Rati was sitting on the steps that stopped just outside the lawn when Alpana came to tell her that the guests had departed. She knew the verdict; had known it all along. Rejected. It was as if someone had stamped the word all over her. Since the day she was born, in fact. Babuji, desiring a son as his first-born, had refused to look at her after her birth. He had refused to speak to Amma at the hospital. Her birth had been a difficult one and Amma had lost a lot of blood. Even today she tends to tire out rather quickly and her face looks as though someone’s whitewashed it. The doctor says she is anaemic but neither Babuji nor Babuji’s mother, my Dadi, seem to care very much.

Babuji’s mother has always been rather mean to Amma, taunting her for producing an offspring – and a girl at that – who was “darker than a night tossed in a storm”.

Amma, being illiterate herself, had insisted on educating Rati and her two siblings. Rati’s brother, Shyam, shone at both academics and sports. He had performed exceptionally well this year by winning a gold medal at an inter-school badminton tournament. His name had also figured in the school’s ‘Hall of Fame’. His class teacher had given him a glowing report at the last parent-teacher meet. Babuji had taken him to the shopping mall just outside the neighbourhood and bought him a bicycle that evening.

Glowing tributes never came Rati’s way as she only shone in her needlework class. And needlework was not a graded subject. She would look forward to the plays held during the annual day when she would suddenly gain importance in everyone’s eyes with all the costumes and dresses that had to be sewn. The cushion covers and curtains in her house had been sewn and embroidered to perfection by her. That’s what Amma and her needlework teacher always said, anyway.

When she had graduated from high school with low passing marks Babuji had declined to pay for her higher education. “A waste ... throwing good money after bad,” he’d grunted. She had, then, enrolled at a polytechnic institute in the neighbourhood where she was learning dressmaking and costume design. She had topped her class this semester but no one at home had rejoiced except Amma. It was Amma who had accompanied her to the temple nearby and offered coconut and small change to the Gods. She had also lighted incense sticks at the temple and blown the conch hard. Later, she had bought laddus from the corner shop near the temple and distributed them amongst street urchins who had clotted around them.

“Rati! RATI!” The roof of the house was about to cave in, she thought, speeding indoors as if on skates. Ever since she had been a child, Babuji’s bellows had that effect on her. Obedience – unquestioning – had become second nature to her. With Alpana, her sister who was ten years her junior, things were different though. Alpana, whose pet name was Bitti, would share jokes with Babuji and even confide her little girl secrets in him. Babuji’s face would light up at the sight of Alpana and Shyam whereas his eyes would narrow into twin pinheads the moment they settled on Rati.

 “The guests have left the living room a mess, the fools!” Babuji snarled at the soiled cups and saucers and at her in turns. “Put those away before anyone drops in. And please tidy up the place as well.”

It was while dusting the dining space that snatches of conversation came floating up to Rati from her parents’ bedroom.

“Who will marry her now? They said she’s so dark and plain looking.” She could picture Amma wringing her skeletal hands worn out with washing clothes and dishes with cheap soaps and Babuji pacing about the bedroom in his semi-porous cotton kurta and pyjamas, crossing and re-crossing his arms.

“Dark and plain-looking”. The words reverberated inside her ears and shot through the back of her head. She thought of Kamal, the young man who had come to see her with his parents. He was dark – darker than her actually – and had a funny gait. Like a duck’s, she thought. But Amma always said that the boy’s looks and posture did not matter as long as he held a good job. The boy in question was a Block Development Officer, a real catch.

“Brijendra was saying I need to hike the bride price for her.” Brijendra Chacha worked as a clerk in the Public Works department.

“I should have joined a government office... I would have made tons of money like him.” Babuji’s voice had edged close to a sob. Today, she felt sorry for him. For both Amma and Babuji.

“I should have when I had the chance, especially when Brijendra told me to...” Babuji was muttering.

It was no secret how Babuji’s first cousin made money. It had only been week since he had “charged” a complainant Rs. 1.50 lakh to speed up his application. He had made the declaration rather smugly, rolling up his sleeves and thumping his chest.

“Aren’t you afraid of getting caught?” Babuji had asked as he sipped the tea Amma had served noisily, his voice hushed with awe.

“Afraid? Never! It is only cowards who are afraid of things like that.” Brijendra Chacha chuckled as he poured his tea onto a saucer.  Amma didn’t approve of the habit but hadn’t ever said so openly. “Don’t worry,” he slurped, “we’ll manage to find a suitable boy for your plain-looking daughter.”

“Plain? You call her plain? I think you are being overly generous!”

Rati hated the bride viewing ritual but she dared not express her opinion, especially in Babuji’s presence. It was Brijendra Chacha’s wife, Lakshmi Kaki, who finally managed to locate a groom for her. The boy was an engineer settled in Dubai. The bride-viewing was to take place in Brijendra Chacha’s house. “Let him see the girl in a ‘classier’ backdrop. It will add to her value,” he had insisted. Babuji and Amma agreed to the arrangement with obvious joy and relief.

He’s sure to reject me. Rati had not dared voice her thoughts as Amma and Lakshmi Kaki dressed her in one of Amma’s old Banarasi silk saris, an opus in mauve and blue. “That’s the thing about Banarasis,” Lakshmi Kaki was mumbling with a mouth full of safety pins as she draped the exotic pallu around Rati, “they never lose their lustre. Just look at the zari work.” With her mouth working and her toffee shaped lips jutting out, Lakshmi kaki looked somewhat comical. Rati wanted to laugh in spite of herself. With effort she controlled herself.

“Hey, stand straight, will you? I need to tuck in the pleats,” admonished Lakshmi Kaki as she inserted the folds expertly. “It is pure gold,” Amma was saying draping one end of the sari around her, “My father’s aunt had bought it for me in Benaras”. The mirrors embedded in the sari, catching light from one of the lamps in the room, were winking.

Amma had applied a mixture of gram flour, turmeric, and rose water to her face that morning. “Not that it will do much to lighten her complexion,” Babuji had remarked from behind the Navbharat Times. “Have you ever seen charcoal turning into chalk?” he’d chuckled turning over the cover page.

Rati had long learned to immune herself against Babuji’s barbs.

Lakshmi Kaki’s daughter, Nimmi, who’d just completed a beautician’s course from the city, was doing her make-up. “Just the right mixture of compact and moisturizer should do the trick,” she mumbled stirring a cream-like paste inside a stainless steel bowl.

“Please, not so gaudy, Nimmi didi! I will look like a ghost with all that powder and foundation.” Rati was wriggling under Nimmi’s vigorous ministrations.

“Who said so? My, my, you do look so nice!” Lakshmi Kaki was exclaiming holding up a mirror to her face.

Fair enough for a prospective groom to want to marry me? That too one who lives abroad and earns a fat salary?

“I must say Nimmi’s done a great job,” Amma was beaming.

“She looks like the decorated lights the rich display during Diwali.” Before Rati was able to decide whether Babuji was being plain sarcastic or genuinely complimentary the gate clicked open. The groom and his party had arrived, Brijendra Chacha’s liveried driver announced self-importantly.

The next few minutes were a blur as the two families exchanged pleasantries. “Pankaj wants a simple girl although he lives in Dubai,” a plump matriarch – whom Rati took to be the groom’s mother – with chubby toes and a tiny mole on her chin was crooning. “And we don’t want any dowry either,” joined in the gentleman seated next to her in a grey and black suit that looked a tad too uncomfortable for the weather.

“The father has a mean face but the mother looks nice, a little too talkative perhaps,” Nimmi whispered as she helped Rati prepare coffee for the little gathering. Dark roasted Brazilian coffee beans had been reserved especially for the occasion.

“Your daughter prepares coffee just the way I like it,” Rati’s prospective father-in-law looked at her and smiled revealing even teeth. She lifted her eyes almost drooping with mascara and eye liner to look at the groom who, too, was smiling but not looking at her directly. “It is just the way Pankaj likes it too, don’t you Pankaj?” the suit-clad gentleman laughed as if he’d made a joke.

“He, I mean Pankaj, seems to like you,” whispered Nimmi to her in the kitchen later. “Lucky girl!” she prodded her ribs with a spoon. Rati winced but said nothing. Her heart was plummeting faster than a comet. The groom was tall and good-looking, way out of her league.

“He hasn’t looked at me once!” she whispered to Nimmi, her face sallowing.

 “Silly! That’s the way well brought-up boys behave, don’t you know that?” Nimmi thumped her lightly on her left cheek.

The wedding was fixed for that month. The groom’s family didn’t want an ostentatious display. It was decided that only close relatives would be invited. For the first time, Babuji looked at Rati and smiled. He had also turned gentler towards her. His words were kinder, softer. As for Amma, her eyes were perpetually red with crying – both out of relief of having found a son-in-law and out of sorrow over losing her daughter.

It is too good to be true, I hope I am not dreaming.

Rati couldn’t remember the last time she had been this happy. Dreaming of her life with Pankaj she would often neglect household chores earning the ire of both Amma and Babuji. Only Babuji’s scoldings had become softer, more tamed.

The dream was splintered on the night of the wedding when Pankaj told her “quite categorically” that he was in love with his assistant in Dubai. That he’d married her out of parental compulsion. The assistant’s name, she learnt, was Fatima.

Her dreams doused, Rati devoted herself to her in-laws and her new home. Not that it helped matters as the abuses grew louder and harsher with each passing day. The rotund matriarch – Rati’s mother-in-law – said she wanted compensation for her daughter-in-law’s “frightful looks and mannerisms”.

“I think she looked pretty under the lights and with all that make-up. But after the make-up was removed... ugh!” the plump matriarch screwed up her nose. “And have you seen the way she slurps over her tea. What appalling manners. Poor Pankaj, he deserved so much better. Why did I have to force him into the marriage?”

Often Rati would escape into the kitchen to avoid the bilious din.

One day, while rolling out the chapattis, her mother-in-law had showered her face with flour. “There! This will make you look fairer, better than you’ve ever looked before.”

Her pride, such as it was, had been pricked since the day she had stepped into her in-laws’ house.

“Brijendra had said they would pay up soon after the wedding, liars!” her father-in-law had smouldered her with hot coal eyes.

“Brijendra had also spoken about the family... political connections, he’d said, hah!” the fat matriarch had bellowed with a burp.

Rati’s mother’s first cousin was a local politician known for his clout with the liquor mafia. “We were told he’d made tons of money granting illegal licenses. It shouldn’t hurt to part with some of that bounty,” had been her father-in-law’s sneering verdict.

Babuji had refused to part with a penny. The girl had always been trouble, he’d grunted during the last meeting at her in-laws’. Now that he’d married her off he was no longer her responsibility, he’d made it clear. Declining the glass of water offered by the manservant, he’d heaved himself out of the arm chair and walked out without looking back.

The beatings had started thereafter.

Her mother-in-law would stuff cloth into her mouth so that her screams wouldn’t escape the walls. Some of the neighbours who would drop by to view the new bride saw her cuts and bruises and go away without a word. But they would whisper amongst themselves. The whispers grew louder each day but hadn’t reached her in-laws’ house. Yet.

Today, things were different.

The morning had been unusually hushed. The placidity had sent a chill down Rati’s spine since mornings were usually pocked with taunts and insults.

The bed had been empty when she woke up in the morning. Pankaj had left early, which was strange as he usually woke up after she had served him tea in bed. Placing her soles firmly on the cold cement floor she looked about her. He wasn’t in the bathroom shaving either. As she rose she could hear a nerve inside her temple thud. 

She put out her hand to touch his towel and bathrobe. Neither appeared wet. Where had he disappeared to without taking a shower first?

Voices emanating from the kitchen sounded like hissing cactuses.

What was Pankaj doing in the kitchen at this hour?

Entering the kitchen she stopped at the door, her bone marrow sleeting. The voices had ceased as though an unseen hand had turned them off. Her mother-in-law, leaning against the kitchen slab, was staring at her with an expression she had not seen before. A smile was playing on her lips while her eyes gleamed as they settled on her.

Lowering her eyelids Rati moved towards the sink to do the dishes. She had not seen her husband moving towards the door. ‘Click’; she wheeled but it was too late.  Her sari had caught fire and the flames came rushing towards her. As smoke entered her lungs she began to cough. Dragging herself through the stinging haze she clutched Pankaj with all her might even as he tried to escape.

If the next-door neighbours hadn’t hacked the kitchen door both would have been charred to death. As it happened Pankaj died inside the ambulance that was rushing him to the hospital while Rati survived with minor burns.

The in-laws, in the meantime, had been turned over to the police by the neighbours.

On being discharged Rati was contacted by an NGO working with the burns ward of a hospital. Today, she teaches sewing to victims of acid and other burns at the NGO. Both Amma and Babuji visit her from time to time.