The Forbidden Daughter. Shobhan Bantwal
Sheila often pointed out to her parents that they should treat Priya the same way they treated her sons. But her advice didn’t make an iota of difference to their way of thinking or behavior.
Isha opened her eyes when the car slowed down and made the sharp turn into their driveway. Nikhil brought the car to a stop under the carport outside their house and turned to her. “Feel a little better now?”
She shook her head. “Worse. We have to go in there and tell them the news.”
He cupped her cheek in his hand, his expression tender and sympathetic. “I’ll do the telling, Ish. You just sit down and relax. You need to rest after the sleepless night you’ve had.”
She tried to summon a smile but didn’t quite succeed. He could be so kind sometimes, and he was so good-looking he still made her heart skip a beat. She’d been instantly attracted to him the day he’d come to her parents’ home for the bride-viewing. One look at those sparkling gray-green eyes, the strong jaw and nose, the tall, proud carriage, and she’d made up her mind that this was the man she wanted to marry. Fortunately he’d felt the same way about her.
She’d fallen in love the first day and fallen deeper over the years as she’d come to recognize his many sterling qualities: loyalty, sense of humor, his capacity for hard work, and mostly his love and devotion to her and Priya—and now his commitment to their unborn child.
She loved Nikhil more than anyone else in the world. But even that wasn’t going to be enough to provide a buffer between his parents and her.
But such was her fate. She had been destined to marry Nikhil Tilak, a good man with not-so-good parents. As his wife, Isha had no choice but to put up with his family. In their culture, marriage was a package deal.
Opening the car door, she stepped out. “All right, then. You tell them and I’ll sit there like the good little wife and pretend to be happy.”
Despite her bitter sarcasm, Nikhil smiled. “Good decision.”
Chapter 2
June 2006
Isha listened to the relentless rain beating down on the roof as she coaxed Priya to finish her dinner. The monsoons were in full swing. Late evenings seemed drearier than the rest of the day for some reason, perhaps because it rained even harder, or because she dreaded dinnertime. It almost always followed the same pattern: the meal started with stilted conversation, then deteriorated into emotional arguments, and finally sank into sullen silence.
It was nearly two months since Nikhil and she had informed Ayee and Baba about the baby’s gender. As expected, their reaction had been shocked silence followed by disappointed sighs.
Then one evening, they had nonchalantly introduced the subject of abortion. From that point on, it became almost the sole topic of discussion, and also a bone of contention. The relationship between the younger and elder Tilaks had begun to fracture immediately. With each passing day it became more strained, more resentful, even turbulent at times. The bitterness and animosity seemed to accelerate at about the same rate the baby grew in her womb and kicked with more intensity.
“I wonder why Nikhil is not home yet,” said Isha’s mother-in-law, interrupting Isha’s gloomy thoughts. Ayee had made the remark for the second time in ten minutes, frowning at the wall clock in the dining room.
Baba was in the drawing room, watching television. They were all waiting for Nikhil to return home from work.
“He’s probably taking care of a last minute customer, Ayee,” Isha explained to ease Ayee’s obvious agitation—although she’d been wondering about the same thing herself. Nikhil knew his parents’ tendency to worry excessively about him, so he indulged them by keeping them informed of his whereabouts as much as he could.
So where was he at the moment? Why hadn’t he called?
“Priya, it’s getting late.” Isha threw her daughter a no-more-arguments frown. “Now finish what’s on your plate!” A fussy eater, Priya usually toyed with her food and wasted a lot of what was served, so she needed to be prodded into eating.
Priya shook her head, making her pigtails bounce. “I’m not hungry.” Her large hazel eyes had that familiar stubbornness about them.
That particular expression was so much like Nikhil’s when he got mulish about something that it made Isha smile inwardly. Like father, like daughter! But they were such beautiful, expressive eyes. She was glad her child had inherited them from her father, because her own light brown eyes weren’t all that spectacular.
“If you don’t eat, you don’t get a bedtime story,” Isha warned her. The enticement of a bedtime story was rather trite, but it almost always worked with Priya.
The little girl reluctantly shoveled the last of the rice and lentils into her mouth, then slid off the chair and skipped out of the dining room. Isha motioned to the maid hovering nearby to remove the empty plate and rose to her feet.
The clock read 8:56 PM. Ayee was sighing audibly. There was still no sign of Nikhil. Isha threw another anxious glance outside the window. No headlights coming up the driveway. The phone remained silent. The first real frisson of apprehension tiptoed through her mind.
Where was her husband?
Nikhil usually left his office around 8:00 PM and came home well before 8:30 every evening. Now Baba was getting impatient and pacing the floor, so Isha called the shop to find out what was keeping Nikhil, but there was no reply. The voice mail came on and she left a message asking Nikhil to call home right away.
But he didn’t call back; and several minutes after the clock struck nine, and there was still no sign of Nikhil and no call, either, Isha and her mother-in-law exchanged worried looks.
Ayee’s frown became deeper. “Why is he not home yet?” she repeated, echoing Isha’s thoughts. “He always informs us if he is going to be late, no?”
Dinner was getting cold, so Isha encouraged the elders to eat. Besides, they were rigid in their eating schedules.
A little later Isha read Priya her promised story and got her settled in bed, then decided to wait up for Nikhil in the drawing room along with her in-laws. She kept trying both the office land-line as well as Nikhil’s mobile phone every few minutes, but both came up with voice-mail each time.
At 9:49 PM, Baba, dressed in white pajamas and a loose muslin shirt, was pacing the drawing room floor more furiously than before, his jaw clenched tight. For a sixty-two-year-old he was in excellent shape, trim-bodied, smooth-complexioned, and in full control of his faculties. Despite his shock of silver hair, he looked ten years younger than he was. Technically he had handed over the business to Nikhil and retired, but he was very much involved in its overall operation.
He finally stopped pacing and turned to Isha. “This is going on too long. Call Patil, the Superintendent of Police. Maybe there was an accident or something.”
So Isha called Mr. Patil’s home number and explained the situation. The superintendent was a family acquaintance, and he immediately offered to send out a couple of men to discreetly find out if there was any sort of trouble at Nikhil’s office.
Ayee looked even more distressed than Baba. Her hair was done in a braid in preparation for bed, and she had on a soft cotton kaftan. At fifty-eight, unlike her young-looking husband, she certainly looked her age, perhaps because she frowned so much and had wrinkles in her brow.
But she had the gorgeous hazel eyes, high cheek bones, and chiseled features that her son, her daughter, and all her grandchildren had inherited. She must have been a lovely woman in her youth. Baba and she still made a handsome couple.
Isha and her in-laws waited a long time, willing the phone to ring. The tension in the room was oppressive, especially when Baba kept switching the television on and off every few minutes and murmuring under his breath. But it wasn’t Isha’s place to tell him to cut it out, stop pacing, and sit down for heaven’s sake. He was driving her crazy with his slippers going clop-clop