Periods, Pyaar And Patriarchy

Chapter Twenty

Seema hadn't taken the news of the engagement ring as badly as Shruti would've thought she would. What Shruti had expected was her mother's eyes to widen into a glare, the black of her pupils dilating until they formed an unavoidable, angry black hole. She had expected her mother to berate her, to tell her harshly something along the lines of, "What have you done? Are you stupid?"

If Seema had done any of these things, Shruti would've known what to say. She would've known when to cry, how to ask her mother to forgive her. But Seema hadn't been any of these things.

When she'd seen the ring, she had stilled almost as though she'd become a statue. And only after a while, she'd said with a low resignation in her voice, "Well, I suppose you've given your answer, then."

That was all that she had said before revving up the car again. She hadn't said anything after that, letting the ring stay just where it was and it was only after they hit some of the rough bumps on the road, had the ring clattered on the dashboard and Seema had said, "You better keep that safely, it looks very, very expensive."

Shruti had taken the ring from her mother in a dazed haze, not knowing what had really transpired. But knowing full well; that something had changed. Shruti and Seema's relationship had always been easy, much easier and confiding than Shweta and Seema had. Shruti wasn't like her mother in a lot of ways and surprisingly, that made it easier for her to read her mother and to understand her.

But at that moment in the car, whatever had happened was beyond Shruti. Seema's usual go-to reaction was anger. She was angry, glaring, scolding, clucking and grumbling like an overprotective mother hen. But now, at one of the most important crossroads of Shruti's life; she had just conceded defeat. The conversation had ended up becoming something else; the silence in the car suffocating her.

Her mother didn't talk to her the entire way home after that and Shruti didn't dare break the silence for a second time. There was something that felt almost fearfully sacred about the silence. It felt as though something would be lost if Shruti were to break it sooner than it was to break. The bubbling and simmering of Seema's thoughts would have to come to their own conclusion without Shruti having to push her way through.

When they'd reached home, Seema had reversed the car in the garage and Shruti's hands were shaking as she opened the car door. She could feel her mother's gaze on her but as she turned around to catch her mother's eyes, Seema had turned her head. But in that brief, split second of time- Shruti had caught the emotion in her mother's eyes. The cloudy, chilling look of disappointment that Seema had tried to hide as she turned her head around, but Shruti had caught it.

Everything had been on autopilot since then. Seema still hadn't broken her silence and the only conversations she had with her mother were the ones on the dinner table to make sure that Shweta didn't suspect anything. And Shweta; who mostly had a tendency to be very clueless about anything that didn't directly affect her, had begun sensing the cracks.

Seema wasn't silent because she was angry; Shruti realized that. Seema was silent because she was afraid that if she opened her mouth, the disappointment would show. When Shruti had failed the medical entrance examinations, Seema hadn't been disappointed- she'd just been passive-aggressive. That was something Shruti could deal with- but this, she wasn't sure she could. Seema was quiet because she loved her daughter so much, she wanted to protect Shruti from her own disappointment.

Why was she disappointed? The question drove Shruti over and over to the edge. Why? Was it because she had expected Shruti to become this powerful, independent woman who didn't need a man? But wanting love wasn't weak- she'd spent two years with a curly-haired therapist who'd convinced her that. Then, what was it? Was she afraid of Shruti repeating Seema's life? If she, Shruti wasn't afraid of that; why was her mother afraid of it?