I married a 60-year-old woman against her family’s wishes, but the moment I touched her, I discovered a sh0cking secret no one had expected…
My name is Aditya. I am thirty two. I live in Lucknow, in Mahanagar, in a house where my mother still keeps my school certificates laminated.
Part One – The Woman on the First Floor
I had known Lata aunty for nine years before I married her.
She lived on the first floor of the same building where I had taken a one room set on rent after my father died. She was not really an aunty to me, that was just what everyone in the colony called her. Her full name was Lata Shukla. Sixty years old, widow, retired Hindi lecturer from Avadh Girls Degree College. She wore only cotton sarees, even in December. She kept two potted tulsi plants and one very fat orange cat named Golu.
My mother on the ground floor, her sister in Indiranagar, and the entire Sharma family on second floor, all thought Lata aunty was a bit eccentric. She did not watch serials. She read. She read all day. She had a small library of maybe three hundred books in her two room flat. When my father died, she was the one who got me a form for a clerk job in LDA without taking any commission.
For five years, she was my neighbour. Then she became my friend. I would go up to return her newspapers and stay for chai. She would correct my Hindi. I would fix her mixer grinder. After my mother shifted to my elder brother’s place in Kanpur, I started eating dinner at Lata aunty’s house three times a week. She made dal exactly like my mother, with extra jeera.
People started talking. In Mahanagar, if a single man of thirty eats at a single woman’s house of sixty, people will talk as if you have committed a crime. They said she was trapping me for property. They said I was after her pension.
The truth was simpler and more lonely. I was not able to marry. I had seen three girls. One wanted a boy in Canada, one wanted a boy with no mother, one said I earn too little. After a point, I stopped going to see girls. Lata aunty also was alone. Her husband had died in 2008. Her two sons lived in Noida and Pune. They came once a year, took her signature on some paper, took money for her pension, and left.
One evening in March, her cat Golu died. She called me at eleven at night, crying like a small child. I went up. She was sitting on the floor, holding that fat orange cat. She said, Aditya, now there is nobody to make noise in this house. I sat with her till two. That night I realised I was more at peace on her floor, next to a dead cat, than I had been at any shadi meeting.
Two days later, I asked her. I did not propose like in films. I said, Lata aunty, will you marry me? Not for anything else. Just so we can live in one house and not feel lonely, and colony people will stop talking because married people eating together is allowed.
She looked at me for a long time. Then she said, you are mad. You are thirty two. I am sixty. My sons will kill you.
I said, let them try.
Part Two – The Marriage No One Wanted
The opposition was exactly as expected, but double.
My mother came from Kanpur and cried for two hours without break. She said, log kya kahenge, you are marrying a woman who is elder to me. My brother said I had gone mad and needed a doctor. Lata aunty’s elder son, Amit, came from Noida with his wife. He did not even enter her house. He stood in the lane and shouted, you want to marry this boy to grab our property. We will go to court. We will prove you are mentally unstable.
Lata aunty stood on her balcony, in her white saree, and shouted back for the first time in her life. She said, which property? The two room flat that you have not whitewashed in ten years? Take it. I have lived in it alone for fifteen years, now I want to live with someone who asks me if I have eaten.
We got married on a Tuesday in Arya Samaj Mandir in Alambagh. Total expense Rs 1100 for garlands and certificate. No band, no baraat, no photographer. I wore a blue shirt. She wore a light pink saree that she had bought for her retirement function. The priest asked us if we are doing this by our own wish. We both said yes. Her younger son did not come. My mother did not come. My friend Rohit came and signed as witness.
After marriage, we came back to the same building. My one room set downstairs, her flat upstairs. We decided we will keep her flat as home. My room we locked. That evening, colony aunties did not bring us any daal chawal like they do for new couples. They closed their doors.
That night was awkward. Not in the way people think with cheap jokes. There was no physical expectation. I was sitting on one side of the bed, she on the other, both in our day clothes. She had pain in her left shoulder for many days, she had told me earlier, due to lifting water bucket. She said, Aditya, will you put this pain relief balm? I cannot reach.
It was the first time I was going to touch my wife after marriage. I took the balm, warmed it in my hand. I said, you have to lower your blouse a little from back, I will not see. She nodded. She was shy, like a young girl, even at sixty.
I lifted the edge of her saree pallu from her shoulder, moved her blouse strap slightly, and applied the balm. And that is when my fingers felt something that should not have been there.
That night, when I finally touched her back to apply the balm for her shoulder pain, my fingers did not meet soft skin, they met a map of thick, ropy, raised scars, old burn marks that ran across her entire back and shoulder like melted wax, some small and round like cigarette burns, and just below her collarbone, under the skin, a small, hard, square plastic button, a chemo port that I had seen once on my father’s chest during his last days, and in that one touch I understood that the sixty year old woman I had married in front of an Arya Samaj priest was not hiding property or age, she was hiding a body that had been burned on purpose and a body that was already fighting cancer alone.
Part Three – The Map on Her Back
I withdrew my hand as if I had touched current. She flinched. She quickly pulled her saree back.
She said, sorry. She thought I was disgusted.
I said, Lata, what is this? Who did this?
She did not answer for a long time. Then she started crying, but without sound. At sixty, women cry without sound because they have learned that loud crying brings more beating.
She told me that night, in pieces, not in one go. Her husband, who was a clerk in Nagar Nigam, was a good man but died early. After that, her two sons started bringing their father-in-laws to the house. They wanted her to sign the flat over to them. She refused. She said, where will I live? In 2019, they came during Diwali. Amit and his wife. They had brought kerosene in a small bottle, for puja they said. They argued. She refused again. His wife held her hands. Amit poured a little kerosene on her back and lit it with a kitchen match, just a little, to scare her, he said later. But saree caught fire. The maid who came for jhadu saved her. They told the doctor it was a stove burst. No police case. The colony thought it was an accident. She never told anyone that her sons did it, because what mother complains about son attempting to burn her?
The chemo port was second story. In 2023, she had bleeding. She went to KGMU alone. Doctor said early stage breast cancer, needs operation and chemo. She got operation done, told her sons she had fever, told me she had gone to her sister’s house. She had three chemos done, alone, taking auto to hospital, vomiting in hospital toilet, coming back and making herself khichdi. No one knew. She hid the port under saree. She said, Aditya, if I had told you, you would have also left, thinking I am diseased.
I sat on the floor that night. I was thirty two, I had married thinking I am saving a lonely woman. Now I understood she had been saving herself for years without anyone.
I did not touch her again that night. I sat near her feet and pressed them. She fell asleep like that.
Part Four – The Sons Come Again
The secret changed everything between us. It was no longer a marriage of convenience to avoid loneliness. It became a responsibility.
I took her to KGMU next week. The doctor there, Dr. Mishra, knew her. He said, Lata ji, you missed last two chemos. Where were you? I said, she is my wife now, I will bring her.
The reports were okay. Cancer had not spread. But she needed three more cycles and then tablets for five years.
I paid from my savings. Rs 18,000 per cycle. Not much for a rich man, but for a LDA clerk it was two months salary. I did not tell my mother.
Her sons came to know that marriage had happened and that I was taking her to hospital. They came again, this time with a lawyer notice. The notice said, our mother is of unsound mind, she has been trapped by a tenant boy for property, this marriage is null and void, we are her legal heirs.
They thought we would get scared. Lata did get scared. She started saying, Aditya, you leave me, they will beat you also.
I said, let them bring police. We have marriage certificate.
That is when second twist happened, which I had not expected at all.
I went to Nagar Nigam to get a copy of her flat’s registry papers, to reply to their notice. The clerk there, who knew me, pulled out file and said, this flat is not in Lata Shukla’s name alone. It is in joint name of Lata Shukla and Sunita Shukla. Who is Sunita Shukla?
I came home and asked Lata. She became very quiet. Then she opened her steel almirah, which she had never opened in front of me, and took out a small tin box. Inside was a photo of a small girl, maybe five years old, with two ponytails.
She said, Sunita is my daughter. My first child. Born in 1982. She had polio. She could not walk properly. When my husband died, my sons said, what will we do with a handicapped sister, she will spoil our marriage prospects. They sent her to a special school in Dehradun and never brought her back. I kept sending money. I kept her name in property so that after me, at least she will have a roof. I never told anyone in colony, because people ask, why daughter not married.
In that moment, I understood why she had agreed to marry me. Not for loneliness alone. She wanted a man in house so her sons would not be able to throw her out and sell flat before she could transfer it to her disabled daughter. She was using my thirty two year old male presence as a shield.
I was not angry. I was in awe.
Part Five – The House That Remained
We fought the case. Not in big court. In family court in Lucknow, with legal aid lawyer.
I submitted the medical papers of burn injuries, the KGMU papers of cancer treatment done alone, the photo of Sunita, and our marriage certificate. The judge, a lady judge of maybe fifty, looked at Amit and said, you tried to burn your mother for a two room flat in Mahanagar? Sharam nahi aati?
The sons withdrew notice. They signed a family settlement. Flat will remain in Lata’s name till she is alive, after that fifty percent will go to Sunita, fifty percent to both sons jointly, but they cannot sell till Sunita is alive. And they will not come to house without permission.
After settlement, we went to Dehradun to bring Sunita home for a week. She is now forty three, speaks very good English, uses a wheelchair, and paints beautiful water colours. She calls Lata, Mumma, and she calls me, Aditya bhaiya, not papa, which is good because I am not her father, I am her brother now.
Lata’s chemo got over in August. Her hair, which was already white and thin, fell a little more and then grew back, more white. My mother came in September, after six months. She saw Lata without saree pallu, with chemo port visible, serving chai with one hand shaking. She did not say anything about age. She just said, beta, you should have told me she is ill. She stayed for two days and made Lata eat moong dal.
We still live in same building. I still have my one room set locked downstairs. Upstairs, we have three people now – Lata, me, and Golu the second, a new orange cat Sunita gifted us.
Sometimes at night, when Lata’s shoulder pains, I still apply balm. Now I know the map of scars by heart. I don’t flinch. I know which scar is from kerosene, which is from cigarette, which is from operation. And under my palm, I can feel the small hard button of chemo port, which will be removed next month.
People in colony still talk. Now they say, that boy married an old woman for property and got nothing, because property went to handicapped daughter. Good, he got trapped.
We don’t explain. We have stopped explaining.
Last week, Lata asked me, Aditya, do you regret? You could have married a young girl and had children.
I said, Lata, I have a mother who is sixty and a sister who is forty three and a cat who is six months. I have more family than many people who have two children.
She laughed, and for the first time since I knew her, her laugh had no pain in it.
In our small flat, where books are more than utensils, we have kept our marriage certificate framed. Not because we need to prove marriage to anyone. Because below our photos, the priest had written a line in Hindi – Vivah bandhan prem ka nahi, sahara ka bhi hota hai.
Marriage is not always bond of love, sometimes it is bond of support also.
