Here's what I would have Archana do:
Tell her parents she knows, even understands, why the incident at the engagement went in favour of Ajit and co, but that she cannot condone it. This means she can't feel as comfortable in their house as she used to and has to consider other alternatives.
Archana goes back to school immediately and resumes her job. She also leaves Manav's home right away, putting in a lawyer's appeal to the court that the situation with her mother in law has become increasingly untenable for her. She does not go to a home for helpless women, but finds, instead, other single women on small incomes who are sharing in low-cost accomodation, where she will feel more empowered and have better company in every respect.
Meanwhile (this is how the story could move) she reverses her self-destructive you're-right-and-I'll-support-you-to-hell-and-back stand and tells Manav that he's doing her, their relationship, and himself grave dishonour and harm by his actions. He realizes this too, and slowly,
so does Shravani. Particularly since Shravani sees that no efforts on her part to get close to Manav seem to be working, and that he seems, in fact, to flinch at her touch. Shravani's self-respect finally puts in an appearance, and when Girish comes back, just before the final case hearing, she leaves to look after the baby as a single mother. Girish is angry and feels helpless, but he is a realist before all else, and so presently he begins to look up newspaper ads for decent, practical, and ambitious divorced men who may be good stepfathers for his grandchild.
This time, they do not "bump" into each other in the train or the auto going to court though Manav would have liked that. Archana is not happy, but far more composed than anyone would have imagined. This time it is Manav who says he wants to stay married to her. The divorce does not come through again, and the judge - having figured out that neither party is serious about this business - dismisses the case without further conditions, but with a reprimand for having wasted his time. Archana does not go back to the chawl. Savita is too furious with everybody and the couple is (wisely) in no mood to rethink or stabilize their marriage under the shadow of her loud wrath. From the extra money he's making thanks to being a garage owner, Manav gives Archana a small sum every month. That along with her own very modest salary allows them to have a clean but really tiny single-room place ten stops further down their train line, with a miscroscopic kitchenette counter, but unfortunately a bathroom they have to share with some seven others down the corridor. Archana is good at home economies and in any case when they have each other they seem to need so little else. Manav, unable to tear himself away from Savita - for after all he has grown up with her nagging in his ears - spends half his time in the chawl, and the other half, more peacefully, with Archana. It is a small room - and a really small bed - but it's much better than having lost her, and one day in the next couple of years, when his mother is older and less angry, when Archana finishes her school finals and they decide on children, perhaps they can move back to the chawl again. Perhaps.
How's that?
C
Edited by commentator - 15 years ago
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