A box of Chocolates

She just needed to breathe

It is 9 am EST and she already has 4 missed calls from him. Should she text him that she is unwell and resting?

It would be her 6th time using the same excuse within a fortnight; how credible would she sound pretending it one more time.

He'd probably wonder if she has got a serious illness and hiding it from him. Probably he'll panic and speak to his family, all in good intention and immediately her phone would be jammed with calls and messages from all over India – his sisters, sisters in law, nephew, nieces, cousins...even random neighbours....

She didn't want to talk to any of them, not even him...especially not him. And by the way, she is sick, chronically sick, but dare she utter a word about her failing mental health to this beloved family of hers inherited through marriage. What will people say? The apple of their eyes had already moved a mountain by marrying a Christian girl, now if they got to know she is in depression...all hell will break loose.

Like most of the other truths in her life, she'd have to push it down her throat, and keep it stashed there. But the quieter her lips grew, the noisier it got inside the walls her head.

'YOU SLEPT WITH A STRANGER !' The echo was so deafening, forming such a thick fog in her brain, that she could barely process anything else. No matter how hard or long she thought, she couldn't remember what all she had eaten in the last couple of weeks, or how she had spent the days, how many meetings she had had for work or what clothes she had worn. She had done whatever had to be done, gone through the motions like a brain dead person.

How could she, a married woman in love with her husband, a virtuous woman in her own right, a girl from a middle class family that upheld their morals over everything else, stray like this?

You think people cheat out of temptation, or for the thrill of trying the unforbidden. You might think people cheat because their marriages have gone dry. I'm sure she had her own thoughts around it, until she crossed the line herself. But at the moment when she was lying under a man, she had picked from the neighbourhood pub, and whose scent was as repulsive as his face was alien, all she could feel was a desperate need to breathe. This marriage, this life had sucked the air out of her lungs and she just needed to breathe.

Her husband is not an adulterous alcoholic wife beating monster, if you thought so. On the contrary, he is a good looking, sweet talking, courteous and TIMID man whom she loved to no end, and who loves her back in the only way he knows. In fact when she first met him, in her very first project at her first job, she couldn't believe a guy as good looking and as popular as him could be as courteous and warm as he was. Sometimes first impressions can be as misleading as shifting sands, and the same qualities that attract us to a person, cause us to drift apart.

In their four year long relationship, he was never rude to her, but he wasn't hurtful to anyone else either. And so she had to pretend they were just friends because of course he didn't want to hurt his family by causing a scandal. He told her to trust him, that he'd deal with this on his own, that she should support him and he would bring the family around. He did it, on his own terms, took his own sweet time, got his Brahmin family around to accept a Christian girl. But he never hurt a soul, never ruffled a feather, the only tweak he made was to airbrush her image a bit so it could perfectly fit their family picture.

Slowly over the years, he morphed her into an ambitious, ambidextrous, 10 handed Goddess who spoke no evil, who did no evil but who could tolerate all evil. Her social media accounts were now heavily policed by his entire clan that followed her from platform to platform. She had to consult him before she put up anything..

A selfie - is it revealing, is it too homely, couldn't it be clicked in her office to make her look professional?

A food snap– you can't put up pictures of chicken or fish, remember we are Brahmin's

A story – I hope it doesn't contain any adult stuff, is the English too tough, too intellectual?

A political post – But you know na our political affiliations are different from yours?

An Eid post – You are a Brahmin bahu now..remember

A Vacation post – can you please not share personal things, u know people get jealous

Slowly she had to forget her festivals, her rituals in exchange of his.

Her weekends were now spent tutoring his nephews and nieces, her evenings checking in on his family. Her life was an open book, being simultaneously edited by a dozen people. What she ate, what she wore, whether or not she should go for a vacation, and where if should, none of it was for her to decide anymore.

When she got the opportunity to move onsite to New York, she couldn't even choose to reject the offer or ask her husband to quit his job and follow her, because obviously someone had booked a flat for them in a city where neither of them lived, and now the EMI had to be paid by both. Hers in dollars, his in INR.

And all through this her husband stayed courteous and TIMID. He had already proved his bravery with the heroic act of marrying a Christian girl in a Hindu Brahmin society. Wasn't it enough for a lifetime, what else did you expect him to do?

And so she stayed silent, against her nature, and tried her best to play the part, her husband had cut out for her. She changed her nature, tamed her likings, sealed her lips, straightened her hair, lost her dreams and let go of her real smile. And amazingly people congratulated and credited him for his stellar choice.

And now here she was, alone in a foreign country, drowning and gasping for breath. So that night, out of anger and frustration and sorrow, with a smile that camouflaged her tears, she strayed to punish them all.

Yet the irony is, the only person she ended up hurting is herself. No one would ever care to recce the damaged crevices of her heart, but they would witch hunt her to death if they got as much as a whiff of what she had done.

Could she confess it to her husband and be forgiven? Probably yes, because remember he never hurt anyone. But it won't make him mend his ways, it won't force him to open his eyes and kick away his God damned timidity. It might however surface in his drunken blabbers, in their private moments and crush her with guilt.