Exploring Love...the shade of PINK

Chapter 6

The morning did not break with the sweet, high whistle of the pressure cooker or the rhythmic swish-swish of Radha's broom against the stone. Instead, it broke with a jagged, unnatural silence that felt like a physical weight pressing down on the Haveli.

Vikram awoke with a start. The sunlight was hitting his face at an angle that told him it was nearly eight o'clock. Usually, the curtains were drawn back by six, and a steaming glass of ginger tea would be resting on the bedside table. He rolled over, his hand instinctively reaching for the spot where Radha usually sat, folding his clothes for the day.

The bed was cold. The sheets were pulled tight, uncreased, as if no one had ever lain there.

A flare of irritation rose in his chest. Still playing this game? he thought, his jaw tightening. He remembered her "No" from the night before, but he had dismissed it as the hysterical rambling of a tired woman. He assumed she had spent the night in the kitchen or perhaps in the children's room, sulking like a scolded child. He expected to walk out and find her red-eyed but busy, back to the grindstone where she belonged.

"Radha!" he shouted, his voice echoing through the high-ceilinged room. "The water for my bath! Where is it?"

Silence. Not even the sound of her hurried footsteps. He was still in haze that she would be here in house.

He stormed out into the courtyard, his silk undershirt unbuttoned. He found his mother, Parvati, standing by the cold stove. She wasn't her usual regal self. Her hair was disheveled, and she was clutching her prayer beads so tightly her knuckles were white.

"The gate was open, Vikram," she whispered, her voice trembling. "The silver keys were in the dirt. She... she isn't in the house. I've checked the pantry, the terrace, even the grain store.Where is this idle lady. No sense of work till now."

Vikram felt a sudden, sharp prickle of fear beneath his skin, though he masked it instantly with a scowl. "May be, She's at the temple. Or maybe she went to the pond to wash. She's trying to show her 'power' because I didn't listen to her nonsense last night. She'll be back by the time the sun is high. Where else would she go? She has no money, no people. She's a Bahu—she exists only because of this house." he said like it was her daily routine not accepting the harsh reality of her Life in this house.

He told Parvati what happened last night and Parvati started to curse Radha for her ridiculous behaviour. She said where would she go? This house won't accept her now. I will handle kids. Before her I was also handling the house and also tried to make her understand but that witch never understood.

By ten o'clock, the "scare" had turned into a full-blown crisis. The children, Sundar and Kishan, were sitting on the floor of the veranda, their faces smeared with dirt and dried tears. They hadn't been bathed, and the dry bread Parvati had tried to give them sat untouched.

"I want Ma!" Kishan wailed, a high-pitched, soul-piercing sound. "My hair hurts! Ma didn't comb it!"

"Hush, child!" Parvati snapped, though her own eyes were darting around the courtyard like a trapped bird. She was habituated to Radha's presence as one is habituated to the air—you only notice it when you're suffocating. "Your mother is being selfish. She has forgotten her Dharma. She is a wicked woman to leave a house like this!"

Till the time pass, till half of the noon, her real face started to be unmasked. Parvati began to wail, a theatrical, childish sound that grated on Vikram's nerves. "Who will manage the milkmen? Who will tell the cleaners which corner to scrub? My blood pressure is rising, Vikram! That girl... that daughter-in-law... she did this to kill me! She knew I couldn't lift a finger!"

Even in her panic, Parvati refused to credit Radha for her hard work. To her, Radha was just a machine that had broken down out of spite. She didn't miss the person; she missed the labor that kept her own hands soft and her ego fed.

By noon, Vikram had sent word for two women from the village to come and handle the chores. He was the Sarpanch; he wouldn't let the village see his house in disarray.

"Pay them whatever they want," he commanded. "Just get the lunch ready and the house cleaned."

But the Haveli rejected the strangers. The two maids wandered the kitchen like lost souls. They didn't know where the spices were hidden; they didn't know how Vikram liked his rice, or that Parvati's lentils had to be mashed three times.

"Not there! Don't touch that with those hands!" Parvati screamed at the maids, her taunts relentless. "Radha never let the brass get dull! You are useless, both of you! My daughter-in-law was a shadow, but at least she wasn't a fool!"

One of the maids dropped a ceramic jar of pickles—the ones Radha had spent three days sun-drying. The sound of it shattering felt like the house itself was cracking. The maids looked at each other, whispered, and walked out before the sun had even begun to set. They couldn't handle ten minutes of what Radha had endured for seven years.

Evening fell, and the house was a disaster. The floor was sticky with spilled milk. The children had finally cried themselves to sleep in a corner, their stomachs empty and their hearts broken.

Vikram sat in his high chair on the porch, but he felt like an impostor. His kurta was wrinkled, the collar limp and unpressed. He hadn't had a proper meal all day, only a cup of tea that tasted like burnt grass. For the first time, he realized that his "power" as Sarpanch was built on a foundation of polished brass and hot meals that he had never once thanked his wife for.

He looked at the empty gate. A tiny voice in the back of his mind—the voice he usually drowned out with pride—asked: What if she actually meant it? It has never happened since she married him.

He remembered her face last night. It hadn't been angry. It had been... gone. The light in her eyes had been extinguished long before she walked out the door. He felt a cold hollow in his chest. He wasn't worried about her safety—not yet—but he was terrified of her absence. He was a man who owned everything, but he couldn't even find his own lamp oil.

His mother came out, leaning heavily on the wall, her voice a pathetic whimper. "Vikram... the dinner is tasteless. I can't eat this. Where is she? Tell the men to go find her. Drag her back by her hair if you must. She is our Bahu. She belongs to the Haveli."

Vikram didn't answer. He looked at his hands—the hands that had only ever taken. He thought of Radha's silent, rhythmic movements in the dark. He thought of the way she satisfied his needs without a word, her own pain invisible to him because he chose not to look.

The house had fallen in a single day. Not because of a storm or an enemy, but because the spirit that breathed life into the stone had simply stopped caring.

He was the Sarpanch. He was the master. But as the moon rose over his cold, messy home, Vikram felt like a beggar sitting on a throne of ash.

He called his trusted man, Shambu. "Take the jeep," he said, his voice cracking. "Check the station. Check the bus stop in the next village. Don't... don't tell anyone she left. Just tell her the children are crying."

It was the only leverage he thought he had left. He didn't realize that for Radha, the tears of the house were just more water for a well that had already overflowed.