Women Who Misbehave by Sayantani DasGupta

Author:Sayantani DasGupta [Dasgupta, Sayantani]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789390914623
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2021-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

SHAAJI AND SATNAM

That Sunday dawned pink and purple, the promise of another lovely, early winter day. Wild chrysanthemums, planted long ago, by unknown hands, nodded along the stretch of green that skirted their village, an unremarkable speck in north-west India. The milkman’s cycle trundled down the street, its shrill bell waking up the dogs. The puppies jumped and yipped, but the older ones only yawned with disinterest. They were used to the milkman’s daily intrusions.

When the doorbell rang, Shaaji muttered, ‘Yes, yes. I am coming, I am coming.’ Next to her, her mother snored loudly, a spot of drool drying on her chin. There were deep lines of disapproval etched on her forehead. Shaaji had seen these lines ever since she could remember. For a second, she considered wiping her mother’s chin. But then she didn’t. Only in sleep could her mother be this loud and free, this uncaring of other people’s opinion. Why ruin it?

The bell rang again, this time a long and impatient peal. ‘Yes, yes,’ Shaaji groaned. ‘I’ll be right there.’ She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and searched for her slippers on the cold, concrete floor. They lay on top of each other, the toes and heels jutting out at odd angles, the worn leather piled up like corpses.

The baby was fussing in the next room. If the bell rang one more time, he would wake up the entire house. Shaaji hurried downstairs, tiptoeing automatically as she passed her father’s room. No, not because he was a light sleeper, but because good girls, girls from families like theirs, walked soundlessly. ‘You should never know a girl is in the room,’ her father was fond of saying. ‘No girl should ever draw attention to herself.’

When she opened the door, the milkman merely gave Shaaji a nod and poured two litres of milk from his metal jug into Shaaji’s stainless-steel pot, his slim but well-muscled arms stretching against the slight fabric of his kurta. He was a busy man in the mornings, with no time for idle banter or cosmetic attention. He wore a uniform of sorts every day—a grey kurta-pyjama, and a red-and-white cotton towel to cover his head. Breathable garments all, they were easy to buy, maintain and replicate a thousand times over.

Shaaji shut the door and brought the pot into the kitchen. She could hear voices from upstairs, her oldest brother and his wife, and their still-fussing baby. It wouldn’t be long before everyone would troop downstairs in search of their first of many cups of strong, milky tea. She didn’t want a mutiny on her hands.

She pulled out five cups and lined them neatly next to the stove. She counted again—one, two, three, four, five—just to be sure and then ran to the downstairs bathroom to change into one of her mother’s saris. Ordinarily, she didn’t like wearing saris, but today was different. Today, it was her armour, though onlookers might say its broad, peach flowers didn’t automatically suggest war. She smiled as she remembered that Satnam liked her in saris.

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