Rejection - A short story

Shruti opened her jewellery box to extract the shiny stone studded bangles that she had chosen for her varmala ceremony. They went perfectly with her peach lehnga adorned completely in zardosi. As she wore the bangles, they made a sweet tinkling sound.

"They look so beautiful," she thought, as she purposely shook her wrists to admire their beauty and their sound. A sharp ring of the phone broke her from her reverie. In her hurry to receive the call, her bangles clanked against the jewellery box and broke into pieces.

"Oh no," she thought. But the damage was already done. The only thing remaining was to receive the call, which she did.

"Hi, Shruti," came the hoarse voice of her finace, Rohan.

"Hey, hi! How are you?" said Shruti in a smiling voice. She was quite excited to share all about the wedding preparation in detail with him, but he cut her back saying he had something important to tell. He was calling off the wedding, breaking the engagement.

Shruti couldn't believe her ears. She stood staring at the mess created by the broken bangles; her eyes clouded with tears. Rohan's voice sounded like that in a faraway world.

But… Why? Her mind wandered to the college canteen in the past where they had spent hours together. Her arguments with Rohan over her strict feminism, and ultimately winning him over with her logical thoughts. They used to speak at length over political issues and leaders, books and writers, humanity and religion. More than love birds, they were two intellectual people having intelligent conversations.

Even the movies they watched were not romantic or comedy, but non-commercial and off beat. They didn’t go shopping for hours or for candle light dinners, or give gifts to each other. But they would sit for hours together, talking on the terrace in the sunset or silently in a cafeteria, just enjoying being together.

They were deeply in love, or so she thought. She wondered what went wrong. She had catered to all the requests made by his parents. Reasonable or not. As the wedding came closer, they kept insisting and adding on to their various demands.

They wanted her to learn cooking initially. Then they expected her to stop working post marriage. The guest list kept inflating, and likewise, the ‘gifts’ to be given in her wedding. Of course, these gifts were for Shruti’s own use and her comfort, to make her life better. She had almost forced her parents to comply with it all.

She was sad to quit her job, but pretended not to be, because love is blind, after all! She didn’t complain to Rohan about any of it. “Why trouble him unnecessarily?” she had thought. She would never find a life partner like him after all.

In fact, recently his parents had demanded that all their guests be flown to Goa for the theme wedding, at the bride’s family expense. She had even contended to this and broken all her savings accounts prematurely.

Then why this? She was in a turmoil.

A fresh wave of tears washed her away.

“Shruti, listen.” She returned to Rohan’s booming voice over the phone.

“I wanted to marry you because you’re an independent, confident girl who could stand up for herself. 

That was something which attracted me the most to you. But you’re not the same anymore. Your father told me how you’ve changed.

You’ve been hiding things from me, giving in to all my parents demands and becoming a hypocrite in the process. All this, out of the fear of losing me. So I want to remove this fear forever.

Love is not something you need to hold onto. If it is true, it will stay on when you’re yourself. I have informed my parents that I will not marry you with all their terms and conditions. If they cannot agree to this, and if you continue to be this girl I do not know, I am sorry, I have to call off the wedding."

Shruti was awash with more tears, but this time, those of pride.

The jewellery box glittered away.

(Do tell me if you enjoyed reading this story in the comments below)

Top 5 things I learnt from my Mother-in-law

Now before you assume, this is NOT a sarcastic post. These are genuinely productive tips of home management I've learnt from my mother in law and I am very grateful for it! I've come a long way from being a naive young daughter in law to an 'experienced' one <wink!>.

So let's just begin!

1. Optimum use of space
 

If you've been to Mumbai, you know there is a heavy dearth of space. You need to make the best use of space available or you're as good as living in a warehouse :D

    I learnt to make use of every inch of space in all the nooks and crannies of the house, thanks to her. Now I know how to store things without making the entire space look cluttered and also have all the necessary items in the house. Which gets me to the next point.

2. Decluttering

    Long before Marie Kondo started teaching the world about decluttering, my mother in law had strictly been following the basic principles of decluttering. Discard the things that you have kept only as memorabilia but are of no use to you.

If you have tons of a specific category of items, keep one of the lot and get rid of the rest. Say, lots of cards from one person. Or lot many candles, soft toys,.. get the drift? Select and keep the ones you really love and donate the rest.

Similarly for expensive gifts. Yes, we all get gifts which are very expensive and given by a loved one - but - let's face it - we don't like a lot of them and we will never use them, and yet they lie in our cupboards for ever and ever. So before we die and our descendants throw them all unused and untouched, it is better we give the stuff to someone else who makes good use of it while we are still alive. <Eureka moment>!

3. Multi tasking
    Well, I think most mothers and so are mothers in law, experts at this. For managing home in the best way and saving maximum time it is important to do more than one thing at a time.

So while your laundry is getting done, you might finish your cooking. While the milk is boiling, you can chop those veggies. And as the tea is boiling, you could wipe off the counter. When cooking this tip comes into great use.

Say for a meal of four items, chapati, curry, rice and dal, first wash the rice and dal, and while they soak a bit, knead the dough. While the dough sets, keep the dal to boil. Fry the sabzi. As the vegetable is cooking, cook the rice and get things ready for the tadka for dal. As soon as the sabzi and rice are ready, dal is tempered and then you can make rotis. 

Of course this is just an example, and you could alter the technique to suit your needs in different situations. Multi tasking is the way to go!

4. Just do it
 
 Often times we think more about doing something and doing the actual work takes much less time. It has happened with me more often than not, and it's not a good place to be in! So mummyji says, don't think too much, once you remember something just do it. Once you start thinking, you just keep thinking more and it lands you nowhere.


5. Keep trying
    Yup, this applies to all areas of life, still I will mention it here! This does come in the context of managing home and cooking.

I have this aversion to cooking, or rather had. I am neither a food lover nor do I love to cook. So I am always afraid of trying anything new. My mother in law has always encouraged me to keep trying. She says, "you may go wrong once or twice, a few items may get wasted, but someday you will get it right. Nobody is a born expert!" So I am able to cook reasonably well now <chuckle>.

That's all for now. If there is anything you have learnt from your mother in law, do share in the comments below! And whether you enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it :).

Take care!


PS: "What I improvised that my mother in law didn't teach me" shall be my next post. What do you think? Subscribe to stay posted :)