Free The Age of Shiva by Manil Suri

saris and sling them over my shoulder in a bundle when I left. But there was no way to access the trunk in the bedroom unseen. Besides, it wasn’t as if I could tote along the radiogram or fridge. The only choice was to leave everything behind.
    The actual getaway turned out to be smooth and quick. I walked along the courtyard perimeter to the gate, pretending to examine the dung fuel cakes stuck to the walls, left over from the time the family had owned a cow. The doors opened at a nudge, the chain clinking noisily, the wood groaning like something alive. But nobody seemed to notice, no voice called out to challenge me even when I stepped across the threshold and closed the doors behind.
    It was dark already, but I blinked, as if emerging into bright sunlight. The air was thick with the pungency of chilies being fried in rancid oil—this, I told myself, was the scent of freedom, of liberty. I allowed myself to be swept towards the station in a surge of elation, gliding over the muddy street in my red and gold bridal regalia, the folds of my sari held raised so that the embroidered border didn’t get dirty. The vegetable hawkers beamed at me from behind their baskets, their tomatoes shiny and ruddy-cheeked in approval, their eggplants glistening vibrantly in encouragement. I passed the shops selling metal parts, the shanty huts made of gunnysack, the line of rickshaws by the station—all sights familiar from my days of stalking Roopa and Dev. How long ago had that been—years maybe, centuries even? Would this be the last time I set eyes on them? Rummaging through the garbage heap behind the station was the same brown and white cow I had petted so many times for good luck. It interrupted its activity to look up and nod as if in recognition, a wedge of watermelon rind in its mouth forming an enormous green grin.
    I stood outside the station steps, contemplating the best way to proceed. I still had the rupee coin Sharmila had pressed into my palm for good luck at the wedding. Was that enough for a rickshaw to Darya Ganj? Or should I take a bus—one of the brightly painted vehicles spewing exhaust fumes opposite the station, the conductors shouting out routes through the windows to cram in as many passengers as they could? There was also a local train that ran during the day, but I didn’t know if it went close to where we lived.
    Then a more alarming question occurred to me. Even if I made it to Darya Ganj, what was to say that Biji would take me in? Hadn’t she always impressed upon us that a woman’s place was by her husband, that he was her god, her Shiva, her pati-parameshwar? “Good or bad, she must accept him as her fate,” I heard her intone. I remembered all the times she had related to us the tale of Sati, who threw herself in a fire when her husband Shiva was insulted. A strange intensity would light up in Biji’s eyes each time she got to the part where the pyre was being prepared, as if this was a test to which she herself aspired, just to prove her mettle. I thought of all the bitterly unhappy years of Biji’s own marriage through which she had stuck by my father’s side. What if I appeared at her doorstep and she turned me away?
    But there was always Paji, who didn’t believe in such things. Paji, who had tried to change Biji’s views so tirelessly. Paji, who quoted Jung and John Stuart Mill, who read out entire chapters from volumes written by Nehru to his daughter, to teach us we were equal to men. Except could it be possible that he wielded these texts so zealously to convince not us but himself? Hadn’t he been the one, after all, with the final say in my marriage, the one who had ultimately said yes? The one who had contracted to hand me over to Dev’s family even as he told me exactly what I could expect? “One hundred and ten rupees for the pressure cooker, two thousand for the refrigerator, eighteen hundred for the radiogram,” I