Janardan
After Vishu and I had decided that we must tell our parents about our decision to get married, I told my mother one Wednesday evening. "Aai, we are having a special guest tomorrow evening.
"Who is that?" Aai asked.
"Your future daughter-in-law."
As expected, Aai was shocked. For a while she said nothing, and then she said, "Don't make fun of an old woman. Tell me the truth."
I told her I was speaking in all seriousness. I told her Vishakha's name, about our friendship of so many years, what she was doing now, about her family — everything I knew.
Aai was extremely pleased, but she also grew anxious. "Janu, how can we receive her in this poor family's room? What will she think of me?"
I told Aai that Vishakha knew everything already and had great respect for her. She should not worry at all.
The next day, Aai cleaned up our room as best she could. The single steel chair was folded away, and the mattresses were spread out with a new bedcover. She also cooked something sweet, and asked me to bring a few paper plates and cups. I had no idea why these were needed, but I got them anyway.
The following evening, I went to Vishakha's work site, and we rode back together on our vehicles to Navi Peth. After parking, Vishakha adjusted her dress. That day she was wearing a long kurta and salwar, not the tight churidars or jeans she usually wore. She had wrapped her dupatta across her chest, its ends hanging from her shoulders. She looked, to me, like the perfect would-be daughter-in-law.
We came up to our room. Vishakha slipped off her sandals and walked in. Aai was dressed in a new saree we had bought the previous Diwali.
I introduced Vishakha to Aai. She moved forward at once and touched Aai's feet. Aai told her to sit on the mattress, and Vishakha sat with both knees folded, very gracefully. I could not stop looking at her.
After the pleasantries, my mother wanted to know many things about her, and Vishakha answered everything most beautifully. Then Aai got up and served us shira and coffee in paper plates and cups. When we finished, Vishakha rose and asked Aai where she should put the used plates and cups. Aai simply produced a garbage bag, and everything went into it. Only then did I understand her plan — we had no water tap inside the room, and Vishakha would have had to go out to the common tap to wash the dishes, which Aai had wanted to avoid.
After a little more conversation, it was time to leave. Aai pressed red kunku onto Vishakha's forehead and handed her an envelope. I learned later it held a note for five hundred rupees. Vishakha touched Aai's feet once more, and for no reason at all, both women had tears in their eyes.
When I came back into the room, I found Aai in the happiest of moods. She admitted that I had found a good wife for myself, and she was already looking forward to the wedding.
After dinner, Aai told me, "Janu, you must search for a new house for the two of you."
"What do you mean?" I said. "We are not leaving you here alone. You will have to come with us too."
"Let's see," was all she said.
The following Sunday, I rode my motorbike to Vishakha's house — a small two-room dwelling on Pune–Mulshi Road. It was much like ours, except they had a kitchen platform, a single steel bed, and a water tap inside what they called their kitchen. Compared to our room, it looked like sheer luxury.
Vishakha's parents received me very warmly. Her mother had cooked several dishes, and her father was full of questions — about our family, our ancestral village, my father's and grandfather's names. He told me he knew the talathi, the local land-records clerk, and would try to find out about my ancestral land. After that, I came back home.
With both visits behind us, I began, in earnest, my search for at least a two-room house that would suit us both.
We kept meeting on Thursdays and Sundays, Vishakha always waiting for good news, and week after week I had only disappointment to bring her. I soon realised it was almost impossible to find a two-room dwelling in Pune within our budget. Nothing of the sort existed unless we looked nearly forty kilometres outside the city, which was simply not practical. Landlords wanted enormous deposits — money we did not have. For a young couple like us, the reality was harsh, and hardest of all for Vishakha.
After two months, I told her there was no point searching any longer — it was impossible. Both of us, and Vishakha's parents too, were deeply disappointed.
Strangely, Aai showed no reaction at all. I assumed she was simply more realistic than the rest of us, and had expected this outcome all along.
Another blow came from Vishakha's father. The family's land records had been so thoroughly falsified after my father's death that undoing them would have meant a long and costly legal battle.
We were both completely down in the dumps, not knowing what to do. Those were dark, dejected days for me.
The following Thursday, after I met Vishakha, she suggested we go to a nearby park to talk — in the coffee house, with eavesdroppers always listening, it was hard to speak freely. We went and sat close together in a quiet corner. Vishakha told me that flat or no flat, her father insisted our marriage take place after Diwali that year.
I wanted to say something, but one look at her face silenced me. Then she said she thought that, to begin with, we would have to live in her family's Bhukum flat, since there was no other way.
I had to agree, setting my pride aside, though it was a hard decision to make. Just then, a thought struck me. This was fate's own tit-for-tat — I had once carried Vishakha piggyback on our picnic to get past an obstacle, and now she was carrying me, in a manner of speaking, past another one. I burst out laughing. Vishakha looked puzzled, so I told her what had crossed my mind, and she began laughing too. We gave this small, out-of-the-box arrangement a name that day — "Mulshi Pattern." It became a favourite phrase among all our friends.
I brought the subject up with Aai. She had watched all my efforts over those two months and seen how disappointed we both were. She said nothing at first, only asked when Vishakha could come to our house again, preferably mid-morning.
"Is it important?" I asked.
"Yes," she said.
Within the week, I arranged for Vishakha to visit. When she arrived, Aai was already dressed and ready. The three of us walked to the end of our lane, then further along another, about half a kilometre from our house, and stopped beside a new building that was just about ready for occupation.
We went into the builder's office and sat down. After a while, the builder appeared — he seemed to know Aai, and welcomed her warmly. Aai told him we wanted to see a flat. Vishakha and I were utterly bewildered by then, but we kept quiet and followed. We climbed two floors and entered a flat — two bedrooms, a hall, a kitchen, the whole arrangement complete. Aai asked Vishakha to walk through it and tell us whether she liked it. We went around together, and Vishakha said she loved it. There was nothing about it not to love.
We went back downstairs and sat again in the builder's office. He turned to my mother. "So, Girijabai, what have you decided?"
"Yes," my mother said, "we like it. I have brought one lakh in cash with me. Give me a receipt and complete the paperwork — I will pay the full price at the time of registration."
"Okay," the builder said. He took the cash and handed Aai a receipt.
Then my mother turned to Vishakha and called her "Sunbai" — respected daughter-in-law. "I may be poor now," she said, "but I want my daughter-in-law to enter a proper Shinde family household as a bride, after her marriage. Remember — I too am a daughter-in-law of the Shinde family, and a daughter of the Mane family. I cannot have it any other way, come what may."
We went nearby afterward and had lunch, Vishakha still speechless from the turn of events. Before she left, my mother told her, "Ask your father to arrange a proper sakharpuda, an engagement ceremony. From our side, only four of us will come — the two of us, Nana Joag, and Vahini." Then Aai smiled, a smile I had not seen on her face in many, many years.
Once home, I asked her, "What is all this about? Where did you get the money? I must know — why didn't you tell me before?"
Aai promised to tell me everything, the whole story. She had kept quiet, she said, only so that Vishakha and I could see for ourselves how hard it truly was to find a house.
Then she took me back to the time of my father's death. My father had suffered from cancer, and he knew that his brothers would never allow his widow and son to remain in the family home after he was gone. He had an old, close friend from his school days, Nana Joag — a man I knew well, and who had helped us many times over the years. When my father learned of his illness, he wrote to Nana, telling him that after his death, his widow would most likely come to Pune, and asking his oldest friend to look after her. Nana had agreed without hesitation.
After my father died, one night my Aaji — his mother — came into my mother's room past midnight and woke her. She warned her that the brothers, who had already turned against her, would likely drive her out of the house the next day. She handed my mother a cloth-wrapped parcel and said it held all her jewellery, including what she had brought from her own parents' home. "Keep this hidden," she said, "and take it with you. I will take you to my brother's place myself, and from there we will decide what to do next."
Just as predicted, my uncles picked a bitter fight with Aaji the next day and told her plainly — either my mother stayed, or they would. Aaji answered that Girija would go, but on one condition only: she would not walk out like a beggar, but leave in their own bullock cart, and Aaji herself would take her to her brother's house to decide what came next. So the two of them left together.
Once there, my mother made it clear she had no intention of staying at her parents' place in her present condition — she wanted to go to Pune instead. My Aaji's brother agreed, and accompanied her there a day or two later, to Nana Joag's house.
Nana lived in a large wada in Shaniwar Peth. He welcomed Aai and found her temporary lodging, and helped her with some money besides. Later, when my mother asked him about keeping her jewellery safe, he took her to his bank, opened a savings account in her name, and rented a vault for her. He also deposited some cash into the account. Slowly, he helped settle her into our room in Navi Peth and introduced her to the work of rolling incense sticks. Over the next twenty-two-odd years, Aai had to sell a few pieces of jewelry to cover my school fees and other expenses, but most of it remained untouched. She had decided long ago that when I married, she would use that gold to buy us a proper house.
I could not say a word. I cried that day like a small child.
Afterward, Aai said, "I have given you a proper house. Now it is your duty, the two of you, to make it a home."
I could only agree. The following Sunday, when I told all of this to Vishakha in the park, she too fell silent. All she said, finally, was that she would try to be as good a daughter-in-law to the Shinde family as Aai herself had been.
Aai, however, would not be moved on one point — when I raised the idea of her moving in with us to the new house, she put her foot down firmly. She told me that under no circumstances would she leave Navi Peth. That was her world, and there she would stay. No amount of persuading, from either Vishakha or me, could change her mind.
I sometimes wonder if women possess some special intuitive power that we do not. Perhaps that is why Vishakha had, from the very beginning, been suggesting the exact arrangement I had once opposed so strongly.
With our final agreement given, Vishakha's parents began preparations for the engagement ceremony. It was planned as a simple function — Vishakha's family, a few relatives, friends, and members of the Mulshi Club were invited. From our side, only four attended: my mother, Nana, Vahini, and I.
My mother had one more surprise in store. Since we could not afford gold rings, we had planned to exchange silver ones instead. But at the ceremony, Aai produced two gold rings — a smaller one for me, and one for Vishakha — and asked us to exchange them. From her bag she also drew out a saree, which she gave to Vishakha to drape right then. Vishakha looked so lovely and so happy that day. Vishakha's father presented me with new clothes in turn. Afterward, we shared some snacks, and the function came to a close.
That evening, I met Vishakha again. She suggested we go for a ride, and once we had started, she asked — why not go to Bhukum and see her flat? I told her we did not have the keys. She only said, "Let's go," and I had to turn the bike toward Bhukum. Vishakha loved riding pillion, her arms wrapped around me, her head resting against my back.
When we reached the flat, we went in and closed the latch behind us. Vishakha crossed the room almost running toward me, and neither of us could hold back any longer. I opened my arms, and she came into them. We stood like that for a long time before we kissed, on the mouth, again and again.
After months — perhaps years — of holding back everything we felt, we finally talked, and talked, and talked.
After one more round of parting kisses, we left for Vishakha's home in the happiest of moods. All our troubles seemed gone. After such a long stretch of hardship, fortune, at last, was smiling on us. It need not be mentioned that we paid many more visits to Bhukum flat later, quite often.
(Continued to Chapter 4)
(All characters places except for geographical names events actions of people are fictional. Any similarity found is purely accidental. All images AI generated)