped kitchen and a dining room. There were four bedrooms, arranged in
pairs, each pair connected by a door. Old-fashioned beds stood in all the
bedrooms except one, which was empty. This, Kshipra told Srini, was to be her
own bedroom, where she would place her large king-size bed. There was also a
storeroom.
Srini was thoroughly pleased and told
Kshipra she saw no problem at all in moving in. Both agreed they could easily
shift their things whenever Shripad had time, well before the deadline of
vacating 'We Three' on the fifteenth of August. As they discussed the
arrangement, Srini said she would prefer the bedroom next to Kshipra's. She had
little furniture of her own besides her television, so she could simply use the
existing bed and cupboards and place her TV somewhere convenient.
The other pair of bedrooms could be left
vacant, so that whenever Kshipra's sons or other guests came to visit, they
could be easily accommodated. Kshipra liked the idea.
When they explained the arrangement to
Shripad, he agreed it was a good plan and said he would manage the shifting
accordingly. He had another suggestion too. Moving and arranging everything, he
felt, could take a couple of days, so the two of them could stay at his flat
during that time. Once Kshipra's house was in order, they could move in
properly. Both women accepted the suggestion.
Sometime in the first week of August,
Kshipra and Srini moved into Shripad's flat and settled in comfortably. As
promised, Shripad took charge of the move himself. He called in movers he knew
and had all of Kshipra's belongings shifted to her house, and his own things
moved to his flat. The two women had nothing to do but sit and chat.
One afternoon, Kshipra remarked to the
others that she had been thinking, lately, about the three of them, and had
found a strange similarity in their life stories. All three of them had faced
painful hardships in their youth, yet each had eventually found a partner with
whom they had shared many happy years. All three had then lost that partner to
tragedy. And in the aftermath of those individual sorrows, they had found one
another again. That meeting, she said, had steadied all their lives.
"Very true, though the similarities
are strange," Shripad and Srini agreed together.
By the first week of August, Kshipra and
Srini had moved into Shripad's flat and made themselves comfortable there. True
to his word, Shripad took the move entirely upon himself. He called in movers
he knew and had all of Kshipra's belongings carried to her house, and his own
things shifted to his flat. The two women had nothing left to do but chat.
One afternoon, Kshipra reminded Srini that
she still hadn't heard the story of how she had met Jaswant.
"All right," said Srini,
"here we go — though I'll have to start from Pen town itself."
"Kshipra, my parents were living in a
chawl in Girgaon, Mumbai, when I was born. Sometime after my younger brother
arrived, my father lost his well-paying job. Finding it too difficult to
support the family in Mumbai, he moved us to Pen, where he took up one odd
temporary job after another just to keep us going. That's how we lived, in
those days.
"By the time I was in the eighth or
ninth standard, he finally found another good job, and we moved back to Mumbai.
I started school there and passed my eleventh-grade examinations with good
marks. I wanted to go to college, and I completed my first two years. Then a
proposal came, through one of our acquaintances, for a boy with a Class Three
government job. He came to see me in Mumbai. I disliked him at once — he was
very fat, and carried a peculiar air of treating everyone else as beneath him.
My parents went to Pune to see his house, an old tenement in a wada in Shaniwar
Peth. He lived there with his mother; they had no other relatives in the city.
My mother didn't like the boy either, but my father was adamant. Because of
that government job, he overruled everyone.
"I was married to this boy, Vidyadhar
Dabke, in a simple ceremony. The only guests were our neighbours from the chawl
— no one came from the bridegroom's side. The marriage was never registered,
which turned out to be a great blessing for me later.
"After I moved to Pune, I found both
mother and son to be deeply orthodox and traditional, full of the most absurd
customs you could imagine. Would you believe, Kshipra, that after I arrived, I
was made to sleep in my mother-in-law's room for eight or ten days, because the
auspicious hour for a certain pooja hadn't yet come? When that day finally
arrived, a ceremony called 'Garbhadan' — which literally means the giving of a
foetus — was performed by a priest for Vidyadhar and me. Only that night was I
allowed into Vidyadhar's room.
"Every dream I had of a beautiful
married life was crushed, because Vidyadhar was a fool. In that room, I wasn't
a person at all — only an object for satisfying his lust. There was one
mattress, and it was his. I was made to sleep on a duree, wrapped in a few old
sarees for blankets.
"The next day brought another
surprise. Vidyadhar's office began at eleven, so like many Class Three
government servants, he ate his full lunch at ten in the morning — which meant
no breakfast was ever cooked in the Dabke house. Imagine it, Kshipra — a girl
of twenty, with nothing at all to eat in the morning. But the real shock came
after Vidyadhar finished his lunch and left for the office. I noticed a good
deal of food still left on his plate, and I asked my mother-in-law whether I
should throw it away. She looked at me as if I'd said something absurd. 'Then
what would you eat?' she asked. I didn't understand at all — until she
explained that in their family, a married woman ate only what her husband left
behind on his own plate, and from that very plate too. So she told me to keep
Vidyadhar's plate carefully covered until I could eat from it. From that day
on, for as long as I lived in that house, I never once ate a hot meal.
"Somehow I bore all of it — the
cruelty, the humiliation in that room — thinking only of my mother. But my
breaking point came about three weeks later, when my periods began. That
morning, Vidyadhar announced to his mother that from that day I was 'Baherchi'
— an outsider. My mother-in-law dug up some old, unwashed duree and told me to
sit outside the door with it. She handed me an old water pot and a cup, since I
wasn't allowed to touch water meant for others. And then, as the final insult,
she gave me a metal lota, telling me to keep it turned upside down for as long as
I sat outside. When I asked her why, her answer was the last straw: it was a
flag, she said, to let people know I was 'Baherchi' for those few days. I even
had to sit in a particular way. My food — Vidyadhar's leftovers — was passed to
me outside the door. I was allowed in only at night to sleep, and even then
only near the door, since the washroom in our wada was shared and outside the
house anyway.
"That night, I decided I would leave.
When I had left Mumbai for Pune, my mother had secretly slipped me a
fifty-rupee note, telling me to keep it hidden and use it only in a real
emergency. I decided the time had come.
"Every day, once Vidyadhar left for
office, my mother-in-law went to a temple to pray, usually returning by
lunchtime. That day she left as always, telling me to keep the door shut. I
waited ten minutes after she'd gone, then went in, picked up my bag, shut the
door, and walked out. Vidyadhar had never given me a cupboard or anything of
the sort, so all my clothes were already in my bag, lying on the floor.
"Once I reached the main road, I took
a rickshaw straight to Pune station, bought a ticket to Mumbai, and caught the
earliest train. I was home by late afternoon.
"When I reached the house, I nearly
wept with relief to find my mother there. She was stunned at the sight of me
and knew at once that something was terribly wrong. 'Aai, give me something to
eat first,' I told her. 'I haven't had a grain of food since last night.' She
gave me whatever there was in the house. I ate, and then I looked at her and
broke down completely. After a while I composed myself and told her everything
— and finally said that if she didn't let me stay, I would go and throw myself
before a train.
"'Don't talk nonsense,' my mother
said. 'You are not leaving this house. I'll speak to your father.'
"That evening, when Baba came home, he
already knew of my arrival — nothing stays secret for long in a Mumbai chawl.
He was furious with me at first, but once he learned the truth, his anger
turned entirely on Vidyadhar. 'I've never seen a bigger fool than this moron,'
was all he said.
"Within a couple of days, the Dabke
mother and son duo showed up, as expected. By then, the whole chawl knew what
had been done to me, and everyone was seething at the inhuman treatment given
to one of the chawl's own daughters.
"When they arrived, four tough young
men from our chawl came along and simply stood in the doorway.
"My father turned to Vidyadhar. 'Good,
you've come. We were expecting you. Let's go.'
"Vidyadhar looked baffled. 'Where?
Why?'
"'To the police chowki, where else?'
my father said. 'I've already filed an FIR against you for the inhuman
treatment of my daughter.'
"The Dabkes had no choice — the four
chawl men were blocking their way out. As it happened, the inspector knew my
father well and had already asked him to bring the Dabkes to the chowki. Once
there, both mother and son were reduced almost to pulp. Vidyadhar, terrified of
losing his job, finally admitted — after a stern lecture from the inspector —
that their treatment of me had been entirely wrong and inhuman. They agreed to
go back to Pune, forget the whole matter, and stay quiet, on the understanding
that any trouble from their side would mean the end of his government job.
"That, Kshipra, was the end of my
first marriage. Since it was never registered, there was no question of a
divorce."
"I went on to complete my BA over the
next two years. I was tall, and thought rather good-looking, and it was because
of this that one of our neighbours mentioned he'd heard a fountain-pen factory
in Dadar was looking for a receptionist. If I was interested, he'd find out the
details. I spoke to my parents, who had no objection.
"After the interview, I got the job. I
was trained by a Parsee lady who served as PA to the managing director. She
told me there were three kinds of visitors: suppliers, who came for their
money; buyers, who came for wholesale purchases; and complainants. Of these,
only the buyers were VIPs and deserved top priority. Suppliers came next.
Complainants always came last. The receptionist's main task, she said, was to
identify each visitor's class and treat them accordingly.
"A female receptionist, she told me,
carries one powerful tool: her feminine charm, to be used in dealing with every
visitor. People with complaints were to be sent away as quickly as possible;
suppliers asking for payment were to be given lower priority still.
"She taught me how to dress, how to
drape a saree — a receptionist should never expose her body, only hint at her
figure. She taught me how to move, how to sit, how to speak to a visitor, how
to style my hair, how not to look overdone. How to be courteous yet firm. A
thousand little things.
"I think that job and I were made for
each other. Then, one day, Jaswant walked in. He was a major supplier to our
factory. None of my usual tricks worked on him — if anything, it was I who fell
headlong for him. He was far too clever for me. After a few meetings, he came
straight to our home, spoke to my father, gave both my parents expensive gifts,
and thoroughly won them over before he ever asked the big question.
"Kshipra, I found out later that he
may have given me false information about his marital status, may even have
deceived me in some ways — but I know, without a doubt, that he loved me truly,
with his whole heart. He made me rich too, and fashion-conscious. The rest, you
already know."
Kshipra, after hearing Srini's story,
seemed to fall into a kind of trance. At last she said, "Srini, hearing
your story, I'm amazed at the sheer range of human nature that exists. There
may be impotent men, lustful men — but most men, I think, are loving and caring
at heart. I used to believe my own life story was the most extraordinary one
there was. Now I find that yours, and Shripad's, are stranger still."
Just then, Shripad walked in and announced,
in his usual dramatic style, "Ladies, your house is ready for occupation.
You may move in whenever you like. One more thing — as a reward for all my
back-breaking labour, I have invited myself as PDG, or Permanent Dinner Guest,
at Kshipra's house, until I leave for the US."
"Tathastu," said Srini and
Kshipra together, in one voice.
And so the 'We Three' experiment came to
its official end that day. It had been, till the very last, as good as it could
possibly be.
(Concluded)
(All characters places except for geographical names events actions of people are fictional. Any similarity found is purely accidental. All images AI generated)