Ladies Coupe Read Online Free PDF

instilled in me, I believed that a woman’s duty was to get married. To be a good wife and mother. I believed in that tired old cliché that a home was a woman’s kingdom. I worked very hard to preserve mine. And then suddenly, one day, it didn’t matter any more. My home ceased to interest me; none of the beliefs I had built my life around had any meaning. I thought if I were to lose it all, I would cope. If I ever became alone, I would manage perfectly. I was quite confident about that. I think I was tired of being this fragile creature.’
    Akhila searched Janaki’s face. What did she mean by ‘was’?
    ‘But you have changed your mind now. Why?’ Akhila asked.
    Janaki patted the air pillow as if it were her husband’s hand and said, ‘Now I know that even if I can cope, it isn’t the same if he isn’t there with me.’

2
    A Certain Age
    Feathers. Soft wispy down. The swish of satin on the skin of the inner arm. Every night Janaki lay on her side, cradling her face in the crook of her elbow, and thought of all the nice and soft things in life. Anything to drown the noises that seeped through the walls of the bathroom. Noises that she had heard almost every night for the past forty years.
    The gurgling of the cistern when he flushed. The splash of water on the floor as the shower spat out fifty-two jets of tepid water. He was that kind of a person; extremes of any sort worried him. His tuneless humming as he soaped himself vigorously, allowing the fragrant white lather to coat his body. Make-believe amniotic fluid before he curled up into a foetal ball beside her. More splashes. The tinkle of his teeth in a china cup. He brushed his dentures and his remaining teeth faithfully every night. Gargling. Spitting. The tuneless humming again and again.
    Do I really hear these noises? Or, is it just what I know? Janaki asked herself Have we really lived together for thirty years?
    Janaki married Prabhakar when she was eighteen and he was twenty-seven. Theirs was an arranged marriage; the
horoscopes matched, the families liked each other and they were considered perfectly suited for each other. Janaki didn’t know what to expect of marriage. All through her girlhood she had been groomed for it. Her mother and aunts had taught her the arts of cooking and cleaning, sewing and pickling … she wasn’t expected to know what it really meant to be married, and neither was she curious about it. It would come to her as it had to her mother, she thought.
    On her wedding night, when he touched her lips with his, all she felt was a stiffening within. It wasn’t just shyness. It was perhaps the strangeness. She had never been alone with a man in a room, with the door locked. The company of men had always been frowned upon and suddenly because she was married they said it was all right for her to be with him, let him touch her and even undress her.
    ‘He is your husband and you must accept whatever he does,’ Janaki’s aunts had whispered as they led her to the bedroom adorned with jasmine and scented with incense sticks.
    He lay down next to her and drew her palms to his chest. ‘Touch me,’ he said and all she could think was how coarse the hair on his chest was.
    He nuzzled his chin against her neck and again that wave of repulsion washed over her: What am I doing here? What have I let myself in for?
    He touched. He stroked. He caressed and fondled and yet all Janaki felt was a locking within.
    Their marriage remained unconsummated for more than two months. He didn’t force himself upon her. It wasn’t as if he didn’t try to make her more receptive. He coaxed, cajoled and even pleaded. He tried very hard to make her accept him into her body. But each time, she flinched at the slightest twinge of pain, and he withdrew and left her alone. She began to wish that he would stop being so gentle and would force himself to close his eyes to her reluctance. She
was afraid, you see. That if she didn’t give him what he wanted,