Rekha’s Raja

On a solitary night, it was quarter to 12 and half past the usual time Raja arrives home. Rekha grew uncomfortable in the presence of this newfound anxiety replacing her usual despondence in awaiting her drunk husband’s sinister knock on the door.

She grew jittery running the possibilities in her mind. Maybe the police, for once, caught him driving drunk. But Raja often slurred smugly that the police never checked auto drivers as they had fatter cows to milk. Maybe it was worse, maybe he was crashed, lying somewhere on the road, bleeding to death with no one to help. She censured herself for such brooding and apologized to the gods in the shelf across the room to redeem herself and then uttered a prayer for her husband’s safety clutching the ‘thaalee’ hung around her neck.

Silence ensued as the clock ticked by. Rekha teared up looking out the all too familiar barred window. She tried to wrestle her anxiety-ridden mind, only failing miserably to keep out the what-ifs and what-nots from creeping in. She murmured to herself that the worst thing that can happen to a wife is her husband dying. But the words lacked the weight truth ought to carry. She knew there is nothing bleaker than the life she had to look forward to with her husband.

There was that image again – Raja drowned in a puddle of his own blood. This time Rekha let it linger. If it was true, suddenly her life would open up to a world of possibilities. She would not be expected to remarry immediately. In fact, the history of a dead husband would send prospects away running. That image made Rekha chuckle for some odd reason. ‘God, how long has it been since I had a hearty laugh?’, she mused.

Is that liberty? It was hard for her to ever recollect a time she ever felt truly autonomous. Before she could notice, her musings turned into fantasies ruminating a future with freedom. Then like a switch had flipped, her fantasies came crashing down drowning her in guilt for wishing her husband dead. Is that the price for her freedom, a dead husband?

This notion made Rekha empathize with her own domineering mother’s life in matrimony. Rekha could see a vivid path that would turn her too into a spiteful old woman. At last, she understood her mother enough to wade through the resentment and pity her mother’s sorry existence. If and when Raja does return, would accepting her impending matrimonial doom be all that’s left Rekha like her mother?

She stopped for a moment to think again. She had no children to be responsible for, being only 2 months into the marriage. Is it the possibility of an accident that is bringing her excitement for the life ahead? No, it is having some semblance of control over her own fate, the slightest glimmer of possibilities other than playing pawn to a tragedy every night. A life of anxious days spent awaiting a husband whose moods only seem to swing from angry to horny. Even a life committed to faith, begging for alms outside a temple would be superior to a life chained to the drunken devil.

With the metaphorical forked road Rekha could see in front of her, she knew it was not a difficult decision with the options at hand. She wiped the tears rolling down her cheek, drew a deep breath and turned to the gods in the photo frames to guide and protect her in the hazy new road ahead. She packed her jewellery and stuffed her sarees into a bag. She looked around and realized that the house showed no signs of having ever known Rekha. She felt reassured that that’s the way it should have always been. She took the only small photo on the shelf. It was a picture of Durga perched piously on a lion with a calendar on the back. It had an address to a Women’s Self-Help Group in the city printed at the bottom in tiny letters.

She stepped out of the house and felt the blood rush through her like a vindicated man walking out the prison gates. It was the crack of a new dawn. She marched onward and never looked back.