Vishakha
It was past nine in the morning when I
finally made my appearance in the kitchen, still rubbing sleep from my eyes. My
father was already at breakfast, and he looked up, surprised. "Don't you
have to go to work? It's past nine already."
"Come on, Baba, today is Sunday — my
weekly off."
"Oh! I forgot," he said,
chuckling at himself.
My mother chipped in from the stove.
"Vishu, I've made hot thalipeeth — want some?"
"I'll be back in five minutes," I
said, and hurried off to freshen up.
After breakfast and tea, Baba turned
serious. "So, what have you decided? Should we start looking for a
suitable boy for you? You have a job, you have your own flat — why wait any
longer?"
"Baba! I told you to wait."
"No, beta. Our deadline ends in
another week. You asked us for six months, and even that is nearly over. Your
mother feels it's high time we got you married." His tone left no room for
argument.
Now it was Aai's turn. "No more
waiting, Vishu. What Baba says is right. If you like someone, either settle
things with him, or we start looking for a proposal ourselves."
I frowned, but she was in no mood to be
swayed.
"Okay, Aai, I'll give you my decision
by next Sunday," I said, closing the discussion before it could go
further.
After lunch, I casually asked my mother,
"When do you plan to move into the new flat in Bhukum?"
"Who's moving there? We can't — your
father's workplace would be too far, and how would your brother manage school
from there? We're going to rent it out instead."
"Then how am I supposed to move into
my flat after I marry, when my workplace is in Pune?" I asked.
"Who says you'll be moving there?
Won't you be going to your husband's house? Isn't that how it works?"
Mother said it so plainly, as if stating the obvious. I turned instantly to my
father. He simply nodded, offering no objection.
Good God, what a fool I have been! A wave
of relief washed over me so suddenly it left me almost breathless. For weeks,
this very question — where we would live — had been the sticking point tearing
at my relationship with Janardan, stretching it to its limit.
I told my mother I was tired and wanted to
rest. Once I lay down, my mind raced back through the events of the last few weeks.
Until then, everything with Janardan had
been smooth sailing. Then one day, Father came home with big news — their
family land near Poud Road was being acquired by the government to build a new
road. In return, the family would receive compensation, either in cash or in
alternate land elsewhere. Since there were several beneficiaries, Father struck
a private deal among them, trading his share of the land for cash outright.
With the generous sum he received, he bought two flats in Bhukum — one for
himself, and one for me, an investment, a father's gift. And foolishly, I had
begun dreaming of a life there.
My first instinct was to run and tell
Janardan everything. But then I stopped myself — handing him this news would be
like putting a loaded gun in the hands of a child. He would never let me live
it down; he'd tease me about it for the rest of our lives. Instead, I sent him
a WhatsApp message: Urgent. Come by the earlier bus and meet me in Deccan at
our usual place by 5 PM.
Janardan never carried his phone onto the shop floor at the factory — it distracted him from his work — so he only checked his messages during lunch. That day, just as he was heading back to the floor after lunch, my message flashed across his screen. He gave nothing away. Calmly, he told his boss that something urgent had come up and that he needed to leave early, then caught the first shift bus out, reaching Deccan just before five.
When he walked into our usual coffee house,
I was already there, practically buzzing, my eyes bright with excitement.
"What's happened? Why the
message?" Janardan asked, his voice deliberately cool. But I knew him well
enough by now to see through it — that composure was just a mask. He was every
bit as anxious about us as I was.
I told him I had wonderful news — that I
had managed to convince my parents that a bride's true home is wherever the
groom lives, which meant I would go to my husband's house, wherever that might
be.
He looked at me, suddenly alert. "What
do you mean, your husband's house?"
"It's simple, Janu. My husband is the
man who proposes to me — and to whom I say yes."
Understanding dawned on his face. Then, in
a gesture entirely unlike him, he moved closer and whispered in my
ear, "Will you marry me, dear Vishakha?"
My face must have lit up like a lamp.
"Yes, of course," I said. I think he wanted to tell me, too, that
he'd been on the verge of giving in about the Bhukum flat — that he'd finally
realized he simply couldn't imagine life without me. But he said nothing. Some
things are better left unsaid.
With every misunderstanding swept away, we
slipped back into the closeness that had been suspended for last few weeks.
Janardan's priority now was to find at least a two-room tenement and move in —
enough to get us through until the wedding, after which we could look for
something bigger. I, meanwhile, would announce at home that I had found my
future husband, and would soon bring Janardan to meet Aai and Baba. He, in
turn, would say nothing to his mother until they had shifted to the new place.
We stepped out of the coffee house into the
gathering dusk and stood close together beside my scooter. Without warning,
Janardan placed his hand on the small of my back, drawing me firmly against
him. A strange, unfamiliar pleasure surged through me, and my throat went dry.
"Hmm," I breathed — the very same sound I had made the day we crossed
the stream together, that same electric current passing between us. Then,
quietly, we said our goodbyes, and I rode home.
Even after I reached home, my hands were
still trembling faintly, and it took real effort to steady myself. That night,
sleep wouldn't come. I could still feel the ghost of Janu's hand on my back.
Memory after memory surfaced — his shy introduction all those years ago, his
help in the carpentry and smithy workshops, the picnic at Ancole. The day we
girls couldn't cross the torrent, and how coolly Janu had turned back for us,
calling us his sisters — and my own sudden, fierce reaction: No — I am not your
sister. The piggyback ride that followed, when I wasn't quite myself anymore.
And afterward, the way he had looked at me — that single moment that bound our
hearts together for good.
I remembered, too, how we had come to know
each other's families. How deep a respect I had developed for his mother — how,
after being driven out of their joint family home following his father's death,
she had raised Janu single-handedly and made an engineer of him. We knew each
other's hopes and ambitions as if they were our own.
By the end of our second year, a kind of
quiet possessiveness had grown between us. And then, almost simultaneously, we
both realized we were standing at the edge of a precipice — that the smallest
push might send us both tumbling down, wrecking our futures and our careers
alike.
Janu was the one who suggested we freeze
things between us and focus on our studies instead. I agreed. We cut off
contact entirely. In time, both of us were picked up through campus placements
— Janu as a supervisor at a large engineering firm, and I as a site engineer
with a major construction company building housing projects across Pune.
We both passed our diplomas with flying
colours and started our jobs. Yet somehow, through all of it, our relationship
stayed frozen. We lost touch with each other almost completely.
Then, one of the boys from our Mulshi group
invited us all to his house for a puja. There, nearly two years later, I saw
Janu again. Gone was every trace of the boy I remembered — before me now stood
a strong, capable, self-assured man. The old flame caught instantly, burning
fiercer than before. Gone, too, was his old shyness, that self-pitying edge
that had once come from years of financial hardship.
After the puja, we all stepped outside. I
wore a yellow Tussar silk saree that evening — I had always known yellow suited
me well. I had filled out a little over the past few years, my figure fuller
now than it had been. I noticed, even before he said a word, that Janu was
staring — transfixed, as though seeing me for the very first time. He couldn't
tear his eyes away. Just to torment him a little, I kept toying with the pallu
of my saree, which only seemed to fascinate him further.
As everyone drifted off on their bikes, I
realized only Janu had come by rickshaw — and only my scooter remained parked there.
We were, quite suddenly, alone.
After a moment's hesitation, he asked,
"Vishu, how are you?" It wasn't a simple question — not between the
two of us. I answered as I knew I should, aware that letting this moment slip
away might mean losing it forever. I took his hand in mine, pressed it gently,
and said, "Janu, I've been waiting for your call. You never called."
He confessed, quietly, that he'd been
afraid to call — afraid he might already have lost me. When he saw the tears
gathering in my eyes, he understood everything at once. I asked if I could drop
him somewhere. "Let's go to Deccan," he said, "and sit in the
coffee house."
As if by magic, our relationship began to
bloom again from that evening on. Every Thursday, he would come to my site in
the evening, and we would go out together. On Sundays, I would wait for him at
the coffee house, and off we'd go.
I began waiting, quietly, for the question
I knew was coming. He wanted to ask it too — desperately — but first he had to
solve the problem of where we would live. Marriage was unthinkable as long as
he remained in his cramped one-room dwelling. By then, my father had bought the
flat for me, and I thought — foolishly,
as it turned out — that it was the perfect solution to his problem.
There was a complication, though. I worried
that his mother, having lived her whole life amid the crowded lanes of Navi Peth,
would struggle to adjust to a flat in Bhukum. So I insisted she remain behind
in Navi Peth, alone. I never imagined how deeply this idea would wound Janu —
to him, his mother was nothing short of a goddess. Both of us dug in, each
certain our own solution was the right one. It was my mother's offhand remark
that finally opened my eyes: a woman must learn to respect the pride of her
man, the way we accept so many other unspoken truths as natural, rather than
trying to force her will upon him. What a wife wants, I realized, can be won
far more gently — through a little feminine charm.
Once that small storm in a teacup had
passed, it felt as though every obstacle between us had finally cleared, and I
found the courage to tell my parents about Janu. Naturally, they wanted to meet
him. I explained our scheduling problem — his weekly off fell on Thursdays,
mine on Sundays — and promised that on our next common holiday, he would come
to meet them properly.
My dreams, at last, were beginning to take
shape. Everything, it seemed, had fallen neatly into place. Then, the following
Thursday, Janu told me he needed to buy a motorcycle — without one, he said,
searching for a flat in Pune would be next to impossible. I agreed
wholeheartedly, and we spent the evening happily debating brands, prices, and
preferences. He told me he had his eye on a particular one but would defer
entirely to my wishes. Since our schedules made it impossible to visit the
showroom together, I simply told him which colour I liked and what accessories
he'd need to carry me on the pillion seat.
About a fortnight later, he sent me a
photograph of his new bike, then rode it all the way to my site to show it off
in person. It was a beautiful machine, and he looked remarkably sharp astride
it. I had already begun dreaming, in earnest, of our married life together.
While we sat dreaming about the future,
Janu suddenly remembered something. "Vishu, I think I'll have to tell Aai
about you."
"Why?" I asked.
"She's already suspicious about the
motorbike. If I start hunting for a flat next, she'll never let me hear the end
of it. I think it's best I tell her now."
I considered his words, then told him that
the following Thursday, I would come with him to meet her. So the day before,
he was to break the news to his mother and prepare her for my visit. I
suggested, too, that the coming Sunday, we should meet my parents. He liked the
idea at once.
Both meetings went beautifully. His mother
and my parents welcomed us with open warmth. We were certain, now, that we were
on the right path — the only thing left standing between us and the wedding was
a flat, one we needed to find before we could tie the knot.
But how little any of us truly know of what
the future holds. We were about to find out.
(To be continued in Chapter 3)
(All characters places except for geographical names events actions of people are fictional. Any similarity found is purely accidental. All images AI generated)