| Shraddha NV Sharma | April 2025 | Flash Fiction |
It had become common now. When she was in bed with Sam, she had to think of M, or she could just not get it on. With M, she thought about some other former lover, long forsaken. It was just how it was—all about having functional relationships. Whenever she and Sam had a domestic fight, she stopped arguing, imagining herself passionately kissing M—how he would pull her into a kiss even while brushing his teeth if she let him. She would wait well into the argument, to not make it look like a cop-out, then nod at Sam and concede that it was partly her fault, that she would be mindful next time, and so on. The affair had helped regulate her temper.
It was not as if Gita was terribly ill-tempered before but it had been several months since she so much as raised her voice in the house. In the classroom, though, it was different. Teenagers did not understand the value of literature; they sat through her classes because the triple major compelled them to. Their lack of sincerity bothered her every day, every minute, and she knew they would soon get better paying jobs than her by pursuing the more vocational aspects of their programmes, and she would continue, haggard, semester after semester, trying to impress upon students the significance of the Indian English Novel in the Indian public sphere. What her job did allow, though, was for her to leave at 5 pm every day and have entire weeks off at the end of semesters.
It all happened by chance. Sam was having a seriously important career year. His milestones were somewhat in place. Afterall, he and Gita had married at the right age, family consent and all. He was making considerable progress at work, and she was getting by. As Sam travelled to conferences, went to bed early, or stayed at work late, Gita found herself alone more and more. She began to have a very busy Finsta. All the rabbit holes she went into paid off in conversations with all her old lovers and new admirers. It just so happened that one of them was particularly single that year.
Gita did not terribly enjoy the thrill of her escapades. She never thought of them as the pleasure of the forbidden fruit. Every time she made her way to M’s house, she felt her chest hollow out, and her heart settled somewhere near her tongue from where she could hear it loud and clear. She imagined the worst—what if she met with an accident on the way to meet him? How would she explain being out there at that time of the day, when she should have been elsewhere? This was perhaps not the worst possibility as she would still have words that she could tease out of herself, and play with. But what if she died in the accident? Who would explain then? And what of her phone? Surely, she thought, my husband would have custody of it, so to speak. When she first had this thought, she had texted her friend E: “If I die anytime soon, take my phone. Don’t let Sam take it.”
But things would not get so bad in real life, she thought. Such things only happened in those cautionary tales, the Hindi movies of the 2000s that took sexual desires and contorted them into murder mysteries. Gita was not going to be found dead in her lover’s house or killed by her husband in a fit of rage. She was no Desdemona, Gita thought, and Sam was not Othello. Tragedies do not strike regular people, she told herself.
Yet, Gita often thought about what it would look like if her motionless body lay in M’s bed. How he would scramble around, not knowing whom to call for help. She felt bad, of course. She would never wish such a thing upon him, she did care for M. But to imagine his well-kept aloofness finally crumbling was a great pleasure.
In some way, it was good that most of her friends were now settled far away from this hometown, or home city as it were; in foreign lands, busy with their multiple children. Even with so few left here to recognize her, she hated meeting M in public. Sometimes, he insisted on it, and Gita never protested once they were out. She would silently squirm and he would simply watch her, at times smirking, but most times indifferent.
Gita too had to feign aloofness, for she would catch herself catching feelings often. Every time this happened, she would remind herself that the loop of a relationship getting old and worn out could only be broken with the urgency that came with an affair. This reminder kept everything in place. It was not as if she believed that marriage was always a front for everyone all over the world, while they had inner lives—inner even to marriage. But it was getting easier to believe it when it got simpler and simpler to lead her double life.
Lately, she had taken to watching and rewatching every film she could remember that was about extra-marital affairs, just to study the characters, but she could not, in most cases, relate to their needs, impulses, motivations, insecurities, or even their mistakes. For scents, nail marks, bites, were all easy enough to hide.
It was her amusement that she could not hide. The thoughts were endlessly intrusive. Why was Sam taking her so seriously? Was he really getting upset that somebody forgot to keep the chicken in the fridge today? What would he say if he was phoned about her dead body in her former lover’s house tomorrow? It cracked her up, and if she did not pay close attention, it would slip out into a smile in the middle of his serious monologue. And then he would surely know?
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Shraddha NV Sharma is a PhD student at the Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, TISS, Mumbai. In her doctoral thesis she is examining issues of caste, sexuality, and youthhood in cities through the cultural site of dating and matchmaking. In her fiction writing she explores these same issues and her own personal dilemmas around them. Her work has been published in the Gulmohur Quarterly. Previously, she has taught at Whistling Woods International, Mumbai and Bangalore University, and worked with Samvada, a youth rights organisation in Karnataka.
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Feature image by Subhasish Dutta via Unsplash
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