Married Woman Read Online Free PDF

for a while, then couldn’t be seen anymore. Some distance down the main road, Rohan stopped.
    ‘Who were they? And why—?’ stammered Astha, shaking with fright.
    Rohan took her hand. ‘Some fools. I’m sorry‚’ he said.
    She started to cry.
    ‘Calm down.’
    ‘Take me home.’
    ‘Calm down first. Look, nothing actually happened.’
    Astha felt worse and worse. Those men had wanted to attack. Suppose they had managed to break the car window, gang rape her because of her shameless behaviour in a public place, and beat up Rohan when he tried to intervene? And all the while her parents would be thinking she was breathing in fresh air. If her mother knew she would first kill her andthen herself. Astha’s tears grew copious and she began to choke in her dupatta, while Rohan took sly glances at his watch. ‘Come on‚’ he said at last, ‘it was bad, but now it is over. Don’t cry, for heaven’s sake. We won’t go there again.’
    ‘Hoon‚’ sniffled Astha.
    ‘You are all right, so what exactly is the problem?’
    Astha only knew she felt terrible. Finally when Rohan dropped her off, she sensed eyes hidden in every bush, eyes that saw and condemned. She pulled her dupatta around her head, and hurried home trying to concentrate on the various lies she would have to tell as to why she was so late.

    The day Astha’s mother read her diary dawned cool and clear, beautiful like all winter days, with the flowers blooming in the garden, and the promise of basking for hours in the sun.
    She was deep in a book when her mother called, ‘Come here, I have something to show you.’
    Reluctantly Astha marked her place, and went inside. When she saw her journal in her mother’s hands, she wanted to instantly erase herself. There she was, with her skin ripped off, exposed in all her abandoned thoughts and deeds.
    ‘Is this you?’ the mother’s voice quavered, her grip like iron on Astha’s arm.
    Astha shook her head nervously.
    ‘Then, what is it?’
    Desperate silence while she tried to think of something plausible.
    ‘Answer me‚’ screamed the mother in a whisper.
    ‘I–I don’t know‚’ stammered the daughter, ‘I mean, I don’t remember.’
    But she did, of course. All her secret fantasies, the things she did with Rohan, painstaking details of the furtive, exciting moments in his car.
    ‘Well, look at it‚’ the mother waved the offending notebook in front of Astha’s nose, an innocuous old brown paper covered thing with St Theresa’s Convent School in a half moon on top. It had been hidden behind her college books, how had her mother discovered it? It looked awful in her hands, soaked in sin.
    ‘You have no right to read my diary‚’ she weakly muttered in self defence, averting her eyes.
    The mother ignored this remark and continued leafing through it gingerly.
    ‘Here, what does this mean?’
    The usual scene of passion. Astha went through puzzled motions of glancing, page turning, furrowed brow.
    ‘These are notes for a story I am writing‚’ she said, inspired at last.
    The mother’s body sagged as some of the tension went out. ‘This is your imagination?’
    ‘Yes. Yes, it is my imagination.’
    The mother was silent for a moment, then sighed heavily and held the tender young body of her innocent daughter close to her. ‘My child is too sensible to do anything like this‚’ she whispered. The girl remained rigid, arms by her side.
    They avoided each other for the rest of the day.
    *
    There were three consequences to this.
    One was that Astha stopped being able to write in her journal. She tried a few entries in an elaborate code, but an audience was now branded into every page, and she could inscribe nothing beyond a casual account of her day in college.
    The second was that Astha’s parents took an annoying interest in her reading matter. Her father began diligently to bring her books of moral and intellectual substance. ‘You need a sense of your cultural background‚’