Chapter 32
IRA
I stood in the kitchen, staring blankly at the strange, wrinkled vegetable lying on the chopping board.
Bitter gourd, I thought. Karela. I had never cooked it before.
Its bumpy skin looked unwelcoming, almost warning me not to try.
But my mother-in-law wanted it for lunch, and saying no wasn't an option in this house.
I glanced through the doorway, where she sat in her high-backed armchair like a quiet monarch, flipping through a book, perhaps the Ramayana again.
She read it every day, lips moving silently, her fingers rhythmically rolling prayer beads. Her devotion was tireless.
It had been three weeks since our marriage.
Three weeks of observing, adjusting, and sometimes just enduring.
What I had learned about this new family I had married into was both revealing and suffocating.
Prashant's family was traditional in the strictest sense.
Pure Brahmins. No onion, no garlic, certainly no meat.
The kitchen was a temple, and my mother-in-law was its high priestess.
She worshipped every deity under the sun, Shiva, Vishnu, Durga, even the obscure village gods.
There was no room for irreverence here. Even the act of cutting vegetables had to follow her unspoken rituals.
Pari and Priya, my sisters-in-law, were obedient to a fault.
They hovered around their mother like loyal puppies, eager to please, never defiant.
They didn't step out of the house without her permission.
Sometimes I wondered if they even went to the bathroom without checking in first. Their submission was total, almost programmed.
And yet, there was no resentment in them, only devotion, the kind I couldn't quite understand.
Prashant, meanwhile, lived mostly outside these walls.
His days were a whirlwind of bank visits, loan paperwork, ration store negotiations, and field inspections.
He carried the weight of this household, his father's long-passed responsibilities now settled squarely on his shoulders.
The house itself, I learned, was mortgaged.
Prashant had taken out multiple loans-one for Pari where she was about to begin her MBBS, and another to support Priya's fashion design course in the city.
The girls' dreams were expensive, and the family income could barely keep up.
At twenty-seven, my husband bore the burdens of a man twice his age. It made him quiet, reserved, serious in a way that didn't quite match the boyish grin I had loved years ago.
When I met Prashant seven years ago, he wasn't this man.
He was vibrant then, always laughing, always ready to help, generous to a fault.
I never once thought of him as broke. He had a way of making things seem okay, even when they weren't. He never hesitated to spend money when it was needed, and he never let on how tightly he was stretched.
After our marriage, I saw the truth. The house was crumbling, physically and financially.
I took the initiative to renovate it, trying to create some space, some comfort, some dignity.
But every nail I hammered in, every old chair I replaced, seemed to bruise his ego.
He watched his wife do what he had long wished to do but couldn't afford.
I saw it in his eyes, the shame, the helplessness, the quiet frustration.
And he let out all his irritation by breaking furniture I bought for this house.
I liked him not for what he gave me, but for what he tried to be.
For how tirelessly he worked to keep his family afloat.
For the selflessness that shaped his every decision.
But in all this, I often wondered, did he ever stop to think about himself?
Did he ever buy himself something without guilt?
A shirt? A good pair of shoes? I only ever saw him in the same three shirts and a pair of jeans that had faded from years of wear.
His sneakers were torn at the seams. He never complained, never demanded, never even hinted at wanting more.
I wanted to do something for him, not out of pity, but out of deep, quiet love or maybe something. I wanted to lift that invisible weight off his back. I wanted him to breathe, to smile freely, to feel if only for a moment that he wasn't alone in carrying this mountain.
So I started paying attention. I became a silent observer in this house.
I watched where he kept the loan papers, how he signed documents, where he stored passwords and account numbers.
I noticed the quiet way he always checked the mail before anyone else, the sigh he let out after each call from the bank.
It took me a week to gather everything I needed: account details, loan statements, and property documents.
I knew he would be furious if he found out.
Pride can be a fragile thing, especially in men like him.
But I didn't care. I would brace myself for anger, for raised voices, and for wounded pride.
Back in the kitchen, the karela still stared at me like a challenge. I picked it up, sliced it open, and began to cook. God, please save me from my mother in law.
______
I waited for the perfect afternoon. One of those hot, lazy ones where everyone naps after lunch.
Pari had gone to the tailor, Priya was locked in her room sketching out some blouse design, and my mother in law had dozed off with the beads still looped around her fingers, book open across her chest. Probably still Ramayana.
Prashant wasn't home either. He had gone to meet someone, maybe his relatives.
I watched him leave from the balcony. His walk was the same as he was used to carrying weight on his shoulders.
His shirt had a faded collar. I could tell which one it was without even seeing the front.
That same dull grey-blue one he always wore on "important" days.
I walked back inside and went straight to the small puja room, which doubled as a storage for all documents. It smelled of incense and camphor.
I knew where to look. I had seen him slide in the brown envelope under the stack of temple receipts, hidden under his mother's old wedding saree. My hands shook as I reached for it, as if I was stealing. Maybe I was. Stealing his burden from him.
I opened the envelope carefully, flattening out the papers on the floor.
Loan documents, signatures, interest schedules.
The red stamp of secured against property.
My fingers paused on the small hand-drawn map of the house.
The courtyard, the kitchen, the storeroom with the leaking tin roof I had fixed that roof.
I had painted that wall. It had become mine, this house, slowly.
And yet it wasn't. It still lived under someone else's name, inside someone else's file.
That thought made my breath catch.
I memorised the details. Account number. IFSC code. Outstanding amount. My brain worked faster than my nerves, calculating in real-time. I had enough. It would be tight or draining but I had enough. That emergency fixed deposit I had opened years ago. I had never touched it but I needed it.
The bank was a half-hour drive. I took Priya's scooty, she'd never noticed. I wore my plain cotton kurta and tied my hair into a loose braid as I didn't want to attract attention. It felt like I was sneaking out for something shameful, but my heart knew the truth.
The road blurred around the edges. My mind was already at the counter, talking to the manager, handing over the cheque.
I could imagine their reaction. "Are you the borrower's wife?
You want to clear the full loan amount?" They'd look at me as if I were mad.
Maybe I was. Who pays someone else's debt quietly without even telling them?
But I didn't want Prashant's thanks. I didn't want him to feel grateful or smaller or emasculated, that hated word. I just wanted him to breathe, really breathe. Without calculating in his head if he could afford it.
The bank manager was kind, a middle-aged man with thinning hair and turmeric stains on his fingers. "Madam, this is unusual, but yes, legally you can pay. His KYC matches yours. Just one second…" He flipped through files, clicked a few buttons. "Yes. This will clear the loan in full."
I signed, wrote the cheque, gave my ID, and sat there quietly while they printed out the "No Dues" certificate.
I took it and folded it neatly into my bag.
On the way back, I cried a little, just quiet tears pushed out by too many days of watching a man exhaust himself for everyone and no one ever asking him what he needed.
I reached home before sunset. My mother in law was still on the swing, this time peeling betel nuts. She glanced at me but didn't say anything. Pari was on the phone laughing loudly, and Priya had come out to show her mother a new design on Pinterest.
I went to our room, locked the door, and hid the file at the bottom of the suitcase.
That night, after dinner, Prashant came into the room looking tired. His eyes were exhausted as he plopped into bed. We had not sex for a week and I really didn't want to push him but I really liked when Prashant touched my body with his.
I slowly slid my hand to him to get hold of him but Prashant brushed my touch away gently. "I think we should sleep," he said with a small smile and lay on bed.
Pushing hurt away I lay next to him. I smiled. He didn't know. He wouldn't for another week. The bank would send a physical copy of the closure letter. He would open it and see it.
And he would be furious. I knew he would shout and ask why I didn't tell him. He would talk about pride, responsibility, being the man of the house.
But later, maybe the next day, maybe a week later, he would sit alone, look around the house and realize it was truly his now. Not in some paper filed away in a bank, but in peace and freedom.
That night I watched him sleep, his arm flung across his forehead, the ceiling fan whirring lazily above us.
I whispered into the dark, "You never had to carry everything alone, Prashant, not with me here."
And somewhere inside that darkness, I felt something lift. Maybe debt. I reached out and ran my fingers through his soft hair.
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