“But later I realised that actually he wasn’t doing so well for money, which is why he was uncomfortable about spending. His business was not doing well. After I realised that, I used to deliberately leave his wallet at home when we went out, so that if he liked something we could just get it and he wouldn’t have to think too hard. And then I stopped shopping in front of him. Which made me feel a little guilty because more often than not, I had to sneak things inside the house and lie about when I’d bought them. But he developed a real inferiority complex about money and it became an issue between us.
“There was this time when I walked in on his uncle saying to him, ‘You can go and take over their business and it will all be yours. They have so much property and it will all come to you eventually and you can really make a life out of your wife.’ I did not like that conversation at all because in our family we’ve always given more priority to relationships than to money. Even when Papa was starting up the business and we were hard-up, money was never an issue. We went through a patch when my parents only ate one meal a day to save money. But it never affected us.
“Cash was never really an issue for us. If we had it, we had it; if we didn’t, we didn’t. In his family, money was a really big thing. Much bigger than relationships. Which was really weird for me. Why would someone give priority to something that might not be there tomorrow rather than to people who might help you in your old age or whatever? But that’s how he was. So his inferiority complex came up. And because of that a lot of fights started happening and abusive language.”
The sun is going down and the feel of evening descends on the terrace. The heat of the day evaporates, leaving the roar of the highway somehow more exposed. Great numbers of crows caw overhead. Waiters put candles out on the tables. Groups of twenty-somethings turn up for after-work drinks; like everyone else in this mall — except the ones who clean and guard it — they are high-caste and pale-skinned.
A woman is taking photographs of her colleagues on her phone, which flashes each time with improbable brilliance. She has her back to us; through her beige business suit I can see the precise outline of her black thong.
“Soon after I moved into my husband’s house,” Sukhvinder continues, “I realised that the dependency between him and his mother was intense, and it made me extremely uncomfortable. Especially because his father had died many years before, and he acted as a husband as well as a son towards his mother. I have absolutely no issues about a son having a good relationship with his mother, but his mother intervened in every aspect of our relationship. There are certain things that should remain between a husband and a wife. After every conversation I had with Dhruv, his mother used to taunt me for it the next day. And I used to be quite taken aback. ‘You know about that too! What else do you know about?’ So I spoke to him about it, but he was absolutely closed to the idea of me saying anything whatsoever about his mother.
“I used to sit down with her — I am an open person and I believe a lot in talking about stuff — so I used to sit with her and talk to her, thinking that I could be a friend to her, since she didn’t have a companion. But it totally blew up in my face. Each time I used to talk with her, she used to go to my husband and say, ‘She was trying to say some shit against you.’
“She thought I was trying to take her son away from her. She thought, since my family had more money, I would one day buy her son off, move to a different house and make him totally forget about her. Which is really weird. I was the one who always said we should never move out because otherwise his mother would be lonely. Her other son never talked to her. He treated her like shit. So I said to my husband, ‘She’s our responsibility and we’ll take care of her.’
“But she would tell Dhruv, ‘You don’t know what she is plotting, I heard her talking on the phone, she is evil.’ Which was ridiculous. I never made phone calls when I was in the house because I knew what it would lead to afterwards.
“I used to tell Dhruv: ‘She doesn’t believe in herself or the values that she’s given you. Or the man she’s made you into. Otherwise why would she be so insecure? You take care of her. She knows you care about her. What is she scared about? One mere girl walking into your house? I’m not here to break up your family.’
“I was supposed to get up in the morning, cook, pack everyone’s lunch, drive an hour to work, run the factory and get out of there in time to buy vegetables for the evening meal and be home by 7 p.m. to cook the dinner. Initially I didn’t know how to cook and she taught me, which I still thank her for. But if I got back at 7.01 she’d have taken her place in the kitchen and she wouldn’t let me enter, and then there would be a huge scene. I had to be in the kitchen by 7 p.m. so that Dhruv would not face some almighty scene when he came home. Nobody wants to walk into a house after work where there’s already bickering happening, and I realised the only way I could help Dhruv was if I turned up on time. There were days when I left the office at 4.30 p.m. I mean, when it’s your own business, you can take certain liberties. But it became a big problem: you can’t go too far.
“Then there came a time when he told me that his mother had a problem with me working. I said to him, ‘I told you before I’m not going to give up working.’ But then it was ruining everything that I’d worked on so much that for a month I didn’t go to work at all.
“I was not allowed to have any social life. The only time I socialised was when I sometimes spent two days at my parents’ house or in the car on the way home from work, when I used to call my friends. At home they hated any calls on my number. Sometimes a machine was being dispatched somewhere and got held up, and since I was in charge I couldn’t just say, ‘I’m not allowed to take calls at home.’ So I would take the call, deal with the issue, and my mother-in-law would say, ‘She’s just trying to show that she works more than my sons. Just because she has so many people under her supervision doesn’t mean my sons are no good.’ Things like that caused glitches in Dhruv’s mind. I don’t think he had really thought about it like that until she said it.
“I couldn’t hug boys even if they were my brothers. I just couldn’t hug anybody. In my family we’re very physically expressive. If my father was going out of town, we’d hug and kiss you, know? There was this time when Dhruv was leaving for work, so I hugged him. And he was like, ‘Don’t do that, Mummy’s standing right there!’ I was like, ‘Goddammit, I’m married to you, okay?’ Then he was like, ‘No she’ll talk to me later and say you shouldn’t do those things standing outside.’
“It was a totally different school of thought. Like there was this time when I came back from work, and I parked my car outside the house and there were kids playing badminton in the street. So I picked up a racquet and joined in. She opened the door and started shouting at me right there. ‘Get inside the house!’ I came in and there was a huge argument. ‘The daughter-in-law of the house doesn’t do such things! I don’t know what your parents have taught you.’
“Sex was another issue. Actually he was pretty comfortable about sex. More than I was. Not that I was a virgin when I got married, though that was the picture I had to portray, knowing the kind of family I was getting into. But in the beginning his mother wouldn’t ever let us close the door of our bedroom. From day one she wanted us to have a kid — that’s what Punjabi families are all about — and I used to tell her, ‘You won’t even allow us to close the door: how am I gonna give you a kid?’ If we did shut the door, she would start banging on it. ‘Knock’ is too polite for what she used to do.
“She would say, ‘What has happened that you have to close the door? If nothing bad is happening you shouldn’t have to close the door.’ We would just be sleeping or chatting inside — on those rare occasions when we actually chatted — and she would come and shout ‘Please put the light on in there. I don’t like you being in there with the light off.’