Ego

Ritu lay on her back and gazed at the star-spangled sky above her. Celestial generosity, she thought. In the city where she lived, she wasn't used to witnessing such abundance. The clear night sky here, in the village looked like a piece of abstract art. Or, as if someone had squeezed an entire tube of silver sparkle on a black chart paper, making its contents splutter in every possible direction. 

A cool breeze caressed her face. It upset her hair and turned over the hem of her long jumper. Time and again she had to tuck back errant locks behind her ears and straighten out her jumper. From the floor below, she could depend on the direction of the breeze hear the voices of her father-in-law and her husband. They were arguing, among other things, about her. Her father-in-law wanted her to give up her job as a lecturer in the government women's college life in the village. Why? Because the old widower deserved good food and the company of his grandchildren.

Ritu and her husband had asked him to live with them in the city. He had scoffed at the idea. What about the house and the cattle? He would ask. He owned three buffalos and two cows. Sell off the cattle, hand over the house to a caretaker, his son would say.

'Should I sell off my cattle and leave my house,' he would say stressing on my, 'so that your wife can continue that useless job of hers?'

Ritu fixed her gaze on one star of average brightness. Just an insignificant piece of decoration for someone lazying on a charpoy on the terrace of a house surrounded by lush green fields. But in fact brighter and bigger than our own sun with who knows how many worlds swirling around it. Were they still obsessed, Ritu thought, with the primacy of their own tiny planets? Were they still burning heliocentrists on stakes or had they really progressed and now contented themselves just burning the dowry deficient brides in their kitchens? 

In the house just a hundred meters away from this one, a new bride had been burnt to death a year ago. The groom's family had demanded a four-wheeler and the bride's father had promised to give them one. But then, on the day of the wedding he had defaulted. The groom and his parents waited a year, during which the woman gave birth to a daughter. It was perhaps the combined crime of not bringing the desired dowry and birthing a female that her clothes finally caught fire one day. At the time she had been making rotis for the family on a country stove. 

Ritu's father-in-law had only been asking her to milch cows and make cow dung cakes. Perhaps she should be grateful. He hadn't even got any dowry from Ritu's father and that fact he frequently rubs in her face. She had been a love marriage and in that the father-in-law had lost greatly. He had insisted on payment of ten lack cash, a four-wheeler, washing machine, LED TV, a double door refrigerator, and an Air Conditioner. Ritu's father said that such a dowry was far beyond his humble means. And Ritu's father-in-law refused to marry his engineer son to a pauper's daughter. So the two of them had got married in a temple and it was only after two years when Ritu began expecting her first child that his father-in-law resumed contact with his son. 

And now he wanted her to quit her useless job and move in permanently. Not for food or the company of his grandchildren, Ritu's sister said. The old man can't stand the fact that his daughter-in-law has a government job while his son works in a private company. First, he tossed away his desires in your favor, then you bring no dowry, and top of that you turn out to be the confident, educated, and independent woman; a misogynist's ultimate nightmare. Too much for a man who would rather have his daughter-in-law mop the floor and cook chapatis. It's the big fat male ego at work, her sister said. And Ritu knew she was right. It did boil her blood when her father-in-law called her job useless, just to put her down, of course. He wanted her to give up the coveted job for two reasons. For one his insecurities would be greatly assuaged and secondly, his daughter-in-law will be relegated to the place that has been of this household's women since ever: the hearth and the bed.

She heard footsteps on the staircase. The two men were coming to the terrace. Why but? Had her husband finally given in? Was her husband about to ask her to quit her job and move to the village permanently? Her heart skipped a beat. She would hate to choose between her career and her marriage but lately, she started to find hints of toxic masculinity in her husband as well. Two years into the marriage she no more had the confidence in him that she had at the time of their marriage. In the last year, he had often raised his voice and although things had not come to it yet, she knew that it wouldn't take much for him to raise his hand on her.  

Ritu sat upright on the charpoy and settled her clothes and hair. She felt her muscles stiffen as if preparing to combat a physical blow. Once again she looked at the vast sky above her and wondered if even that was sufficiently vast to accommodate the male ego.