The Newlyweds by Mansi Choksi

Author:Mansi Choksi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2022-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

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A week later, Arif’s parents arrived in Balapur to meet their new daughter-in-law. Tabssum took Monika’s face in her hands, pressed it against her heaving chest, praised God for blessing her family, and praised herself for raising a son who did not abandon the woman he got pregnant. Monika tried to remember whether she had noticed this peculiar smell—the empty-stomach stench that covered Tabssum’s face and hair—the first time she met the woman months earlier when Bhagyashri invited her over for tea and poha. That afternoon, Monika had wandered out into the living room, and Tabssum had noticed her thick hair and wanted to know which hair oil she used. It was only now that she noticed that Tabssum’s neck, wrists, and ears were totally bare, without even as much as a thin gold chain.

As Tabssum mumbled into Monika’s hair, Arif’s father emptied a bag of snacks to mark the happy occasion. There was a savory mix of flattened rice known as chivda and a packet of sliced sponge cakes. Bashir had a gray beard that looked like a sprinkling of desiccated coconut and eyes so vacant they reminded Monika of the broken windows of the tumbledown state transport buses that brought them to this village. “Today I want to make a votive,” he announced to the family. “If Allah takes the police case away, and our Arif gets his job, I will donate two goats or pay for a poor couple’s marriage.” Monika glanced around the room to check if anyone else saw the absurdity of her father-in-law’s votive; after all, where would Bashir find a couple poorer than him and his wife?

That same afternoon, a favorable court ruling arrived. Arif burst into a dance, chanting the verdict over and over to different tunes, as if it were a new film song. “As the statements of the petitioners are recorded as desired by the respondents, and since the petitioners are not desirous of prosecuting the criminal writ petition in view of the assurance from respondents that they would not take any action against the petitioners,” the verdict said, “we dispose of the criminal writ petition with no order as to costs.”

Arif was now officially a free man. He imagined himself slicking back his hair, straightening his collar, tossing his sunglasses into the air, and walking out of the shadow of the criminal cases threatening to checkmate his dreams. But Monika was exactly where she had been since she left home. She suddenly felt out of breath, and her smile vanished with the realization that for the next ten days, while her husband attended his police constable orientation in Mumbai, she would have to live with strangers.

As Monika packed their bags, she paused to admire a pair of denim dungarees she had included for a honeymoon that had not yet come. “Ayat, please forgive me, I have to leave you and go toward my future,” Arif told Monika, calling her by her new married name. Monika nodded because

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