Our Mindset Episode 15
That morning, Aunt’s face fell when she saw the goat at the doorstep. She had been chatting with Grandmother, and as they talked, Grandmother casually remarked, “Dada will work in the fields, and Sunanda will take care of the goats and chickens.” I hadn’t expected Aunt to take it so seriously.
After she left for the fields, Grandmother asked me to call my mother. She spoke loudly into the phone, reassuring her, “You don’t need to worry about Sunanda at all. She has a good home—tile flooring inside and out, no trouble cleaning, and she doesn’t even have to go far for goat feed. The sugarcane field right in front of the house is packed with grass; she just has to cut it. Fresh buffalo milk is available in the house every morning and evening. She doesn’t even have to wake up at 2 a.m. to pack Dada’s lunch anymore. Now, husband and wife will work together and eat together. I’m leaving today itself; no point in staying longer.”
Her departure was the best news for me. Still, I put on a sad face and said, “Stay for a few more days.”
But my husband wasn’t ready to let her go just yet. “Stay two more days, old lady,” he said. He wasn’t asking her to stay out of love. If she stayed, he could slip away in the evening to watch TV at his aunt’s place. But she didn’t realize that. He was a master at lying and deception.
She finished her meal and left.
While my husband was still eating, Mangu arrived to drop off the milk. “Dada, the price of maize has gone up. The crop has dried well. You should pack the sacks today itself.”
A tempo was passing by on the road, and Mangu signaled it to stop. “Instead of going to the village and coming back, just wait here for half an hour. We need to load the maize sacks to sell them in the village,” he told the driver.
The driver, a young man named Tatya, about eighteen or nineteen years old, parked the tempo under a babul tree. Everyone went to fill the sacks.
The kids saw the tempo and asked excitedly, “Can we sit inside?”
I turned to Tatya, “Can these two sit in the tempo?”
He nodded, “Yes.”
He turned on the music, and Pravin and Aparna started dancing inside. That was how I first met him.
I made him tea that day. After that, every morning, when he passed through the village, he would honk while looking toward the kids. In the evenings, on his way home, he would stop by and give them chocolates. His tempo always had loud music playing. The moment the kids heard the sound, they would rush to the roadside and wave goodbye.
Soon, rumors started spreading—Tatya honked for me, played songs for me, and stopped every evening just to meet me.
The rumors bothered Tatya more than they did me. He was in love with another girl—someone who lived right next to his house. One day, she came to meet me. She wanted to marry him. I explained everything to her, and she believed me.
But you can’t put a lid on people’s mouths. For the eleven months that I lived there, the gossip never stopped. Some even warned Tatya’s parents, saying he might bring home a woman with two kids. Fearing this, his parents quickly arranged his marriage.
And the one who started all these rumors? It was none other than my own friend’s husband. One evening, on his way home, he had seen me standing and talking to Tatya. That was enough for the stories to begin.