Her Husband's Rival

four

I tiptoe in the hallway leading to Neil’s room and slowly, carefully press the handle down and open the door. Once I’ve managed to unlock the room without making a noise, I dart straight for the closet with padded feet without even looking to see if Neil’s in the shower yet or not.

This is a routine I’ve been doing for the past year and a half and it’s basically something my body is now attuned to. A few days after Neil so ceremoniously threw me out of the room and I spent my days sleeping in Bharat Kaka’s room while he stayed with his daughter, my mother-in-law finally found out about her son’s shenanigans after she heard Bharat Kaka advising me to take care of my living issue soon because it broke his heart to see my suffering.

Rajlakshmi Rajan, my mother-in-law addressed this matter at a family meal which ended with me being called “an uneventful, unnecessary, black-mail wife” by Neil while he claimed himself to be “a victim of my father’s vicious greed”, his words, none mine, and it was finally decided that I’d live in a guest room but all my necessities would remain in what should be our room since we’re a couple.

The people in this house have made such a joke of something as holy as a marriage. Mummy-ji is always in deep water with my father-in-law. I’ve seen Mahesh Rajan hit his wife across the face for something as trivial as spilling orange juice on his newspaper and not one single person batted an eyelash.

Not Neil who saw his mother getting abused at the hands of his father. Not the workers they finally hired who watched their boss hit his wife. And definitely not the man himself who later ordered Mummy-ji to tear a piece of her saree she was wearing and clean the mess she’d made.

I’ve never claimed to be soft-hearted. Instead, having grown with a manipulative father myself, I obviously expected some kind of patriarchal politics in this house but I’d never expected to witness domestic abuse happen so nonchalantly.

I’m sure my father hits my mother but he’s never done that in front of an audience. A gentleman and all that. But watching Mahesh — because it puts an ick in my mouth to even call a homo sapien like him my father-in-law — be so casually rude with Rajlakshmi — while she may take her husband’s abuse, she’s never made an attempt to put an end and instead has only encouraged it by abusing the least harmful in the house, me — even makes my father look like an okay man.

I exhale a breath and quickly slide the tiny wardrobe space that I have where all my clothes lie rampant because there’s not enough space to fold and keep them neatly, I grab a red, chiffon saree, its matching blouse and start draping it.

“Come on, come on,” I mutter to myself, moving my hands faster.

Neil absolutely loathes seeing me anywhere in his vicinity. Even though he knows my clothes are in his wardrobe per his mother’s insistence, he gets green with rage if he finds me in this room when he’s awake. The last time that happened, he grabbed me by the hair and hauled me out in the hallway while I had my blouse on and only half my saree draped.