She had hoped it would be a daughter. but Somu took after his father even when he was six months old. For Somu, as for his father, she had a utilitarian value in their all male world of mathematics and sports. With a daughter perhaps things would have been more tolerable and shareable. Except that Rajiv was glad that they had a son and not a daughter.
She brooded with her head on her knees. She cried a little, softly sobbing away a funny kind of pain in her breast. Weeping was a luxury she indulged in when she was either alone or with Prashant. Even now he was holding her in his arms, comforting her without words, just holding her as if to say that everything would be okay.
She hugged her knees, sitting on the carpet, and rocked herself gently to and fro.
She let her thoughts wander from the magazine she had absent-mindedly picked up. It was a film magazine, and she had been through it at least six times. She preserved these magazines for the sake of their pictures. They spun up romantic images for her and transported her into an entirely different world of glamour and wealth. These magazines were the only literature she read now. It troubled her strangely when Rajiv decided to sell them off to the raddiwala. It also troubled her if Rajiv found her looking into one of the pictures.
She started thinking about the dinner. It should be simple tonight, after the elaborate affair last night. She planned three dishes, mentally detailing the preparation of each, thinking about the ingredients.
Her life revolved around food. How much, what and how of cooking. Serving it after that. Breakfast, packed lunch, tea, dinner - for her husband and son - day in day out, even on Sundays and holidays, years after years. Anyway, she liked cooking, she thought, so it was all right. And it was healthier, cheaper, more satisfying.
It was only since last two or three years that she had started liking cooking. For as long as she could remember, cooking had been more of a punishment than anything else. It used to make her feel lonely, and bored her no end. Besides, she didn’t feel like eating anything after cooking it. In the beginning of her married life, she was utterly inept at housework. It was a source of endless entertainment to her husband and his friends. But they had a full-time maid-servant than, and their social life took up most of their time. She had taken a few cooking courses to fill up her spare time, and the dishes she turned out after the courses were highly appreciated by Rajiv - all the more because they were occasional and rich. Rajiv liked good food.
Then the servant had given notice and left. A succession of other domestics followed, but none were as good and the first one. After some months she found herself increasingly unable to get along with any of them. She wanted more and more time to herself. Life had organized itself in a servantless home gradually. A daily part-time help to do some of the heavier chores, once a day. Rajiv explained how much better it was not to have a servant breathing down their necks all the time. He said that he had been feeling for some years that they had become excessively and unnecessarily dependent on servants for their smallest needs, like getting a glass of water, polishing shoes, etc. He said it was so much more of a pleasure doing things by yourself.
It never occurred to anyone to remind Rajiv that the servant had been doing lots of tiresome daily chores which no one actually felt like taking up. Anyway, Rajiv had started going shopping and making breakfast, in a sudden spurt of generous energy. But she began objecting to spending fifty rupees on vegetables twice a week, as Rajiv did. He bought impossible things like sugarcane, which he said was very good for teeth, but no one had energy to eat it. Lots of out of season vegetables were bought, which she couldn’t appreciate either tastewise or pricewise. The daily help had a gala time for about a month when everything was given to her, cooked or uncooked.
She started shopping and going to the vegetable market because Rajiv was very indigent when told that he wasted money, and refused to go out anymore to shop.
And of course, the breakfast. They had had rich, oily breakfast for days, when Rajiv made it - fried eggs and bacon, cutlets, parathas with butter - till one day Somu fell ill with diarrhea and fever. He took eight days to recover from it. Rajiv never recovered, though. He doted on Somu neurotically, and developed a phobia for fried breakfast. She had to take over the charge, on doctor’s order so to say. Thus, breakfasts, packed lunches, teas, dinners, day in day out. She cooked all the time, or so she felt. Somu was growing up and Rajiv liked food. Good, rich food, that is. She tried her best.
She also did the cleaning and mending. Oh, yes, they helped. Rajiv washed his socks and handkerchiefs, sometimes even his underclothes and a shirt or two. She slowly got accustomed to his habit of soaking his clothes in soap water or surf, and then forgetting all about them. After some time, he even stopped noticing that they had been washed, ironed and arranged in the wardrobe. Somu was, of course, too young to do anything, but he laid the table off and on. Such loving husband and son. People considered her extremely fortunate. Her neighbors said they felt envious of her life. Their own husbands were too demanding, never lifting a finger. And they had two to four children each. She was so lucky.
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