Chapter 15
Medhavi and Samskara got settled in San Diego after their marriage. Both of them got pretty decent jobs. They were quite compatible from various angles: same country of origin, same city of origin, same religion, same race, same caste, same sub-caste, same mother tongue, similar educational background, similar professional background.
Samskara soon set up his routine of getting up early at 5 o’clock in the morning every day irrespective of weekends and holidays for worshipping the god in an elaborate manner after compulsorily taking a shower.
Medhavi was not far behind him in reciting her prayers if not from 5 AM, it was invariably between 6 AM to 7 AM though she was not comfortable with the early morning shower as her husband did.
By 7 AM both were free from their religious chores to eat breakfast and start for their offices.
So they had every reason to be satisfied and happy and they were quite satisfied and happy for almost first four months. Then something happened.
After passing out from the university, Medhavi and Anjali did not keep in touch with each other. All Medhavi knew was that Anjali took up a job in LA and Anjali knew that after marriage Medhavi settled in San Diego. They had each other’s phone numbers and email addresses. Yet they did not exchange any communication with each other for all these days.
Then one evening while Medhavi was driving, she got a phone call on her cell from Anjali.
“Hi Medhavi, am I disturbing you in your office?”
“Anji, hi, what a surprise! I am driving home. I am so happy you rang.”
“Guess what? We will meet soon. I am reaching San Diego for a day’s conference next Monday. And I have decided to stay with you. I am sure that your husband will not mind my one night’s stay with you.”
Medhavi laughed heartily. “I am going to shift to the guest room with you that night. It will be like old times. We will talk and talk. There will be so much gossip to share. I am so excited about our meeting. And let me assure you my husband will not miss me for one night. You can as well plan to stay longer. I will love it.”
Medhavi heard Anjali’s chuckle. “No. Thanks. I can’t stay longer this time. I will email you my flight details. Pick me up from the airport. Will you?”
“Sure, I will. I am excited.”
“I am excited too. See you soon then.”
That evening Medhavi informed Samskara, “Guess who is coming to our place next Monday?”
“No. I can’t guess. You tell me.”
“Anji is coming. You know her well. My roommate. You met her many times.”
“Yes, I know Anjali. But I cannot say if I know her very well. Since she shared your apartment in LA, I met her on many occasions but frankly I did not get to know her much. But I am happy she is coming. After all she is your good friend. Will she stay with us?”
“Yes. It’s just one night. Longer stay is not possible for her this time. Don’t mind if we exclude you from our company that day. We have a lot to catch up; we will be meeting almost after six months or more.”
“Have a blast.” He smiled.
And next Monday night Medhavi and Anjali had whale of a time together. They exchanged a lot of gossip.
Anjali said, “Hey Medhavi, the other day I bumped into Shaan at LAX. He stays in San Jose.”
“Oh I know that. And I care two hoots. Tell me about others.”
“How do you know that he lives in San Jose?”
“Just like that.”
“Oh, come on. You had no way of knowing it since you had severed all the relationships with him. Then how do you know that Shaan is in America nowadays?”
“Some common acquaintance gave me Shaan’s whereabouts,” Medhavi lied.
“No. That’s not true. But I know how you know about Shaan being in America. You met him when you travelled with him to USA the very first time. In fact Shaan dropped you at our apartment. You hurt your leg at the airport and he took care of you. But you did not tell me about it.”
“How do you know all these details?” Medhavi got curious to know more.
“I told you just now that I met him recently at LAX. During our conversation I realized that he presumed that I knew about his stay in San Jose. When I denied, he told me all about how you two travelled by the same flight, how you hurt yourself while picking up your bag from carousel and how he dropped you at the apartment. He took it for granted that you told me the entire story. Tell me why you did not tell me?”
“OK, but you know about it now. That should be all right now. Let us close that chapter and talk something more pleasant. Enough is enough.”
Anjali was in a mood of teasing Medhavi. She continued, “Do you know that Shaan goes to India on and off in connection with his business? And yes one more very important thing. At LAX, I saw him with a girl.”
Medhavi’s curiosity got aroused. Her jealousy also got aroused. She asked, “What girl?”
“I saw a beautiful girl with Shaan. They seemed quite intimate with each other. I saw Shaan holding her hands all the while I was talking to him.”
“Has Shaan married her?” Medhavi was quick to enquire. She became impatient with curiosity.
“No. He introduced her to me as his friend. Once bitten, twice shy. I think he is going to be careful about girls now on. You taught him that lesson.”
“Don’t talk rubbish. Was that girl really beautiful?”
“Yes she is but not as beautiful as you.”
On that note Medhavi felt happy and satisfied and she had no difficulty getting a peaceful sleep that night.
At the breakfast table, Medhavi, Anjali and Samskara gathered before starting for their respective venues of work.
Medhavi got busy setting up the typical vegetarian South Indian breakfast of idli-sambhar-chatni and Madras coffee for all of them. In the mean time Anjali cooked two fluffy omelets and brought them on the table for Medhavi and herself. Medhavi was unaware of it.
All the three of them sat around the table.
Medhavi was surprised to see the omelet in front of her. She asked, “Anji, when did you make these omelets? And who brought the eggs? We don’t keep or cook non-vegetarian stuff at home. Anji, did you?”
This conversation attracted Samskara’s attention.
Anjali answered, “Yes. While you did the grocery the previous evening and you were busy paying for it, I lifted a tray of eggs and paid at the other cash counter. I wanted to give you a surprise this morning. I thought why not eat eggs for our breakfast, like old times. After all towards the end of our stay together I had finally been successful in initiating you to eat omelet. Surprisingly you had started relishing omelets.”
“So thoughtful of you,” said Medhavi. “I never thought I could ever eat an egg preparation and like it too.”
After the breakfast Anjali was the first to leave the house. Medhavi started getting ready to go but Samskara stopped her by pulling her back in a somewhat rough manner.
He forcibly made her sit in front of him on the dining chair and shouted, “You did not tell me that you are used to eating non-vegetarian stuff. How can you eat non-veg stuff despite being a Hindu Brahmin?”
“I don’t eat any non-veg food. It’s jut eggs and that too I started eating it of late in the company of Anji. Have you ever seen me eating an egg earlier? And please don’t shout at me on this minor matter. Please leave my hand, you are hurting me.”
“It’s not a minor matter. We Brahmins don’t even touch the non-veg, eating it is a far-fetched thing. Now I need to do your shuddhikaran (purification or cleansing) and that of our fridge where the eggs were stored.”
He opened the fridge, threw out the egg tray in the trash bin, took out a bottle filled with the water of the river Ganga and sprinkled it over the fridge and also over Medhavi.
“Now this sacred water of Ganga has purified you and the fridge. Please don’t ever do it again.” His patronizing tone sounded quite jarring to Medhavi’s ears. She hated it.
And then he walked out of the house in a hurry. Medhavi heard his car drive away.
Medhavi remained stunned for some five minutes. She felt terribly violated. She immensely despised the words and actions of Samskara. She thought, “Why is he so narrow-minded? What wrong did I do by eating just one omelet in the company of my old friend? And what did he mean by sprinkling the water all over me without my permission? I hate him.”
She also recalled from the previous incidents, “He carries out the same procedure of sprinkling the sacred water of Ganga all over the house every time I am done with my periods. And now I know why he avoids touching me during those four-five days. So he thinks that my periods make the house and me dirty. Rubbish. Now I remember my mom doing the same thing and I always hated it.”
She started feeling that Samskara had been quite irritating in many other ways too. She felt that it was very boring of him to wake up every day at 5 AM, take a shower at that indecent hour of the day and carry out his pooja (worship) for two long hours. Why can’t he windup his pooja a little quicker?Because of his extended poojas even on weekends he did not even once give the kind of company she needed from him for a leisurely tea and breakfast.
“Excess of everything is bad. I am now sure of it. It gets on nerves,” She thought.
That evening when he returned from the office he lost no time in suggesting Medhavi, “Do not encourage your friend Anjali to come here often.”
“Just because she made me eat an omelet this morning?” Medhavi was furious.
“Of course that wasn’t good on her part,” Samskara was quite harsh.
After giving a pause he continued, “Also we should make friends with the people of our own community only. Isn’t Anjali a Christian?”
“We already have many friends who are from our community but I do not mind making friends with the people of other communities. I have been good friend from all kinds of communities from my childhood. What is the problem?”
“Oh these people of other communities can be a bad influence on our children. And I am quite serious about it. Our samskaras (cultural heritage and upbringing) are far more superior to the samskaras people of other communities give to their children. We do not want our children to pick them up.”
Medhavi got very upset hearing all of these ideologies of her husband. She thought that he carried some extreme ideas related to these issues that did not gel with her. She thought it wise to remain silent. She was already perturbed and if she spoke with that frame of mind she would surely get into a big row with him.
She accepted that she herself was quite religious and could not think of getting married to a boy of other religion. She had also looked down upon the people of other communities and castes when it came to the question of marriage. She did not consider the boys of other castes and sub-castes of even her own religion suitable for her. That’s why she did what she did to Shaan. But to her, her husband seemed to be far more religious than her. He was too much of a religious person as per her judgment.
And she wondered how religiousness, which she thought was a great virtue, could become intolerable when stretched to extremes. She felt confused with her new understanding that religiousness could also be categorized as being non-religious, little religious, moderately religious and extremely religious.
She further asked herself, “How much religiousness is correct, after all? And does sticking to all the diktats of an organized religion make a human being completely worthy? Are all of those diktats relevant today? Do people interpret them correctly? Were the people who made them more authentic and wiser than the modern day human beings? Haven’t many of those diktats become obsolete and irrelevant? May be many of those diktats are outright retrograde and inhuman. Do we need to review them from an open mind and modify appropriately?”
She further probed, “And perhaps that seems true of every organized religion. Perhaps no religion may be an exception to it.”
It was a sudden revelation to her, that too for the first time in her life.
For the first time after many months she remembered Shaan. For the first time she remembered him in a favorable manner also. Subconsciously she started comparing him to her husband. By now she was quite tired emotionally. She did not realize when she hit the bed and went to sleep.
