Playing House

I knew he was pissed from the clenching of his jaw, and the way his shoulders locked into squares. A shiver of excitement ran down my spine as I held up his shirt, staring at him through the peninsula-shaped hole burned in it. It felt as though we were playing house, pretending to be husband and wife. I half-hoped he would shout. I would reply with, ‘I have only two hands,’ like I had heard Ma say to Papa. But he only walked out, shaking his head, door slamming behind him.

I chewed through a dry chapati in silence, then stared at the clock. My profile on that stupid website had advertised me as ‘homely’ and ‘talented’. If that was a lie, then this waiting-for-the-husband act was my penance.

I must have dozed off on the sofa, the one Ma had insisted was a gift, not a dowry. The embroidery was itchy through my nightgown. When the lock turned, I sat up, bleary-eyed, and stared. Rakesh stood in the doorway, his expression unreadable.

‘Dinner?’ I croaked.

He walked straight to me and gripped my forearm – not roughly, not tenderly. He didn’t pull me to my feet either.

‘Rakesh?’ I said stupidly, stumbling as he dragged me down the corridor. He didn’t smell of whiskey – just sweat and talcum.

We’d only done it twice before. Both times, he’d checked in after every motion, his voice catching like a schoolboy rehearsing dialogue in front of a mirror: ‘Is this okay? Is this alright?’ I had only pretended to come each time.

He pushed me onto the bed with a force that surprised even him and yanked my salwar down. I tensed, but didn’t resist. The pain was sharp at first, then dull, then irrelevant as I came.

The fan ticked overhead.

My underwear was tangled around my ankle.

He snored softly.

Ma had said, ‘The third time is when you truly become husband and wife.’

The next morning, I cooked poha, his favourite for breakfast. He reached for his plate, then paused, fingers brushing mine, eyes averting.

‘I was drunk.’

*

Vimla wasn’t an apology, but an olive branch. I was unusually quiet after that night because I knew he expected me to be afraid. A part of me enjoyed playing the submissive wife, while another liked watching him squirm with guilt.

He returned early from work on Wednesday with a shy grin and the dark-skinned matron. The first thing I noticed was her teeth, gapless and gleaming like a tube light in her face. She didn’t smile, she simply grunted as though her presence was all the explanation I needed.

‘Vimla is to take some of the work off your hands,’ Rakesh supplied, ushering her past me. ‘So that you can rest.’

‘Rest’ was just a euphemism for my apparent incompetence – something he would never have the guts to confront me about.

I all but gnashed my teeth through my smile. ‘You didn’t have to.’

He took my hands in the kitchen and gave me a shy shrug like a little boy waiting to be praised. She stood there gawking as though she were a part of the conversation.

‘It must be expensive, na?’

His thumbs brushed across my knuckles, touch featherlight. ‘That’s not for you to worry about.’ He would have kissed me then, had she not been there.

*

I never cared much about having a career. Not a fashionable thing to say now, I know. But I didn’t have to pretend. Papa owned three tile factories.

Ma and Papa were surprised when I said I wanted to get married after graduation. But not as surprised as when they learned that no boyfriend was waiting for me with a ring. Ma took me aside, her eyes fixed on my stomach, face pale with the unspoken question. I don’t think she was truly convinced that I was not pregnant.

Papa reached out to his business circle, but it was from the slew of matrimonial sites that I started hearing back. Most of them wanted working wives, preferably doctors, engineers, or those with an MBA. Others were very particular about skin tone and height. I was average in both respects – not dark, but not fair either, rounding off at a 5’2”, so it took a few months for the matches to stop ghosting me. Rakesh was thirty-two and desperate to settle down when I met him. A dash of red lipstick and a plate of samosas was evidence enough of my ‘homeliness’ for him, and the deal was sealed.

Ma and Papa would have preferred an alliance with a business family, but my urgency seemed to hint at something untoward, in which case they seemed to think it was advisable not to pry. And there was nothing particularly wrong with Rakesh. He had a pleasing smile, a stable job at a bank, and did not drink. That, combined with the charm of an older man, past his days of fucking around, made the match irrefutable. To top it all off, his mother had passed away a few years earlier. .

*

Vimla was a creature of habit. She had established a daily routine without consulting me, and she never deviated from it throughout her employment. She would wake up at six to iron Rakesh’s clothes, make him tea, and cook his breakfast. Once he left, she would wrap her sari around her waist, exposing her fleshy thighs, squat, and bend over to scrub the floor. Then, she would clean the bathroom with an unnatural sincerity, plunging herself neck-deep into the bowl. I never allowed her to make my bed, though. Even though she bathed afterward, the thought of her touching my sheets with the same hands with which she had scrubbed the toilet made my stomach churn. I am unsure if she sensed my repulsion because she never gave any indication that she did. Perhaps she was used to it. Not that I was cruel to her or anything. After all, except for the thing with the bed, I never objected to her running the house the way she wanted. I suppose that it was because a part of me was frightened of her.

One evening, as she was sweeping the kitchen floor, her blouse slipped down her shoulder, exposing the curve of her sagging breasts. I glanced around hurriedly and to my relief, saw that Rakesh, sitting with the newspaper in the living room, hadn’t noticed her. She seemed to have no qualms about shamelessly revealing herself.

‘Vimla,’ I whispered, looking over my shoulder.

She lifted her head slowly, wearily, as though that simple act had cost her an immense amount of effort.

‘Blouse!’ Telling a woman of Ma’s age to cover up felt strangely funny.

She raised an eyebrow, slowly covering herself.

‘There is a man in this house,’ I added without conviction because it seemed like something Ma would say. She rolled her eyes, as though seeing through my pretence.

Rakesh never told me how or why he had picked her. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if his eyes had lingered over her frame the way mine did, even subconsciously.

When he was around, I would chide Vimla to hurry up or scold her for some imaginary error to maintain the facade of usefulness. He continued sending me a small but sufficient monthly ‘allowance’ so that I wouldn’t have to take his permission for my expenses.

If only he would stop congratulating himself on how ‘balanced’ her sambhar and how ‘crispy’ her fryums were. We both knew that the real source of his happiness lay in knowing that there was nothing I could do to displease him anymore. After that night, he had gone back to being gentle and tentative in bed again. I only half-jokingly asked afterward, ‘Do you slot it into your calendar every week?’

He didn’t laugh. I could make out the stiffening of his body as he rolled onto his side, pretending to be asleep. There was something pitifully weak about it, and I learned never to ask that question again.

As weeks passed by, my obsession with Vimla only seemed to grow. I repeatedly scolded her for how she dressed, even calling her a ‘slut’ in a fit of rage , but she seemed unmoved. There was something primal about how her sari clung to her pouchy midriff, or how sweat patches shadowed her underarms. Her body appeared to be of no consequence to her as if she were above caring about such worldly matters.

Rakesh barely even noticed her as long as she did his bidding. She didn’t seem to care about his dismissiveness, though. I would catch her quietly humming to herself as she chopped vegetables in the kitchen, seemingly locked in her world.

Once, after Rakesh had fallen asleep, leaving me unsatisfied, I climbed out of bed and went to the kitchen, behind which lay the servant’s room. I pretended to fumble with a water bottle, dropping the cap, so that I could slowly nudge the door open with my foot. Vimla was on her side, snoring like an elephant. The sight should have been repulsive, but there was something strangely arousing about her vulnerability. I should have closed the door, but I didn’t.

I rucked up my nightgown to my waist, my breath shallow.

Sweat trickled down my neck in the April heat.

My quivering frame cast a shadow across the kitchen floor in the moonlight.

Minutes passed, or perhaps hours – I couldn’t say.

A gasp escaped my mouth, and she sat up in her creaking cot. She flicked on the light switch before I could move. Heart pounding, I withdrew my hand, and the gown fell back down.

She took in my splayed out legs, eyes finally falling to the floor. ‘You spilled water,’ she grunted, rising after a pause. I was standing in a small puddle; the bottle was empty on the floor.

I stood rooted to the spot as she walked past me, into the kitchen to retrieve a rag. ‘Go sleep,’ her voice was heavy with annoyance, as she began wiping up. Feeling small and humiliated, like a scolded child, I returned to bed.

Rakesh stirred awake at the movement and turned to me in confusion. Hot with shame, I climbed on top of him. He lay still but didn’t push me off.

I came again that night.