Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair Read Free Book Online Page A

said. But I won’t, I know. Janaki felt a tear slide down into her hair. It would be her lot to endure. Souls like his savoured life. They swept their way through births and deaths, not once but a million times.
    What would it be like to sleep alone in a bed and to wake up in a room all by herself? Early mornings, nights. Alone, alone. Please god, Janaki prayed, let me fall asleep so that I don’t have to think.
    When it was time for Jaya to be admitted to hospital for the Caesarean, Siddharth called his parents. ‘Please Ma, will you two come? Jaya’s mother is here and she is perfectly capable of managing, but if you were around I would feel a lot more secure.’
    ‘Do you want to go?’ Prabhakar asked Janaki.
    ‘How can we not go?’ Janaki said as she began to pull out saris from the cupboard and arrange them in little stacks on the bed for Prabhakar to pack. ‘He is our son. We have to be there for him when he needs us.’
    By the third day, the squabbles began. Prabhakar had known they would. Ever since Siddharth got married, almost everything his mother said or did infuriated him. It was as if he had begun to measure his mother with a new yardstick and each time she fell short of what he expected of her. Janu was the same, he thought. She complained that her son had changed and that she no longer knew this man whose voice, when it was directed towards her, was heavy with a suppressed dislike. A suppressed dislike for what? What have I done wrong? she asked Prabhakar again and again.
    There were no real reasons for them to snipe at each other but they always did. She and Siddharth tossed veiled insults at each other as if they were a ball while Prabhakar stood in the middle, unwilling to take sides.
    Then one day, as Prabhakar lay on the bed in the guest room, he heard Siddharth say, ‘You are spoilt. Everyone you know has spoilt you. Your family and then Dad. You are such a princess. You want everything done your way, your selfish way. And if someone doesn’t do it the way you want it done, you know how to sulk and get them to do it. I can’t help but compare you to Jaya’s mother. I see how generous she is; how she is willing to give all of herself to her children. You don’t do that. When have you ever thought of anyone but yourself?’
    Prabhakar had stormed into the dining room where they were and said in an ice-cold voice, ‘Janaki, pack your things. We are leaving right now. You don’t have to take any of this nonsense from him. How dare he talk to you in that tone of voice!’
    ‘Dad, stop being so melodramatic. You always take her side no matter who is at fault. Listen to what I have to say as well. You are the reason why Mummy is the way she is,’
Siddharth said, flinging his arms out in a gesture of helplessness.
    ‘You,’ Prabhakar said, wagging an angry finger, ‘shut up. I will have nothing to do with you until you apologize to your mother first. And if I don’t take her side, who will? I’m her husband, goddamn it, and I bloody well will take her side.’
    Janaki began to cry. Contrite, Siddharth had gone on his knees and pleaded with his mother to stop crying while Prabhakar watched, anger making his face pale and drawn.
    Later in the night, he had said, ‘We will leave in a couple of days. There is no point in staying on if there is this air of unease all the time. But more than anything else, what bothers me is that if this is how he is with you when I am alive, what will he do to you when I’m dead and no longer around to take care of you.’
    But Janaki had put her hand on his arm and tried to breach the cracks as well as she could, for that was what mothers were meant to do. ‘Don’t let it upset you. He is not a bad son. I know he is tense about the baby being born ill; I know that his work pressure is high; it’s the stress that’s making him nasty. He is not a bad son. I know that.’
    A shaft of light came from the bathroom door. Janaki saw him framed in the doorway