She sat in the cafe, drinking her coffee and staring out of the window. The file lay next to her handbag. It contained her divorce papers; a relationship which the judge had pronounced dead in the court that morning. She had never imagined that such would be an end to what she had considered one of the most important and beautiful bonds in her life. A permanent separation from her beloved husband whom she had found very handsome, witty, caring and charming in the initial days of knowing him. As she drank her coffee, scenes from the past eight years of her life flashed past her eyes.

An arranged marriage followed by a dream honeymoon in the snow-capped Himalayas. Life was bliss, full of new-found romantic love. Driving in the hills, singing songs, a ride on the yak’s back, walking through the forest and posing with the rabbits. And then back to reality to her husband’s house. That is when it all started. Life began to resemble a saas-bahu soap on TV. Daily bickering, family politics and the vamp sister-in-law – all of it was real.

“Oh God!” she said to herself, “Is this really happening to me? I thought this stuff only happens on TV”. She cried and told him “I can’t live here”. 

He assured her that they would go abroad soon. He had applied for a job overseas and they would leave. Six months of family drama and they were in a new city.

New city, new job, new people; it was like a dream come true. A cosy-apartment in a multi-storeyed building located on the sixteenth floor, overlooking a hill. Cool sea breeze in the evenings; located in the heart of the city. Finally things had fallen in place she thought as she stared at the multi-storeyed buildings that lined the horizon from her balcony. She thanked God every day for this small happy world that they had created together for themselves.

They went for vacations and travelled the hills, valleys, islands and beaches together. Walking along the beach and collecting sea-shells, could life get more beautiful than this? She was living her dream. Their tastes were alike. He was more adventurous in life with his food and outings and she loved seeing a new world through his eyes. He found her quite conservative in many ways but never failed to tell her that he thought she was brilliant and he loved her the way she was. They fought occasionally over the TV remote control as she wanted to watch her Hindi soaps and he his American ones. The arguments were short-lived since they could not stay much longer without talking to each other.

The more serious and longer lasting fights were only regarding his family. Their interference in his marital life even across the seas upset her. Their constant bitching about her over the phone, their jealousies and insecurities irritated her very much. She told him to tell them to mind their own business and he yelled back at her to mind her own first. Those were the times when things got nasty. Their egos clashed and neither could bear to hear negative stuff about their families.

Yet both of them made efforts to mend things after their arguments as the relationship meant a lot to both. They had known heartbreaks and their devastating impacts before and wanted things to work out in this sweet union of theirs. Life however had other plans for them.

She travelled overseas for a business meeting and when she returned home she found his bags packed. He was distraught and ready to leave.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, alarmed.

“My father,” he said, “he’s has had a heart attack. I need to be by his side, otherwise I will die here”.

“And what about us?” she asked. “My job contract ends next year!”

“You continue where you are, finish your contract and come back home next year,” he said.

“But this is my home! This is what I worked hard to set up,” she said.

“It isn’t mine and it never can be,” he replied.

She wept the whole night and in the morning he was gone leaving a void in her life and an empty house. For days she was depressed and found it hard to get up from the bed. The city that was once throbbing with life seemed listless to her. Everything had suddenly lost its meaning. She called up her mother who advised her to find a room-mate to share her apartment. She advertised in the newspaper and found a girl to share her apartment. The girl was a graduate student, a few years younger than her. She now had company, and the apartment became a home once again from which chatter and laughter would flow out. They went out shopping and eating together. They shared the cooking chores and took care of each other. The void was filled with the arrival of the girl in her house.

Other friends in the neighbourhood would join them for meals and their social circle increased. Weekend picnics and trips to the beach kept the cheer flowing. Once again she thanked God for rescuing her from a lonely existence in a foreign country. She felt that she had created a little family of friends for herself away from home and would feel sad when she would have to leave them behind. And soon the time to return came near. She had her fears and apprehensions. How would she go back and live with the same people who had inflicted so many wounds on her, had poisoned her husband against her and pulled him back from their beautiful little nest.

She called him and said, “I am coming back but don’t have a clue as to how I am going to share the roof with the people whom I have no desire to see”.

Irritated with her question, he hissed back at her “Come if you want to or just stay where you are”.

Tears rolled down her cheeks after the phone call ended. He was not interested in addressing her problems. In fact he did not see a problem at all. The only problem according to him was her “negative attitude”. She kept asking herself what she was doing and why she was going back. Was there a way out? But that meant a separation from her husband whom she loved very much. There were conflicting voices in her head. She wanted their relationship to work out and decided that she would go back to her country and stay in his house.

Back in his house she was welcomed with stern and angry looks. They wanted her to feel guilty for having lived apart for a year and failing her wifely duties. Verbal conversations had turned into physical actions showing contempt. The food that she cooked would be rejected, fed to the dogs or the helpers that worked at home. Doors were slammed at her face. Her movements were closely observed and she was discouraged from going out of the house or making any friends. She spent most of her time locked up in her room, chatting with friends on social media. Her husband was a different person. He would come back home late and would work on the weekends leaving very little time for any meaningful interaction between them. She would spend her weekends alone, locked up in her room and feeling frustrated. She started to talk about taking up a job and that suggestion was met with a hostile response. They wanted her to be locked up in the house doing domestic chores.

It became hard for her to breathe in the toxic environment of his house. Every moment was filled with conspiracy, hatred and a deep dislike for each other. She wanted a change of scene and came over to her parents’ house for a visit.

Her mother looked at her and knew that something was terribly wrong. She asked “What’s wrong with you? You appear so sick and angry. Why’s your body so bloated?”

Bitter and angry tears rolled down her cheeks as she yelled, “That house! I don’t ever want to go back there, I am choking, I am dying, Oh please don’t ask me to return there!”

***********

It was a hot afternoon in May. She changed two metro trains and reached his office by 2 pm. The office was in a narrow lane in an urban village located in the southern part of the city. There was a dargah opposite it. She felt a tinge of hope as she climbed up the stairs. On the wall adjoining the staircase were pictures of socially disadvantaged and deprived children who were smiling. The girl at the reception greeted her with a smile. “Come in Madam, he is ready to see you.”

She entered his room and saw him – a bald, old man with a gentle face and pleasing manners. He had a kind smile just like the one she had seen in his pictures on the internet.

He stood up and walked up to the water dispenser to bring her a glass of cold water. “You must be thirsty by now, the heat is quite severe!”

“Yes,” she said thankfully gulping down the water.

He said, “Well you can join work from tomorrow. Welcome aboard!”

She heaved a sigh of relief and said to herself ‘Another new beginning, may it be a good one!’ The work was exciting. It involved research on social marginalisation. 

Days flew by. Many young people joined her team; most of them younger to her by a decade. Slowly and steadily a strong bond of togetherness began to develop among them. They shared not only office space but also food, jokes and travel experiences. Her team began to feel like a family, caring, sharing and teasing each other through their travels. As the travels grew so did the wisdom. They met people in extremely difficult and deprived situations. They realised that their own struggles were quite petty before the people they were meeting and interviewing. They stayed in the houses of people whom they had never known before, receiving incredible hospitality and developing deep bonds that would last for a lifetime.

They saw malnourished children defecating in the open and then playing on their own shit. The scenes were as disturbing as they were real. They met an old wrinkled woman, with a bent back who scarcely ate or washed herself. She was angry with life. She yelled at them “get lost, what are you people doing here?” They tried to placate her but she said, “People like you have come and gone, but our lives haven’t changed for the better since the time we were born, it only gets worse with time”. Their pens worked hard as they wrote about the unjust world together.

Her wounds had begun to heal. There was much lesser time to think about the negative incidents of her past life. There was bigger work at hand to finish and larger questions in life to be answered. This new-found camaraderie was like a balm on the abrasion that time had inflicted on her. Two years had gone by. Like sand from the fist some relationships had slipped out of her life. And yet it felt that time had placed some fresh moist soil in her fist. It was comforting and rewarding to spend time with the newly formed friends.

She shook herself out of the trail of thoughts and looked at her watch. “Oh God! It is 4 pm. I need to get home and bake the cake.” Three of her team-mates were going abroad for higher studies and she was meeting them later that evening for a farewell dinner. She wanted to bake a cake for them. She did not want to be late for the party. After all, today was a new beginning of the rest of her life and she wanted to celebrate it with something sweet. She picked up her handbag, and the file kept next to it from the table and headed out of the café determined to bake a perfect cake. A moist chocolate cake it would be!