The Woman My Grandmother Loved.

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six.

Becky's letter didn't take much time in arriving. It made Anita wonder what she must have written. There were a hundred and one possibilities but she didn't want to know any one of them. There is the benefit that ignorance, not knowing allows you to have. When the letter lay underneath the pile of clothes in her closet, Anita could rest easy. She didn't have to repress the desire to answer Becky; for when she didn't know the question how could there be an answer?

The engagement had been a hush-hush affair. Anita's mother was superstitious and particularly wary of Anita's sudden decision to get married. Her daughter had always been vehemently against the institution of marriage and suddenly she had yielded as though all those years of defiance had amounted to nothing. Her father was secretly disappointed but he never showed it. He didn't think anybody was good enough for Anita and he believed that every man would only weigh her down. But when his wife had breached the subject for the seven thousandth time, talking about Mr Lal's son, Anita had suddenly agreed. There was no fanfare about the declaration; she had simply looked at her mother and said, "Haan. Mil lungi. Just like that. All those years of Maa, aap kyu nahi samajhti ho?" and the teary outbursts of "Nahi karna mujhe shaadi. Nahi hoga mujshe bacche sambhalna, shaadi sambhalna."

They were all surprised when after meeting him for the first time, she had just shrugged and said, "Haan boldena." Just like that. No second meetings; her father feared that she had given up. It seemed so defeatist and unlike Anita. The boy Anita's mother had chosen didn't really match her well but he wasn't entirely a bad choice. He didn't seem like the person people would've envisioned Anita landing up with. He wasn't wrong, but he wasn't right either. He seemed like a safe choice, a lukewarm refuge for Anita's scalding waters. And then there had been the engagement. It had made Anita's father uneasy.

She had been smiling and laughing like any other bride during her engagement. She sat correctly, made polite conversation and was agreeable.

In other words, she wasn't herself.

It scared Anita's father but when he mentioned it to his wife, she just brushed it off saying, She's grown up after all these years! She's become a sensible woman at last. He had been pondering over his wife's demeanour over the past years and the more time went by, the more he was convinced that she was venomous. While some of it might be the traditional husband tendency to demonize one's wife, there was still some truth to it. Whether the old man wanted to admit it or not, he was more than just Anita and Roop's father. He was Bhuwan's father as well.

He had been Bhuwan's father and he had failed the boy miserably.

Bhuwan was his wildest, most rebellious child. He was born with such an intense hunger for life, travelling all around seeking answers. Was he responsible for killing the hunger and thereby killing his child? He is remorseful of all those years he had wished Bhuwan were more normal. What is normal after all? People are born different kinds of normal; nobody is born the wrong kind of normal.

Then, there was his Anita. His youngest, beautiful and intelligent child. She had the same wild streak as Bhuwan but she wasn't as impulsive and haphazard. She asked the same questions as Bhuwan did but her methods were different. He wondered if in forcing her to be normal, he was watching another Bhuwan in the making. Anita had been Bhuwan's favourite and in the last years, his only link to the family. She was the only one who he came home for and she had taken his loss particularly hard. He couldn't afford to lose two children, could he? But at the same time, how was he to breach the conversation? Was he to ask his daughter why her smile didn't reach her eyes? Or why she had agreed to wear the ghunghat and lower her head in submission? It was his fault, he had let her fight alone for too long. He had let his wife convince her that a woman's place is indeed behind a man.