Our Mindset Episode 20
What could I have done even if I had known? Would it have made any difference?
Back in Velapur, I saw him getting close to my aunt-in-law. Back then, we didn’t have electricity 24/7. It was summer, and the house would get unbearably hot. So, I would take the children and sleep outside on the porch. My cousin-in-law worked as a night watchman at a lodge in the town square and usually slept there.
Our houses—mine and my cousin-in-law’s wife’s—were so close that only a thin wall separated us. The heat and the relentless mosquito bites made it impossible to sleep. Every night, around eleven or twelve, she would come out and call him over. Right in front of me, he would shut the door behind him.
It was a time when a man having two wives wasn’t questioned. Even my father had two wives. My mother was incredibly beautiful, yet my father had multiple affairs. Who could she complain to? When I told her about my husband’s behavior, she simply said, “That’s what men do. Even your father did the same. If you leave your husband and come here, can you remarry? And even if you do, you’ll end up like me. Now that you have children, you must endure it. If it bothers you so much, sleep inside.”
Back then, I didn’t have the courage to oppose him. He was obsessed with watching obscene videos. He would fill his phone’s memory with them. Later, he saved up money and took a friend to Pune to buy CDs, spending ₹2,500. He would rent tapes, connect the CD player to the TV, and watch them endlessly. Before leaving for work, he would switch the tapes, replacing the obscene ones with regular movies.
One day, the power went out. He forgot about the tape inside the player. When the electricity returned around 9 PM, I turned on the TV, intending to watch something before bed, and that’s when I saw what he had been watching. That was the moment I truly understood.
To him, morality didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how a woman looked or even if she was older—what mattered was that she was a woman. When he was in eighth grade, his uncle made him work in the fields and even took him to visit the women he kept. He would send him to escort them back and forth. What was the boy supposed to learn from such an uncle?
Even after that uncle passed away, one of his women came to pay respects. That meant they had all been in it together from the start. She said, “Dada, come help me cut some firewood.” That’s when I realized why she had brought a rope and a towel. My husband, chatting with her, chopped the wood, bundled it up, made a cushion out of the towel, and placed it on her head for her to carry.
To everyone, he was the same as before—a servant, a workhorse. They used him for everything.
Marriage didn’t change him. He remained oblivious to the fact that he had a wife, two children, and responsibilities. I once asked him to chop wood for me, but he cut it for that woman instead. Whenever someone asked him to do something, I would get furious, but he remained indifferent. To everyone else, I was the bad one, and he was the simple, kind-hearted fool.
One day, while he was engrossed in chatting with her, water from the sugarcane fields flooded into someone else’s farm. When the owner came to complain, he finally snapped out of it.
I silently prayed, “Dear God, when will these women—these so-called aunts—finally leave my life?”