Chapter 15: Maths and Marriage
"What exactly is your degree in?" He asked her that night in their room as he pulled out the couch bed and she walked over with sheets and pillows for him.
"B.Sc. in Maths." She answered as he took one end of the sheet from her and they spread it over the pull-out bed.
"Really?" he looked at her in surprise.
"With Distinction." She answered and he could hear the unmistakable pride in her voice.
"Wow." Now he was truly impressed. He had no idea that he had married a math whiz. "Why didn't you go on?" he asked, genuinely curious.
She fluffed the pillows and looked up at him with a smile, "My parents thought that you were better than higher education even though I tried to tell them that I was much better at Maths than Marriage."
Had his wife just cracked a joke? He looked at her curiously and saw her bite her lips, first to control a smile and then in confusion at his lack of reaction, before she said, "Bad joke. Sorry."
He laughed out loud then and she tilted her head just to make sure that he was indeed laughing in real before she too smiled. "Lord, I was starting to think that you just wouldn't get my odd sense of humor."
"That may still be true." He replied and she stopped smiling and looked at him. He kept his face serious for a moment before he gave her a wink and smiled as he said, "Just keeping you on your toes."
Her smile was back as she walked to the bed and he climbed onto his couch bed.
"So, are you like that girl from Swades? Can you do crazy problems with decimals in your head?"
This time she laughed out loud as she looked at him. "I can try."
"Alright, hold on… let me get a calculator, because mental math with 3 and 4 digits is not my specialty."
She waited on the bed, tying her hair up into a ponytail while he found his calculator.
"Alright, something simple first…" he said before looking at her and asking, "what is 364 plus 645"
"Oh, come on! Addition?" she tsked and shook her head as she said, "One thousand and nine."
"You are like the Swades girl!" he said with a smile before asking, "Alright Ms. I-tsk-at-long-addition. How about 1009 divided by 34?"
She lay down on the bed facing him and balanced her head on her elbows as she closed her eyes and said, "hmm… twenty nine point six, seven… six… four… seven……. zero…..hmm… five…"
"Alright, that's good, that's good!" He interrupted, holding up his hands and she squeezed her eyes shut as she said, "eight…" and then opened them up to say, "You broke my concentration."
"That's eight numbers after the decimal. There's only space for two more numbers on this calculator. Let's just say that I am sufficiently impressed."
She grinned widely now as she looked at him, "You know, this is barely math. It's just a savant skill for quick computations. Advanced mathematics is more conceptual. That's more difficult."
"I see…" he said as he got up off of his bed and walked to the table for his laptop.
"So, can I take a guess here and imagine that you want to do your masters in Maths?" he asked as he turned on his laptop.
"I do… but I was also thinking that I can maybe take some classes in English?"
"Why?" he looked away from the laptop and towards her.
"Hmm.. why?... so that I can expand my repertoire into two languages when I am cursing out my husband in my head. I hear that the English language is creative with its insults."
Another one! He laughed in his head before it actually came through his lips. Her humor definitely took some time to get used to…especially because she was so matter-of-fact when she actually made a joke and then looked at him to see his reaction before giving into laughing…
"Married for just a week and my wife is already thinking of learning another language to curse me out. I think you are not the only one who sucks at this marriage business, Vidya…"
She smiled at him and straightened from her elbows before moving back to the other side of the bed to get under the covers. Even though they had said it in a joke, she wondered as she lay down why it was that he did not share a bed with her. She was relieved, but it still left her curious. He was a nice man and contrary to how he had seemed those first few days, was not entirely averse to her. She didn't know quite what to make of him, although she did find that she liked seeing him and talking to him. Just before she fell asleep, she sent up a prayer that she would not dream again of Uttara maasi and her husband like she had been for the past three nights. The worst was that nightmare always ended with her running away from Rishab but then looking back to see that it was not Rishab chasing her, but SSP Brahmanand Jhaakar. It left a sour feeling in her when she woke in the morning.
Gaurav pulled up the website of Sweety's university and went through the admissions website before pulling up the course catalog. He looked back at his wife and found that she had fallen asleep. He stayed up for some more time looking through the catalog and bookmarked it so that she could look through it tomorrow.
Just before he fell asleep that night, Salome's question came back to haunt him.
"I know that you think differently from the rest of us folks bound by the codes of this hypocritical society, but really, are you so very different? Answer me this then; if you see me again, will you be able to sleep with me? Give it some thought before you answer."
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