A bloody fair deal

The winds were blowing hard. The clouds stretched their hostile arms to clog up the sun’s rays. They carried a letter written by the powers residing in heaven. The words poured down in the form of droplets and were conveying the message to soil and nature — words that only a few mortals could fathom. The cuckoo’s cooing reverberated through the trunks of the trees and walls of a century-old bungalow. The weather brought
chaos to the bungalow of Chakrobartys.  

“This is unbearable,” said Bhanu and kept the newspaper down on the table. “Baba, what are these arrangements that you have been doing for the past two months?” asked Subha and stood beside her father.

Bhanu noticed her elegant, angular visage, and said in his usual soft, concerned voice,  “Oh Subha, your wedding is day after tomorrow and look at you! You are a bride now!”

“Arundhati!” he called for his wife. Arundhati walked into the room and placed a cup of hot tea on the Burmese teakwood table. Her forehead was soaked in sweat. 

“Arundhati,” he said in an unusually tender way, “Get your daughter ready and tell her what she needs to know.” Arundhati grabbed Subha’s hand and took her into the room. Subha noticed her red eyes. Her hair was tied loose, and an inevitable grief dropped from every word she spoke. She stood on the bed and went closer to her. “Is anything wrong? Mom,” Subha had learnt the word ‘mom’ from her cousins who came to visit them from Wales. Tears trickled down Arundhati’s cheeks and she looked away to wipe them, and gather some courage.   

“You don’t know it Subha.” Her every word was filled with the pain that she had harboured for so many days. “This wedding is no less than a deal, a business deal.”  

“They will choke you but you have to live as the options we have are already exhausted.” Her words left no opportunity to curse her husband, her life. Subha stood their in utter disbelief but the weight of truth was unbearable.  

Arundhati gathered her breath to speak. “You don’t know how it feels to lose freedom...Subha. A child’s pain, you haven’t experienced it.”  

Subha went quietly to her room. She sat on the cot and covered her cold, shivering body with the warm blanket. Her mother’s words kept ringing in her ears. 

The wedding day is a bright occasion for any girl. But for Subha it meant dark beginnings. Dressed in a ruby-hued red sari, her luscious blakc hair was neatly braided and strands of white jasmine flowers were tied into a small bun on the crown. Her gold bangles clanged, in a way that seemed more music than noise. The mascara on her eyes revealed the hidden beauty and resembling the eyes of a peacock dancing in the monsoon shower.  

“Are you ready?” enquired Bhanu as he entered the room. “My pretty lady!” His words were interrupted then.

“Baba, can I talk to him?” asked Subha. “Who?” asked Bhanu with a sudden curiosity. “Shantanu. I want to tell him something. Something that only he should know.”

“Fine. I will call him here. But the talk shouldn’t be long,” said Bhanu and left the room.  A few minutes passed and a man about twice her height wearing a golden shervani entered the room. He sat on the cot. But his words were silenced at once. Subha opened the door and started towards her father with a cold, impassive face. “What happened?” asked Bhanu. “What did you say?”
“I killed him. Thank you.” said Subha.

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