The mother-in-law pretended to be ill to keep Roha...

Part I – The House With Two Women

Rohan was not just a son in that house. He was the house.

Meera had raised him alone after her husband left when Rohan was six years old. He went away to Canada with another woman and never sent even a postcard. Meera did not marry again. She took a job as a clerk in the municipal office in Lucknow, stitched salwars at night, and made her son the centre of her universe. She kept his first tooth in a small dibbi, his first school diary, his college admission letter laminated like a degree.

When people asked Meera why she never thought of herself, she would say, “My son is my husband, my child, my everything. Rohan is my property.”

She said it with love, but also with ownership.

Ananya came into this house like a soft wind that did not know the doors were closed.

She was twenty-six, from Kanpur, MA in Hindi literature, taught in a small private school. She was not very fair, not very modern, but she had a laugh that came from the stomach and eyes that stayed when she looked. Rohan met her at a cousin’s wedding. He was thirty, working in an IT company in Gomti Nagar, quiet, good-looking in a tired way, the kind of boy who never said no to his mother.

He liked Ananya because she did not ask him about salary on the first day. She asked him what book he was reading.

They married after six months. Meera agreed, but with a condition that was not spoken, only understood. The girl can come, but the son will remain mine.

The first month, everything was normal. Ananya tried to be a good bahu. She woke at six, made chai exactly how Meera liked, less sugar, more ginger. She touched Meera’s feet every morning. Meera smiled and said, “Beta, you are good girl.”

At night, when Ananya waited in their small bedroom for Rohan, Meera would call from the next room, “Rohan beta, my head is paining a little, can you press?”

Rohan would go. He would come back after one hour, sometimes two, saying, “Mumma could not sleep, you sleep, Ananya.”

Ananya adjusted. She thought, new house, mother is alone for many years, she is insecure.

On their first Karva Chauth, Ananya kept fast. She wore red saree. She waited for moon. Rohan came home early, took her to terrace, they were about to break the fast together, hands touching, when Meera’s voice came from downstairs, loud, gasping.

“Rohan… Rohan… chest pain…”

Rohan ran down, leaving Ananya on the terrace with her thali in her hands. Meera was lying on the sofa, holding her chest, breathing fast. Rohan called the neighbour doctor, made her lie down, slept beside her bed whole night on the floor. Ananya broke her fast alone with water at 11 p.m.

That was the first time. Then it became a pattern.

Part II – The Illness

Whenever Ananya and Rohan tried to be close, Meera fell ill.

If they went for a movie, Meera called ten times, “Beta, my BP is low, I am feeling dizzy.” If they closed their bedroom door early, Meera knocked after ten minutes, “Rohan, my knee is paining, I cannot get up, can you give me medicine?”

If they laughed loudly in their room, Meera would cough loudly in her room, till Rohan went to check.

Rohan never said no. How could he? She was his mother. She had raised him alone. She had not eaten many nights so he could eat. His friends said, “Yaar, your mother is too attached.” But Rohan said, “She has only me. What to do?”

Ananya slowly started feeling like a guest in her own marriage. She would make two chapatis for Rohan with love, and Meera would say, “Rohan does not like thick chapatis, beta, make thin like I make.” Rohan would eat Meera’s thin chapatis and say, “Both are good.”

At night, Rohan started sleeping in Meera’s room three times a week. Meera would say, “I am having anxiety, beta, you sleep here, I feel safe.”

Ananya would lie alone in their double bed, staring at the ceiling fan, listening to her husband snoring in his mother’s room. She was twenty-six, married, but felt like a widow.

She tried talking to Rohan one Sunday afternoon, when Meera had gone to satsang.

“Rohan, I need you also,” she said, holding his hand. “I left my house, my city, for you. If you are always with Mummy, when will we become husband and wife?”

Rohan became uncomfortable. “Ananya, please understand, Mummy is alone. She is getting old. She sacrificed everything for me. If I don’t care, who will? You are young, you can adjust, no?”

Adjust. That word that every Indian daughter-in-law hears like a mantra.

Ananya did not shout. She went to the kitchen and made kheer. She thought maybe if she makes good food, love will come back.

That same night, Rohan came to their room early, for the first time in two weeks. He locked the door. He hugged Ananya from behind while she was removing her earrings. For a moment, she felt he was back, her husband, not just Meera’s son.

Then the knock came. Loud, urgent.

“Rohan… Rohan… I am feeling very serious… my chest… I cannot breathe…”

Rohan opened the door. Meera was standing there in her nightgown, holding her chest, her face pale. She looked genuinely ill that night. Even Ananya got scared.

Rohan picked his mother in his arms and took her to the sofa. He called Dr. Mishra, the family doctor who had known Meera for fifteen years. Dr. Mishra came at 10 p.m., checked BP, ECG, gave injection.

Meera said, “Don’t leave me tonight, Rohan, I might die.”

Rohan slept beside her bed again. Ananya slept alone again, her earrings still half removed.

Next morning, Ananya went to return Dr. Mishra’s fees to his small clinic near the market. She was worried, so she asked, “Doctor uncle, is Mummy’s heart okay? Should we do full checkup?”

Dr. Mishra looked around, closed his clinic door, and lowered his voice. He had seen Meera for fifteen years. He knew.

And that morning, in that small clinic with the smell of Dettol and old registers, when Dr. Mishra quietly told Ananya while handing back her hundred rupees, beta, I have checked Meera ji four times this month, her BP is 120 by 80, ECG is absolutely normal, there is no chest problem, no knee problem, she is healthier than many 40 year olds I see, Ananya finally understood the terrible truth that Meera’s sudden, serious illnesses every time Rohan tried to be close to his own wife were not illnesses at all, but a carefully staged drama to keep her only son sleeping beside her bed and to slowly push his young wife out of the marriage.

Part III – The Pushing Out

Knowing is worse than not knowing.

After Dr. Mishra told her, Ananya could not unsee. She saw how Meera’s face became normal as soon as Rohan slept in her room. How her “chest pain” disappeared when neighbour aunty came with gossip. How she could climb three floors to terrace when she wanted to dry papads, but could not get up from sofa when Rohan and Ananya were laughing.

Ananya tried to tell Rohan, gently.

“Rohan, I think Mummy is scared that you will leave her, so she is doing this.”

Rohan became angry, for the first time. “Ananya, how can you say like that? My mother is ill and you are saying she is acting? This is why mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law never get along, you all think bad only.”

He did not talk to her for two days. He slept in Meera’s room both days without even being called.

Ananya felt the house pushing her out, not with hands, but with silence. Meera started making decisions about Rohan’s clothes, food, office tiffin, as if Ananya did not exist. When Ananya made his favourite aloo paratha, Meera would say, “Rohan does not eat aloo at night, you don’t know, I know.”

Ananya started staying at school longer. She took extra tuition classes. She ate lunch alone in school canteen. Her friends said, “Why are you looking so thin?”

She thought of going back to Kanpur. Her mother said on phone, “Adjust, beta, mother-in-law is like that only in beginning, after child everything becomes fine.”

After child. That word stayed.

Three months after Dr. Mishra’s truth, Ananya missed her period. She did a test in school washroom, with shaking hands. Two lines. She was pregnant.

She came home and told Rohan first, in their bedroom, closing the door. Rohan’s face, for the first time in months, lit up like a boy’s. He picked her up, twirled her, kissed her forehead.

“Our child, Ananya? Really? I am going to be father?”

For that one evening, he was her husband again, not Meera’s property. He made tea for her, kept his hand on her stomach, talked to the unborn child.

Then they told Meera.

Meera did not smile. She looked at Ananya’s stomach, then at Rohan, then at Ananya again.

She said, “Good. Very good. My son’s child.”

She came and touched Ananya’s stomach, but her touch was not like a grandmother’s. It was like someone checking a bag she owned.

That night, Meera did not pretend to be ill. She was unusually quiet.

Part IV – The Claim

From next day, Meera’s drama changed shape.

She stopped pretending to be ill. Instead, she started pretending to be the most caring mother-in-law. She made Ananya sit, “Beta, don’t bend, I will do.” She made halwa with ghee. She told everyone in colony, “My bahu is pregnant, my son’s child is coming.”

But with caring, came control.

“You should not go to school now, beta, leave job, dust is not good for baby,” she told Ananya.

“You should sleep in my room, Rohan will disturb you, he snores, baby needs peace,” she told her.

“You should not eat pickle, not good for my grandchild,” she said.

My grandchild. Not your child. Always my.

Ananya felt the push become a pull. Meera was pulling the unborn child towards herself, away from its mother.

In the fifth month, during a small godh bharai function, with ten ladies from colony, Meera stood up and announced, with sindoor shining and voice loud.

“Everyone listen, this child is my son’s child. Rohan is my only son, his child is also mine. After delivery, child will sleep with me, will be raised by me, because Ananya is young, she does not know how to raise. I have raised Rohan alone, I know. My son’s child is also mine.”

The ladies clapped, saying, “Wah, Meera, what a grandmother.”

Ananya sat there with mehendi on her hands and felt cold. Rohan was in office, he did not hear. When she told him at night, he said, “Mumma is just excited, Ananya, don’t take serious, she loves you.”

But Ananya had taken serious. Because for the first time, Meera had said openly what she had been doing secretly for one year. My son is mine. My son’s child is also mine. Where are you, bahu?

That night, Ananya bled a little. Spotting. Doctor said stress, bed rest, no tension.

Rohan finally got scared. He took leave for three days and stayed home. He saw how his mother kept taking Ananya’s hand off her own stomach and keeping her own hand instead. How she said, “My child will be fair like Rohan, not like…”

He remembered his father leaving. Meera had told him, “Your father left because that woman took him. Men leave when other women come.” She had been saying it since he was six. He had grown up hearing that every woman who comes close to her son will take him away.

He understood, late, but he understood.

He confronted Meera, not with shouting, but with crying. He, a thirty-one-year-old man, cried in front of his mother like he used to when he was six.

“Mumma, you are scared I will leave you like Papa left you, no?” he said. “That is why you do all this drama. You pretend to be ill so I sleep near you. You say my child is yours so I stay with you. Mumma, I am not Papa. I will never leave you. But if you keep pushing Ananya out, I will have to go with her, because she is my wife and she is carrying my child and she is alone in this house.”

Meera stared at him. For the first time, her mask of illness and ownership cracked, and behind it was a woman who was just scared. Scared of being alone again. Scared that history will repeat, that her only son will also be taken by another woman.

“I have only you, Rohan,” she whispered. “If you also go…”

“I am not going, Mumma,” Rohan said, and for the first time, he held both women, his mother and his wife, one in each hand, and made them sit together. “But you have to share. Love is not property, Mumma. If you keep it in locker, it dies. If you share, it grows.”

Part V – The Sharing

Meera did not change in one day. People who have been scared for twenty-four years don’t change in one day.

But she tried. She went to Dr. Mishra herself and said, “Doctor, tell my son I am fine. I don’t need to pretend.”

Dr. Mishra gave her a small tablet for anxiety, not for heart.

Ananya gave birth in the eighth month, a little early, because of earlier stress, but healthy. A girl, with Ananya’s eyes and Rohan’s nose.

In the hospital, Meera came, but she did not say, my son’s child is mine. She stood at the door and asked, “Can I touch, beta?”

Ananya, lying on the hospital bed, tired, with stitches, said, “Yes, Mummy, but after me. First I will hold, then you.”

Meera nodded. She waited.

Rohan, who had once slept beside his mother’s bed every time she pretended to be ill, now slept beside his wife’s bed in the hospital, holding the baby’s small finger, while his mother sat on the chair nearby, not calling him, just watching.

Later, at home, they made rules. Small, written on paper, stuck on fridge, like in Ananya’s school.

Rule 1 – Rohan will sleep in his wife’s room. If Mummy feels ill, she will call, and Ananya will also come, both will help.

Rule 2 – Baby will sleep with mother and father. Grandmother can take baby in morning for two hours, so mother can rest.

Rule 3 – No one will say, my son, my child. We will say, our.

Meera read the rules and cried, but she signed with a sketch pen.

One night, baby was crying continuously. Ananya was exhausted, Rohan was trying to make formula. Meera came, without knocking, took the baby gently and said, “Give to me, I know how, you both sleep for one hour.”

Ananya gave. Because this time, Meera was not snatching. She was asking. She was sharing.

When Ananya woke after one hour, she saw Meera sleeping on the chair, baby sleeping on her chest, and Rohan sleeping on the floor beside them, holding Meera’s feet like he used to when he was small, and also holding Ananya’s hand that was hanging from the bed.

For the first time, Ananya felt she was not pushed out. She was pulled in, all three of them, in a strange, imperfect circle.

Love in that Lucknow house did not become like film love after that. Meera still sometimes says, “My son,” and Ananya still corrects, “Our son.” Meera still pretends to have a little headache when Rohan and Ananya laugh too loudly, but now she herself laughs after two minutes and says, “Arre, I was just checking if you remember me.”

And Rohan, the only son, who was once treated like personal property, is learning to be not a property, but a bridge.

On the day baby was named Myra, Meera said in front of everyone, “My son’s child is… our child.”

She corrected herself. Everyone heard. Ananya cried, but this time, not alone in bedroom. She cried on Meera’s shoulder, and Meera cried on hers, while Rohan held both and Myra stared at all three with big eyes, as if saying, finally, you all learnt to share.