Only three days had passed since his marriage. He was still wearing his new veshti with the narrow edging of gold zari. He fingered it now and remembered his excitement when he had first gazed at it. It was the first time he had got a new veshti – white, pristine and grand because of the edging. He could not believe his luck. As a labourer he had always worn old, soiled, hand-me-downs from his brothers. He had tried his best to talk his mother into buying a shirt in his favourite colour of bright red – just like the shiny one his adored hero wore in the movies but his mother had put her foot down and chose a yellow shirt. “Don’t you know that the bride and groom should be clad in auspicious yellow” she had said.

            The yellow shirt, crumpled now made his neck itch. The heat and sweat added to his misery as he sat alone in the house and listened to the voices outside. They never seemed to stop and his mother’s lament kept rising in pitch every time somebody new came along. She interspersed her wails with liberal curses for his wife, her parents, the uncle who had brought the alliance, always ending her diatribe by cursing him and his bad luck.

            He still found it difficult to take it all in. He had had a fleeting glimpse of his bride when their marriage was fixed. He remembered how he was not consulted as the elders of both the families had decided to make a match of it. He was inured to being ignored all his life and accepted it placidly. And then the wedding three days back. It came to him in flashes - the ceremony in the night, guests arriving in matador vans from near and far, loud music from the latest movies, the smell of cheap liquor and unwashed bodies as they came and thumped him on his back and cracked jokes that went over his head, grinning at people who never had time for him before and throughout, the underlying excitement of something new happening in his life as he stolesurreptitious looks at his new wife who never seemed to lift up her head. In the aftermath of the wedding they had attended lunches and dinners but he never had an opportunity to  talk to her as she was always in the midst of women – his mother, sisters, his brother’s wife all contrived or so it seemed to him, to keep them apart.

            Yesterday in the bus he had his first chance to talk to her. They had been sent to his uncle’s place in the nearby town to spend the night. Unlike their one room house his uncle’s place offered more privacy for the newlyweds. He had gathered courage and ventured out in the evening on the pretext of visiting a temple. But he had led her to the bus stand and suggested that they should go a nearby town and see his idol’s latest movie. He had seen it twice already and felt a thrill in seeing it again in her company.  She had nodded her head in assent. It seemed that she was too timid to speak to him even now. He wondered how she who had unlike him reached her ninth standard had managed to remain so shy. In fact it puzzled him still as to how she had agreed to marry him, who had not even passed his fifth standard. He resolved to ask her sometime about it but not now. He would wait for her to get used to him and overcome her timidity. He also wished he could tell her how he felt that his life seemed to look much brighter by her mere presence. He seemed to be standing taller, had even rebelliously taken her out by himself and they were now going for a movie.

            He still could not believe what happened then. Absolutely no hints of things to come. They were seated in the bus and were waiting for it to start its journey. They had found good seats, not close to the engine but not too far back either. The journey was not expected to be long, half an hour so but still he wanted his wife to travel in comfort. They were sitting in silence and the next he knew, she had got down from the bus mumbling she would be back quickly. He was too embarrassed to ask outright but he had guessed the reason. Five minutes turned to ten but still no sign of her. The bus was getting filled up. He had become nervous. He kept peering out of the window and simultaneously warding off all attempts by others to take her seat. Finally he had been forced to get down when the bus moved out. Whatever happened after that was all hazy to him, even now. He remembered moving around indecisively searching for her, unsure now if he remembered her face even properly, looking at a lot of women at close range and some angry faces too. Was it two hours or three later that he had stumbled back to his uncle’s house, incoherent and on the verge of tears? He remembered people talking on the phone, her brother and father anxiously questioning him, voices raised in accusation and altercations but nothing had penetrated his haze of confusion and anxiety for his wife.

            The loud voices outside claimed his attention. Somebody was explaining for the benefit of those late-comers, how the girl had eloped with a man from her town, an assistant at a pharmacy. She must have called him from the bus-stand, somebody conjectured. “Did you know that man is already married and has two children?” a voice interjected with relish.” “And she has taken all her jewellery”, somebody chimed in. “Obviously her parents knew about it and tried to quickly get her wed.” “How did this fool lose her?” a disgusted voice questioned. His mother’s voice interrupted all the others. “I’ll get my son married by next month again”, she said fiercely. As the babel of voices broke out again, his eyes welled up. “Another marriage? Another white veshti?” What would he, a labourer do with two white veshtis? What use did he have for this one that he wore now? He could imagine the jibes and comments that would follow him if he ever ventured out in this white veshti again. He could hear them now, “Hey look at the new bridegroom. At least he managed to keep his veshti. Pity he did not hold on to his wife as firmly. Ha ha”. The little ray of hope that had illuminated his life had gone. As the black clouds of despair closed over him, he got up coming to a decision. Quietly closing the front door, he took off his veshti and knotting one end threw the other end up over the girder that supported the roof…..

Veshti -  white piece of cloth draped around the waist, the traditional dress of men in South Indian equivalent to Dhoti in North India