Ladies Coupe Read Free

stood a whole family of uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents who had come to see a lone man off. He was headed for Bombay from where he would catch a plane to a Middle-Eastern country.
    She wondered what it must be like to be the wife of a man who was away for many years and when he came home was claimed for their own by parents, siblings, cousins, relatives, friends … Akhila looked at the man who carried on his shoulders the burden of other people’s dreams. That she knew all about. That she could understand.
    She turned away from the man and watched the elderly couple. The woman wore a pale pink sari with a narrow gold border, a slim gold chain around her neck, and metal-rimmed spectacles. Her hair lay gathered in a little bun at
the nape of her neck. A gold bracelet watch gleamed at her wrist. One hand held a water bottle while the other clutched a narrow leather purse. In a few years’ time I will look like her, Akhila told herself Except that I won’t have a man like him beside me.
    He seemed nice enough. The well-tailored clothes, the horn-rimmed spectacles, the still muscular body, the pleasant features, the manner in which his hair had receded, the way he stood at his wife’s side, they all seemed to suggest a non-aggressive confidence. The couple looked like they belonged together.
    What is it about marriage that makes it possible for a man and a woman to mesh their lives, dreams and even their thoughts in such a complete fashion? Her parents used to be like that. They even resembled each other with broad high foreheads, a slight hook to their noses and a cleft in their chins. They liked their coffee sweetened with two spoons of sugar and their curds set just so. It had to taste almost milk-like.
    Often her mother only had to think about something, and her father would voice exactly the same sentiment within the fraction of a second and her mother would say, ‘I was about to say that.’
    He would beam at her then and guffaw with pleasure, ‘That’s because we are so well suited. We are two bodies and one soul.’ And her mother would smile back coyly.
    When she was a teenager, Akhila remembered reading a novel about a couple who were passionately in love with each other even after many years of being married. Years later, she could recall neither the name of the book nor its plot. All she remembered was a line: The children of lovers are no better than orphans.
    As a child, her parents’ togetherness did not vex her. She was part of that enchanted circle as well. But as she grew up, their playfulness, their affection, the obvious pleasure they found in each other’s presence made her feel excluded.
Later, it embarrassed her. But they remained completely oblivious to her mortification. And even if they sensed it, nothing would deter or diminish what was practically a lifelong love affair.
    When her father died, her parents had been married for almost twenty-two years. Every year thereafter, on the date of their wedding day, her mother wept. ‘For our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, your father had promised to buy me a diamond nose-ring. A diamond for the queen of my heart, he said. He loved me so much,’ she would moan. With every passing year, her mother’s grief seemed only to increase.
    She had lost more than a husband. He had been part of her life from the moment she was born. As her uncle, he had carried her in his arms, pointing out butterflies and crows, the moon and the rainbow, the wonders of nature. In many ways, it was only natural that he should be the one to show her the wonder of being a woman.
    Akhila’s mother married her father when she was fifteen years old. He was twenty-four. Akhila was born two years and eight months later.
    ‘But Amma, how could you have agreed to marry your uncle?’ Akhila asked her mother once. ‘It’s so unnatural.’
    ‘What’s unnatural about it?’ she had demanded angrily. ‘It is a perfectly accepted norm in our community. Who do you think you