After shivering for some time in the winter morning, she mustered courage to pour cold water all over her body. She finished her bath quickly and was out within minutes. Sitting in front of the dressing table she filled the parting-line of her hair with vermillion, moving her hands softly not to make the red and white bangles jingle. She was not supposed to wake up the man who was lying asleep on the bed. The man who was a stranger till the previous day had become the most important person in her life — her husband. She looked at her sleeping husband and smiled coyly. She thought that she had fallen in love with him. In some of the Bollywood films she had watched, the heroines had smiled the same way when they were in love.
Before stepping out of her room, she adjusted the tip of her saree over the head so as to cover the face fully. A woman is not supposed to show her face to her in-laws and the people around. They would only see her bangled hands and her feet. Rest of her body, including her face, would always stay hidden in the complex wraps of the saree.
She walked towards the kitchen with butterflies in her stomach. It was her first day in the house and she had to prove herself to be a traditional daughter-in-law, worthy enough to belong to the house. For years, her mother kept on reminding her that her most important task in life was to become a dutiful daughter-in-law in her husband’s household.
Her aunt had brought the marriage proposal as the groom’s party was known to her. “The groom’s parents are not as greedy as many others in our community. They won’t keep pestering with demands apart from the dowry given at the time of wedding. They have agreed to take her in with a small dowry and haven’t demanded a car. Even the groom does not smoke or drink. Your daughter is the luckiest girl in the community.” The virtues of the groom and his parents lay in things they did not do and not in what they did.
In the kitchen, the mother-in-law was waiting for her. “This is your world now. I have asked the maidservant to stop coming from today onwards. Now that you are here, she is not needed,” she said. She did not acknowledge how good a deal that was — a maidservant who comes with a dowry and works for free lifelong.
“You can make flat bread for noon with vegetables and cooked lentils. Now that it is your first day, we are waiting to enjoy a sweetmeat made by you. If you have any doubt, you can ask me. I will be there in my room,” her mother-in-law said.
Her head covered by the anchal[1] moved in a nod. “How kind is my mother-in-law! She did not talk to me rudely,” she heaved a sigh of relief.
For the next couple of hours, she moved within the kitchen, searching for spices and utensils, kneading the flour, cooking the flatbreads and cutting vegetables. She kept the food ready on the table and informed her mother-in-law. Her husband and father-in-law ate the food without any comments and the father-in-law left a 100 rupee note on the table for her as per the custom of doling out a tip for the first food she cooked. He never had given away that big tip in any restaurant.
After they finished their meal, her mother-in-law ate hers. While she was doing the dishes, mother-in-law told her: “We do not waste food. We are quite strict about it. Whatever food is left from the previous meal, I keep aside in the refrigerator for the maid. She used to happily take them home. But she is not coming now.”
“Don’t worry mom. I will eat them,” she told her mother-in-law, who then retired to her room. She looked at the refrigerator. It was a relic from the century when refrigerators were invented. It was a matter of debate whether the paint or the rust owned the exterior more. The interior was the cheapest mode of having a glimpse of Himalayas as the icicles hung from the roof and glaciers had formed in the corners. The refrigerator had the unique quality of turning any food item into the most unpalatable substance.
She looked into the casserole. There were a few flatbreads left, which were sufficient for her. But as per the instructions, she had to finish those in the refrigerator. She took out the flatbreads from the previous day. They were hard and tasteless like dry wood and when she heated them, they became harder and she could barely chew them. The curries kept in the refrigerator did not even remotely taste like them.
The next day, she made fewer flatbreads. Her father-in-law opened the casserole, looked in and stood up and left for his room without uttering anything. An anxious mother-in-law opened the casserole and hurried towards her in the kitchen. “Did you make fewer flatbreads today?” she asked.
She was horrified to see her mother-in-law looking anxious. “Yes, I had a few old flatbreads in the refrigerator. So I made less,” she stammered.
“What did you do? Your father-in-law wants to see the casserole full of flatbreads. Else, he would sulk and leave without eating,” she said. “Quickly make a few more. I will pacify him and bring him back to the table,” mother-in-law said.
She hurriedly made the extra flatbreads and filled up the casserole. Like the previous day, she ate the old ones and kept the fresh flatbreads in the refrigerator for the next day.
Her days were fully engaged in cooking, washing and cleaning. She was happy that nobody had complaints about her.
At night, she applied kohl in her eyes and adjusted the vermillion and looked at herself in the mirror. She wanted to look her best when her husband would see her without the veil. She wanted him to feel lucky to have got her as his wife and expected a few nice words in return for the day-long work.
As soon as he entered the room, he closed the door behind him and switched off the light. After a few days, she realised that he was not interested in seeing her face. In that house, she moved about cooking, cleaning and washing clothes, without a face. They did not see her hands either. Chopping vegetables and scrubbing vessels were turning them rough and dark and the red and white bangles had lost their sheen.
They did not notice her feet nor her saree. She was nourishing them, providing them clean clothes to wear, keeping their toilets clean and tidying up their rooms. She was everywhere. But, like the air they breathed, she was invisible to them. She stopped applying kohl in her eyes and adorning herself. After some time, she became quite disinterested in seeing herself in the mirror.
She started falling sick quite often. Most days she would have stomach aches, sometimes the belly would bloat up and then at times she would throw up. Most days she did not want to eat. The plate of hard, dry flatbread and stale curries were nauseating. But she would force the food down her throat so as to not throw them in the bin. Dark circles had formed around her eyes and her skin was looking pale and lifeless. Nobody knew anything about what was happening to her until one day she collapsed on the floor.
They took her to the hospital and the doctor asked her husband about her food. “She eats what we eat,” he said. Unsatisfied by that reply, he turned to her and asked: “what do you eat? You seem to be having stomach problems for quite some time.”
“I usually eat stale flatbreads and curries from the previous day,” she said.
“Her stomach is terribly upset. Give her something fresh to eat before taking the medicines,” doctor ordered.
Her husband bought fresh flatbread and lentils. The aroma of the lavishly buttered flatbread and spiced lentils filled the room. She broke a tiny piece of flatbread, dipped it in the lentil curry and chewed it. But the body did not accept that unfamiliar food. It threw up all that went inside.
[1] Free end of the sari
Sangeetha G is a journalist in India. Her flash fiction and short stories have appeared in Orange Blossom Review, Decolonial Passage, Sky Island Journal, Down in the Dirt, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Kitaab International, Borderless Journal and Indian Review. Her stories have won the Himalayan Writing Retreat Flash Fiction contest and the Strands International Flash Fiction contest. Her debut novel, Drop of the Last Cloud, was published in May 2023.
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