The Secret wish List Read Online Free PDF Page B

seems like I am succeeding.
    ‘Okay. So now you have it. What is it?’ he says.
    I feel like an amateur boxer in a ring who has won a first round entirely by fluke against an opponent who is a world-class champion.
    ‘Sandeep, I feel this growing sense of discontent in our marriage,’ I say.
    He looks at me as though I have just confessed my desire to become a strip dancer.
    He blinks a few times.
    I stand and stare back at him.
    Finally, he says, ‘Sit down.’
    I sit opposite him, like a child who comes late and has been given permission by the teacher to enter the classroom. I sit and wait for him to talk.
    ‘What do you mean by discontent? Am I not doing all my duties as a husband?’
    Sure, as long as ‘duties of a husband’ mean earning for us and providing for us, you are. What else do you really do other than that? A big fat nothing.
    ‘Yes, Sandeep. But surely there is more to a marriage than that,’ I meekly say, suppressing all I am feeling inside.
    ‘Diksha, I am a simple guy. I do not understand what more you want? ’
    I squirm.
    ‘Sandeep, I want some conversation. I feel a bit taken for granted in this whole deal here. I feel I want to do something with my life. Other than being a wife and a mother, I truly am nothing.’
    ‘Have I ever stopped you from doing what you want to do, Diksha? Didn’t you go for your interior design course after marriage? Did I ever stop you? Wasn’t it you who decided not to have a career?’
    ‘Yes, but I wanted to give the best care I could to Abhay. How would I have done that had I gone ahead and had a career? We would have had to send him to a crèche.’
    ‘So it is a choice you made, Diksha. Nobody forced you. Not me. Not my mother.’
    ‘I know, Sandeep. All I am saying is that I now want to do something of my own. Abhay goes to school during the day. You travel so much on work and keep long hours. After that you just come home and watch TV. We hardly ever even talk, Sandeep.’
    ‘How many couples do you know, married for as long as we have been, who have conversations? We aren’t dating or newlyweds for God’s sake. What conversation are you talking about? We are talking now, aren’t we?’
    ‘It wasn’t as though we had great conversation even when we were newlyweds. But don’t you agree, it was so different then, Sandeep?’
    He does not know what to say. I have stepped across an invisible line here. I have expressed, for the first time, how I have felt. I feel triumphant, almost emancipated for having stood up for myself.
    Finally he says, ‘I think all the new-age mumbo-jumbo which these women’s magazines feed you have influenced your thinking. I don’t think I am such a bad guy. I earn enough, I am a good father and husband. I have never questioned the choices you make, and I think I have given you reasonable freedom and allowed you to do what you want. You made a choice to stay at home. Now you regret it. And you are blaming me and making me the scapegoat for what you think is your boring life. How am I responsible? You act like a martyr here while living in luxury even as I work my balls off. Don’t you ever forget that.’
    His little speech has crushed me like a ten-ton truck. All my newfound bravery vanishes swiftly.
    I wince at what he has stated so plainly. He has thrown at me a fact—that it is he who has been earning while I live in the lap of luxury. It hurts as there is an element of truth to it. Heck, not just an element, it is the entire truth.
    And it is bitter and hard to swallow.
    So I bite back the tears that are threatening to spill over and with an intense self-loathing, mutter a ‘Sorry, you are right. I don’t know what came over me.’
    Then I retreat into the kitchen and I sob and sob and sob, even as Sandeep turns the television back on and goes back to watching whatever it was that I interrupted.

Five
    A NKIT AND I MEET AT I NFINITY AFTER MY DANCE class. I am still in my dance uniform—a plain pink salwar