Chapter 20: A Woman’s Perspective
She was nearly at the door when she heard Kamla in the corridor.
“Kamla,” she said, without stopping, still straightening the crease of her saree. “Mere kamre mein table pe ek glass rakha hai — usse mat hatana. Saaf karte waqt dhyan rakhna, bas.”
Kamla said “Ji” the way she said *ji* to all instructions — complete, unquestioning — and continued on.
Tulsi went to the dining table.
It was only when she pulled out her chair that something — not quite a thought, more the shape of one — passed through her and was gone before she could look at it directly.
She sat. Reached for her glass of water.
-----
The table was fuller than usual that morning — Madhvi had slept over in Timsy’s room, and there was the particular noise that comes with that - of little cousins continuing their important discussions from last night. Two conversations running at once, someone asking for more chai, Garima trying to negotiate an extra paratha through a combination of eye contact and strategic proximity to Ritik. “Mamu, please!”, she said cutely.
Tulsi had her plate. Ate. Answered what was asked of her.
At some point Mihir reached for the serving spoon and in the same motion registered it — the absence of something that had been there last evening. The absence of that inwardness that had accompanied her like a second presence during dinner and balcony last night. She was simply present this morning. No more, no less. He set the spoon down and returned to his plate without looking at her.
Daksha chachi, midway through her own breakfast, glanced once in Tulsi’s direction — the same quiet attention she had been paying for weeks now, unhurried, unannounced. Whatever she found or didn’t find, she kept to herself.
Pari, from across the table, felt it the way you feel a change in air pressure — not seeing, just knowing. She didn’t examine it. Went back to supervising Garima’s paratha negotiation.
The meal finished the way meals finish.
-----
The day moved the way days moved at Bandhej — purposefully, with the particular momentum of a place that had its own rhythm independent of whoever was running it.
Tulsi was at her desk by nine. The Surat order, two supplier calls, a quality check on the new indigo lot that Vaishnavi had flagged the previous week. She worked through the morning without interruption, ate at her desk, was back on the floor by two.
Twice — once in the middle of the supplier call, once while walking the floor between the looms — her attention went somewhere briefly and came back. Not long enough to be called a thought. The way your eyes find a window without your having decided to look at it.
Her attention was back to work within the minute both times.
The afternoon continued.
-----
She returned home and freshened up. There was still a lot of time till dinner so she just thought of going upstairs to check on the extra crockery cupboard she had been meaning to check since she returned to Shantiniketan. Just then she heard a high pitched shout from Timsy from the direction of the living room. Her footsteps automatically turned towards the sound.
She heard them before she reached the living room — the particular volume of four children in the same space, not quite chaos, not quite not.
She came in.
For just a moment — a half-second, no more — the room stilled. Ritik mid-sentence. Angad looking up from his phone. The children briefly registering a new presence before returning to whatever they had been doing. Mihir in the armchair, a newspaper folded in his lap, not looking up.
Then Ritik continued what he had been saying to Mihir, and the room resumed.
Tulsi moved toward the far end of the room and sat.
Angad pocketed his phone. “Kaisa raha aaj aapka din, Maa? Kaam theek tha?”
“Theek tha.” She settled her saree. “Tera?”
“Bas chal raha hai.” A pause — the pause of someone locating something he has been meaning to say and deciding this is the moment. “Maa —” slightly more careful now, feeling his way — “woh aapki dal dhokli —” he stopped. Started again. “Bohot time ho gaya. Main jaanta hoon aap thak jaati hain aajkal, kaam bhi hai — bas yaad aa gayi achanak.”
Tulsi looked at him.
“Bola kyun nahi itne dinon mein?”
“Woh — aap busy hain, aur —”
“Angad.” The tone that was not unkind and was also not interested in the explanation. “Aaj raat bana deti hoon.”
“Maa, aaj nahi, shayad weekend pe—”
“Aaj.” Already done. She had turned slightly toward the room as she said it, the decision made the way she made decisions — without ceremony, simply by making them.
From the armchair, Mihir turned a page of the newspaper.
*Dal dhokli.* The words had landed somewhere quiet and immediate. He could already smell it — the tartness of the tamarind, the way the dough pieces soaked up the dal if you let it sit even five minutes too long, the specific weight of the bowl she always used. Forty-four years and the body still knew before the mind did.
And then — Angad’s words settling underneath: *aap thak jaati hain aajkal.*
She had just come home from the factory and now was going to stand at the stove for almost two hours. Because Angad had looked hesitant asking and she had responded the only way she knew how — by doing it immediately, completely, without half-measures.
She had always been like this. It had always undone him.
He turned the page. A beat too late.
Tulsi, from across the room, caught it — the delayed page, the slight tightening around his eyes. She couldn’t read all of it. But she read enough to know something had moved through him and been put away.
She looked back at her hands.
The conversation between Ritik and Mihir continued around them — something about the Jamshedpur office, a vendor dispute, the ordinary texture of the evening.
Then Garima looked up.
“Nani.” Said with the directness of someone who has been waiting for exactly this moment and this person. “Aapko pata hai aapko sabse zyada kaun pyaar karta hai?”
Behind the newspaper, Mihir went very still.
Ritik was still talking. The words continued reaching him. He heard none of them.
Tulsi looked at Garima with the particular softness she reserved for her alone. “Meri Garu?”
Garima slapped her forehead. “Nahin nahin nahin! Mujhse bhi zyaada!”
Still indulging, Tulsi said in a mock-curious voice, “Arre, aisa kaun hai”
All four children looked at Mihir.
It lasted perhaps two seconds — the four of them, heads turned in the same direction, in the manner of a completely unselfconscious and entirely unanimous verdict.
Then — four voices shouted together
“Secret!” — and they scattered - Akshay and Timsy towards the corridor, Garima under the sofa and Madhvi next to the same sofa.
Mihir turned back to Ritik. Deliberately. Carefully. The specific quality of a man who has decided that the correct response to what just happened is to have no response at all. But not before Tulsi caught — just briefly, just at the edges — the particular look of a man who had been simultaneously mortified and undone and was hoping very hard that no one had noticed.
She looked away.
The room settled. The conversation resumed. Somewhere behind the sofa Garima could be heard explaining the rules of a game that appeared to have been invented thirty seconds ago.
She sat with it — the noise of the room, the evening light coming in at its angle, the ordinary continuing around her.
Three weeks ago she would not have walked into a room where he was sitting without a reason to be there.
She hadn’t noticed herself walking in.
-----
She had made it the way she always made it — no shortcuts, no approximations, the tamarind balanced exactly right, the dhokli pieces cut to the thickness that mattered. The kitchen had smelled like it used to smell on winter evenings a long time ago.
The table knew it immediately.
Angad was the first to say something — *Maa, seriously* — with the particular helplessness of someone whose feelings about a bowl of food are slightly embarrassing him. Ritik asked for more before he had finished what was on his plate. Shobha recollecting how she used to ask for dal dhokli every single day as a kid - and now was having it after a long time.
Pari, who had earlier made a face every time her mother made it, demanding some other dish instead - now ate in a focused, almost private silence that said more than any comment could. When she looked up and found Tulsi watching her, she said nothing — just made a small, slightly sheepish gesture with her spoon that made Ritik laugh. Even the chachis ate happily reminiscing about old times when the family enjoyed Tulsi’s dal dhokli.
And then Mitali.
She had been eating quietly, the way she often ate — present but slightly apart, as if still finding her footing at this table. Then she set her spoon down and looked at Tulsi directly.
“Maa.” A pause — finding the words, or finding the courage for them, or both. “Agli baar jab banaayein — mujhe bhi saath rakhiyega? Main jaanti hoon mujhe kuch nahi aata — bilkul basic cooking bhi nahi — par shayad yeh ek cheez…” She stopped. “Sikhna chahungi.”
The table had gone slightly quiet.
Tulsi looked at her. Something moved briefly across her face — not quite surprise, not quite anything else that could be named. Then, simply:
“Koi mushkil nahi hai. Thoda time lagta hai bas — warna easy dish hai.”
Mitali nodded. Looked back at her plate.
The conversation resumed around them.
At the other end of the table Mihir ate steadily, without comment. He had said nothing when the dal dhokli arrived. He had said nothing when Angad made his declaration, nothing when Pari’s spoon made Ritik laugh, nothing when Mitali asked what she asked.
He simply ate.
And then, without looking up, without addressing anyone, he held his bowl out toward Angad, who was nearest the serving bowl, for a second helping.
Angad ladled without comment.
In her peripheral vision Tulsi caught it — the bowl extended, the quiet of it, the complete absence of ceremony.
She looked at her own plate.
*Forty-four years and he still waits for the second helping. As if wanting more in the first helping is something that has to be justified first.*
She ate.
Did not smile.
But did not look away from her plate quite as quickly as she might have.
-----
The chamomile was already steeping in the kettle when she came to the balcony.
He poured without looking up — the routine so established now that it required nothing, not even the small acknowledgment of someone performing a task. She sat. Took her cup. The night outside was what it was — the garden below settling into its darkness, the February sky doing what it did at this hour.
They sat in the silence that had become, over these weeks, its own kind of language.
He looked at his cup.
“Aaj—”
He stopped.
The word sat between them — incomplete, open at one end, containing everything it had been about to say and everything he knew he didn’t yet have the right to say.
Tulsi heard it. All of it. The gratitude in it, the wanting to name what the evening had been, the forty-four years of knowing exactly what her dal dhokli meant and having no current claim on that knowledge.
She looked at the garden.
Did not say *keh sakte ho.* Did not give him the opening. Not because she wanted to be unkind — but because she wasn’t there yet. And she had promised herself, somewhere in these weeks, that she would not move faster than she actually was.
The silence held.
Then, after a moment — quietly, into the night air, to no one in particular:
“Ab thand kam ho rahi hai.”
He looked up briefly at the sky. Considered it.
“Haan.” A pause. “March aa raha hai.”
That was all. Earlier, he would have grabbed the opportunity to prolong the conversation. Now he paced himself to her comfort level.
But the silence that settled after it was different from the silence before — not the silence of something unfinished, but the silence of something small and sufficient having been said. She had spoken first. He had answered. The night continued around them, indifferent and mild.
They finished their chamomile.
-----
Her room was quiet when she entered.
The glass on the table. The jasmine still in it — slightly less upright than this morning, the stems beginning to soften in the water, but holding. She stood looking at them for a moment without meaning to.
Then she sat on the edge of the bed and picked up her phone.
She had tried Damini four times in the past fifteen days. The calls had gone unanswered each time — not declined, just ringing out, which was somehow worse. She had told herself Damini was busy, or in a meeting, or had simply not seen the call. She had not let herself think about the other possibilities.
She dialed now.
It rang twice.
“Maa.”
The voice was flat. Not unkind — just stripped of everything that makes a voice warm. The voice of someone who has decided in advance how long this conversation will be.
“Damini.” The relief of the call connecting, and underneath it immediately — something else. “Kaisi ho beta? Main kaafi baar —”
“Maa.” A pause. Precise. “Please baar baar call mat kijiye.”
Tulsi went still.
“Main aur Gomzi alag ho gaye hain.” Said the way you say something you have said many times, to many people, and have long since stopped feeling while saying it. “Toh jo rishta tha woh ab nahi raha. Aur agar woh rishta nahi raha toh —” a brief pause — “humara bhi nahi raha.”
The room was very quiet.
“Damini.” Tulsi’s voice came out steadier than she felt. “Maa bhi bolti ho aur yeh bhi bolti ho koi rishta nahi raha? Aisa kya hua tum dono ke beech?”
Silence on the other end. Not the silence of someone who has nothing to say.
“Gomzi se poochhiye.”
The line went dead.
Tulsi sat with the phone in her hand.
The jasmine on the table. The night outside the window. The chamomile still faintly on her tongue.
She did not move for a long moment.
Then she set the phone down. Lay back on the bed. Looked at the ceiling.
*Gautam. Damini. Alag.*
The words would not arrange themselves into anything that made sense. She turned them over the way you turn over something that has no right angle — no way to hold it that doesn’t press somewhere it shouldn’t. The message from the factory corridor came back to her. *Don’t bother about me. You already have enough stepchildren and adopted children to worry about.*
He had been carrying this — the separation, whatever had happened between him and Damini — and had said nothing. Not to her, not to Mihir, not to anyone. Just sent that message and gone silent.
Her firstborn. Shutting every door from the inside.
She closed her eyes.
Sleep, when it came, was a long time coming.
-----
She was at the balcony before him the next morning.
Not by much — the kaada and chai tray already on the table, the February morning doing what it now did at this hour, which was arrive with slightly more light than the morning before. March coming in at the edges whether anyone had asked it to or not.
He came out. Saw her face.
Said nothing. Sat. Took his cup.
She let the silence run for a moment — not the comfortable silence of recent mornings, but the silence of someone who has been carrying something since the previous night and is deciding how to set it down.
“Damini ko call kiya tha kal raat.”
He looked at her.
“Woh aur Gautam —” she stopped. The words still not arranging themselves properly. “Alag ho gaye hain.”
Mihir was very still.
“Kab se?” Quiet. The tone of someone who is calculating several things at once.
“Pata nahi. Usne kuch nahi bataya.” A pause. “Tumhe kuch pata tha? Gautam ne kuch —”
“Nahi.” Said with the flat certainty of someone who has also been shut out and has had to make his peace with it. “Usne sabko door kar rakha hai. Mujhe bhi. Sab ko.” He looked at his cup. “Main jaanta bhi nahi tha.”
The morning held them both for a moment.
“Bangalore jaana padega,” Tulsi said. Not a question.
“Haan.” He didn’t hesitate. “Main pata karta hoon address ka. Uske kuch contacts hain —” already thinking, already moving through the problem the way he moved through problems. Then, carefully: “Hum dono ko chalna padega, I guess?”
She looked at the garden.
“Haan.”
That was all. The decision made the way decisions were made between people who have known each other long enough that the negotiation happens underneath the words rather than in them.
They finished their kaada. Then their chai. In the silence of parents mulling over what their first-born had been going through.
———
Both were quieter at breakfast, and the family had gotten used to noticing things without saying anything. Soon after breakfast, everyone left for their work and the kids to their school.
-----
Vandana was at her cabin door almost before Tulsi had set her bag down.
Not her usual Vandana — the one who managed the factory floor with the efficiency of someone who had seen everything and had long since stopped being surprised by any of it. This was a different register. The face of someone who has been sitting on something since morning and has been waiting for exactly this arrival.
“Kya hua?” Tulsi asked, without preamble.
“Kaki —” Vandana glanced briefly into the corridor behind her, then back. Lowered her voice slightly, though there was no one there to hear. “Sushila tai ne resignation de di.”
Sushila was their most experienced and best worker. Tulsi looked at her.
“Kab?”
“Aaj subah. Mujhe di. Kuch nahi bataya — bas yeh.” She held out the folded paper.
Tulsi took it. Read it once. Set it on the desk.
The handwriting was neat. Precise. The handwriting of a woman not much educated but who had learned to be exact because exactness was something she could control.
“Tumhe kuch pata hai?”
“Kuch nahi kaki. Main ne poochha — bahut koshish ki. Personal reason hai, bas itna. Please samjho — yahi kehti rahi.” Vandana’s hands moved slightly. The gesture of someone who has exhausted her options and is handing the problem to the only person who might do better with it. “Aap hi baat karo na.”
Tulsi was quiet for a moment.
“Baad mein,” she said. “Pehle Paridhi ko bhejo mere cabin mein.”
-----
Pari, who had rejoined today itself after her illness, knocked twice and came in.
“Madam — aap ne bulaya?”
“Haan. Andar aa. Darwaza band kar.”
The door closed. And with it, the register between them shifted — the factory falling away, the cabin becoming just a room with her mother in it.
“Mumma.” She came closer. The posture of someone who is at work and with her mother simultaneously and is navigating the two without quite managing to separate them.
“Sushila didi ke baare mein — kuch notice kiya tha pichle kuch dinon mein?”
Something moved across Pari’s face. “Haan.” She said it carefully, the way you say something you have been observing but haven’t yet named. “Last eight-ten days se — woh bahut khoyi khoyi rehti hain. Main ne ek baar poochha bhi — didi sab theek hai? Kehne lagi haan haan, sab theek hai.” A pause. “Theek nahi thi, Mumma. Bilkul bhi nahi.”
“Kaam mein?”
“Kaam mein koi fark nahi. Woh toh —” and here something in Pari’s voice that was not quite admiration but was close to it — “woh toh bilkul wohi hain. Ek dum.”
Tulsi nodded. “Theek hai. Jaa, aur Vaishnavi ko bhej.”
Vaishnavi’s face when she came said everything before she spoke.
“Kaki — maine bohot koshish ki. Seedha bhi poochha, ghuma ke bhi. Kuch nahi mila. Personal reason hai — bas itna. Jo resignation di hai —” she paused, choosing her words carefully — “lagta hai pakki hai. Woh ja chuki hain andar se. Kagaz toh formality hai.”
“Theek hai,” Tulsi said. “Bhejo unhe.”
-----
Sushila came in the way she did everything — with efficiency, her dupatta straight, her bearing the particular uprightness of someone who has made a decision and has come to have it confirmed. She had worked at Bandhej long enough to know what being called to the cabin meant. She stood near the door, hands folded.
Tulsi looked up from the desk. Said warmly, “Aao Sushila baitho.” This surprised her. She hadn’t expected to offered a chair. She stiffly sat down on one of the two visitor chairs, at the edge, with her back upright and her hands in her lap.
Tulsi looked at her for a brief moment. Then she stood, came around the desk and took the chair next to Sushila.
Now Sushila was genuinely surprised. She looked at her employer - just for a fraction of a second — just enough to register that this was not the configuration she had prepared for.
Tulsi glanced at the resignation letter on the desk. Then at Sushila.
“Kal tak kaam karogi ya agle mahine ki pandrah taareekh tak?”
Sushila blinked. She had braced for something — an argument, a negotiation, managerial disappointment requiring defence. Not this. Not a practical question delivered in the tone of someone simply trying to plan.
“Ji — jo aap theek samjho —”
“Main pooch rahi hoon ki tumhe kitna waqt chahiye,” Tulsi said. “Arrange karna hoga na tumhare baad.”
A beat.
“Yeh toh kaam ki baat ho gayi.” She looked at Sushila directly. “Lekin ab main kaam ki baat nahi kar rahi. Main tumse pooch rahi hoon — tumhari chinta ho rahi hai mujhe. Tumhe pata haina Bandhej ek bada parivaar hai — aur parivaar mein koi bhi sadasya kisi takleef mein ho toh hum ek doosre ki madad karte hain.”
Sushila’s hands, folded in her lap, tightened slightly.
“Do shifts kar rahi thi,” Tulsi continued. “Bacchon ki padhai ke liye. Yeh tumhara faisla tha, tumhari mehnat thi, tumne khud maanga tha. Aaj achanak yeh —” she gestured, barely, toward the letter — “toh kuch toh hai jo kaam se alag hai.”
Sushila looked at the window. The February morning outside it, neither warm nor too cold now.
“Aap nahi samjhogi Kaki.”
Tulsi said nothing.
The silence settled. Not uncomfortable — the specific quality of a silence that has been made safe. Sushila had worked here long enough to know this particular silence. To know that it was not waiting for her to defend herself, or explain herself, or be efficient about herself.
It was just — waiting.
A moment passed. Then another.
Then —
“Pari didi ki wajah se nahi hai.” Quickly. First. As if this had been pressing against her since she walked in and needed to be established before anything else. “Woh bahut achhi hain. Seedha baat karti hain, kabhi bhi —” and here something genuine, unguarded — “kabhi bhi apne aap ko bada nahi samjha mujhse.”
“Main jaanti hoon,” Tulsi said. “Pari se koi sambandh nahi hai iss baat ka.”
Sushila looked at her. Something in her face shifted — the specific relief of someone who had been bracing for a wrong assumption and has found it isn’t there. The relief of not having to defend something she cared about.
And then — the relief cracked.
Not dramatically. Not all at once. The way these things happen — quietly, in stages, the way a wall doesn’t collapse but simply stops holding.
“Mera marad —” she started. Stopped. Looked at her hands. Started again. “Mere marad ne ek aurat se dosti kar li. Jahan woh kaam karta hai, wahin kaam karti hai woh bhi.”
Tulsi listened. Her face did not change.
But something had shifted — small, barely perceptible, the way a door shifts when someone puts their hand on it from the other side. She didn’t know yet what the next words would be. But something in the sentence had already found a place in her that she hadn’t known was open.
“Main itni vyast rehti hoon,” Sushila continued, her voice fraying now at the edges. “Do shifts. Ghar jaao toh thakaan hai. Woh bulaata hai — saath chalo, hum sab bahar ja rahe hain. Lekin main — main jaa nahi sakti. Ya toh kaam hai ya itni thaki hoti hoon ki pair hi nahi uthte.” A pause. “Aur woh aurat — woh wahan hoti hai. Hamesha. Hamesha haazir. Hamesha fursat mein.”
Her hands had stopped being folded. They were just hands now, uncertain of themselves in her lap.
“Tumhara pati — tumhara uss pe bharosa hai?” Tulsi asked. Quietly. Not as interrogation. As something that needed to be established before what came next.
“Poora.” Immediate. Certain — the certainty of someone who has examined this from every angle, in every dark hour, and arrived at the same answer every time. “Woh mujhse pyaar karta hai. Mujhe pata hai. Yeh —” She shook her head. “Yeh sawaal hi nahi hai mere liye.”
“Toh phir?”
Sushila looked at her directly. The specific look of a woman who knows something and is not sure she can explain it to someone who hasn’t lived it.
“Uss aurat ko main nahi jaanti. Uss pe main bharosa nahi kar sakti.” Simply. Flatly. The flat certainty of someone who has thought about nothing else for weeks. “Mujhe pata hai woh aurat kya kar rahi hai. Kahan le jaana chahti hai yeh dosti ko. Mujhe pata hai.” Her jaw tightened. “Lekin mera marad — woh nahi jaanta. Mard bhole hote hain iss cheez mein. Unhe dikhta hi nahi — kya ho raha hai unke saath, kya kiya ja raha hai unhe. Sirf ek aurat hi jaanti hai doosri aurat kya karti hai. Mard kabhi nahi jaanenge yeh.”
She stopped.
Drew a breath.
And then — the weight of it finally, fully coming through:
“Kya karoon main? Bata do mujhe kaki. Bacchon ko padhaoon — woh bhi zaroori hai. Aur agar iss chakkar mein mera marad hi chala gaya toh? Kya karoon?”
The room held this.
Tulsi sat very still.
*Uss aurat ko main nahi jaanti. Uss pe main bharosa nahi kar sakti.*
It had arrived. Not loudly. Not with any announcement. Just — arrived. The way certain things find you not when you are looking for them but when you have finally, in the middle of someone else’s pain, stopped looking away.
She had known.
She had stood in the corridor at Shantiniketan about seven years ago and watched Noina laugh at something Mihir had said — the specific quality of that laugh, the specific direction of those eyes — and something in her had gone very quiet and very certain. It had all added up - the various small incidents - Noina’s smiles, her words, the looks she directed towards Mihir. Tulsi had not doubted it. Had not talked herself out of it. Had gone to Mihir and said it flat and clear as something simply, already, true:
*Noina tumse pyaar karti hai.*
The antenna had worked perfectly.
And then she had put it down.
Because she had looked at Mihir and known — with the same certainty, the same unshakeable read — that he did not feel for Noina what Noina felt for him. And so she had stopped watching Noina. Had taken her in. Had made her a friend, opened the house to her, called her by name with genuine warmth.
She had trusted the right thing.
And left the door open to the wrong one.
Sushila sat across from her — exhausted, stretched thin across two shifts, her marriage fraying at the edges — and she was still watching. Still naming it to herself. Still clear about which thing she trusted and which thing she didn’t, and understanding that they were not the same act.
Tulsi had thought they were.
She had trusted her husband and called it enough.
It had not been enough.
She sat with this. Completely still. Her face giving nothing away. The employer, the founder, the woman who had built this place — all of it present, all of it doing its job.
Then:
“Sushila.” Even. Unhurried. “Kal resignation dena.”
Sushila looked up.
“Aaj nahi?”
“Kal. Mahine ka aakhri din hai kal —” a pause — “aur main kuch sochti hoon.”
The *main kuch sochti hoon* said not as dismissal. As actual intent. Sushila heard the difference.
She stood. Straightened her dupatta — the automatic gesture, composure being reassembled piece by piece. At the door she paused, her hand on the frame.
Looked back at Tulsi.
Didn’t say anything. But the look said it — the specific look of someone who came in carrying something alone and is leaving having been, for the first time, actually understood.
Then she was gone.
The cabin was quiet.
Tulsi did not move for a long moment. The factory floor below her, the morning outside the window, the resignation letter still on her desk.
*Sirf ek aurat hi jaanti hai doosri aurat kya karti hai.*
She had known. She had always known. She had said it out loud, named it clearly, and then — because she trusted him, because he said she was a friend so she trusted her as she would trust her own friend. She had thought she was being open-minded by not watching closely a woman she knew was in love with her husband.
Sushila, exhausted and stretched and barely present in her own marriage — Sushila had not stopped watching.
That was the difference.
Tulsi sat at her desk for a long moment.
Then she dragged her feet towards her own chair and pulled the day’s work toward her.
And began.
-----
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