Indian Unfolding: Musings Of A Small Town

Indian Parents and Divorce

An as Indian child, my mind was susceptible to the thought of our parents getting a divorce. "Women never get to leave their husband's home unless it's on a bier."

The 'get to' in my mother's sentence always haunted me, even after my father set her on fire. I, who always held back my anger every time when he vented out at her several times and spared me his anger, should have known better than to leave her alone in that house.

It made her happy to meet my girlfriend who wasn't much to look at but she understood me like no one else had. She took my hands in middle of conversation when mother told the stories of my childhood that she had told a million times before. In my heart I knew it were these memories that ultimately made her stop crying each time.

And it was these memories that made her forgive father each time too. She remembered how he was before the gambling started and it made her believe that she could still make him happy like she did before.

That day she had made cake, to welcome us and I was surprised. We had lost all money to fathers gambling and in the last years of me staying at home, all she cooked was simple meals, sometimes just chappati with chai. I took it that the circumstances must have changed, I didn't dare to ask her about them.

But I couldn't have been more wrong. As my mother talked, I could see my girlfriend's eyes rested on her face, looking for something deeper than she let us see. She always said she had a way of finding suffering on a face that tries to hide it. She squeezed my hands every now and then, when mother mentioned my father, or her parents or the neighbors who bought a new place and she hasn't been able to visit, despite them having called several times.

"Where will she go even if she gets a divorce?" I would ask her, looking around our one bedroom flat with a shared balcony. One day my girlfriend had had enough of my grunting and said she could come live with us.

This was not long before we found ourselves at my childhood homes eating a cake and laughing at things. When father came back, he glanced us a look and retired to his room without saying a word. I could tell that was in trouble but I left her to them, like I always had. She read this on me and smiled, saying that she had cake to feed him today.

That night I received a call from my neighbors saying that my house had caught fire and my mother had been rushed to the hospital. When she opened her eyes, much of her body in pain, she took my hand and said it was time to leave the godforsaken house.

"Standing there in that kitchen as flames erupted around me, it felt like he had set fire to my funeral pyre, and the gurney they lifted me on was nothing less than a bier. Oh, and the cake that I offered him, which made him mad and he wanted to burn the kitchen, that cake survived!" My mother would later recall as she told the story of that evening.