The Bride

"We are happy with everything about her, the horoscopes matched, but there one thing." Keshav Chand paused, sipped his drink, and looked at Divya's parents, who shifted apprehensively in their seats in the lobby of the lavish 5 star hotel. Matches had come close to being settled before for their youngest daughter and yet fallen apart at the last minute over demands for money,so they had become pragmatic. After all, Keshav Chand's family ran a jewellery business in three cities,and his Oxford returned son Varun probably had no dearth of suitors.

Keshav Chand may have sensed their discomfort, for he smiled. "I'm not talking about money.But we have a saint that the family patronizes. He thinks
that the girl would bring more fortune to the family if her name is changed to Vibha after marriage. Do you have any problems with that ?"
Divya's parents looked at each other in relief and said that it was a small matter, of no consequence.

Keshav Chand continued,"Good. Varun might have to go live in Europe for a few years to grow our business, so she will need to apply for a passport.
Make sure she puts the new name on it."

To the relief of Divya's parents, that was all there was to the last meeting for fixing her match, the remaining time being devoted to discussing the dates.
Keshav Chand insisted that the wedding be held in his native village, far away from the city, but he also said he would undertake all expenses for it and not burden them with hosting a wedding so far away.

* * *

The rural wedding was a lavish, but low key affair. Most of Divya's city friends , except the close ones, could not make it. Even most of Varun's friends from the city had apparently cancelled at the last minute because of a conference. Varun initially promised to hold a reception for them a few weeks later, but got so busy after their return back to the city that the thought had slipped out of his mind. Divya, now 'Vibha' , was alone at home most times after the wedding, keeping busy by helping with the housework, trying to arrange the immense pile of wedding gifts, jewllery and clothing that had accumulated, calling her mother every now and then, and trying to learn how her in laws lived.

Apart from Varun, there were four people in the house. Varun's divorced sister and mother, and Keshav Chand and his blind younger brother who had suffered a stroke recently and was mostly bedridden. They did not seem to be very social people. The neighbours had not been invited to meet her. When she offered to invite them for lunch, Keshav Chand said that it was a nice gesture but not worthy of their present neighbours; they were a bad lot who envied Keshav Chand's family wealth and talked and laughed behind their backs.Varun agreed with what his father said. Vibha's mother said that when you were wealthy you would only mix with others who had class, so it was nothing to crib about.

"We are conservative people,dear ," the mother in law had said. "We like our women to grow their hair long. And please wear dresses that keep your arms covered when you step out. I will get some stiched for you this week." Vibha complied but called her mother about it. "There is no perfection in life", her mother replied,"even your sister has problems with her travelling husband. Learn to live with the situation."

So Vibha 'adjusted' over the next few weeks.While Varun would be out all day, she would spend some time on housework, then go shopping in the chauffer driven car, dressed in long sleeves and dark sunglasses (Varun said she reminded him of some movie star when she wore those glasses, so she wore them often). She would meet Varun for lunch, and then come back and do more house work in the evening. Sometimes she would meet her old friends, who would roll up the sleeves of her long dress and look at her wedding bangles with envy.

The doorbell rang one afternoon after she had returned from a shopping trip. She peered down from the first floor balcony and saw a Kashmiri Shawl seller standing below the house. " Vibha madam here ?," he enquired
"Yes, what do you want?" she replied.
"You had asked for a pashmina shawl with aari flowerwork on it madam , when my brother visited six months ago. He did not have it them and you had asked him to send it with someone next time"
"I don't think I've ordered anything. It must be a mistake. Are you sure it's the same house? "
"I think so, but if you did not order it, them I am mistaken." The shawl seller looked confused and started to cycle away, even as Vibha's mother in law , who had woken up from her afternoon siesta at the sound of the doorbell, appeared behind the balcony door.
"Must be a mistake," the mother in law said.

The daily routine was interrupted a few days later because Keshav Chand's brother fell ill again. Varun took him to the hospital for a day of checkups and he lay bedridden downstairs with frequent visits from the family doctor. Vibha offered to help out but Varun said it was not necessary, she could stay upstairs and not bother herself with the gloomy hospital like situation downstairs. When Varun was out, her mother in law attended to the patient. But one day she heard someone calling out for some warm water, and since her mother in law did not appear to be around she quickly hurried down to help. The old family doctor was asking for the water. Vibha had seen the warm benign gentleman a few times from the balcony upstairs but they had never spoken.

"You must be Vibha ! " He smiled at her. "How far are you with your surgery course ? Have you taken the exams yet ?"
She was quite startled and wondered if Varun or his family had boasted about her qualifications and turned her into a doctor when she was in reality a simple biology teacher. But before she could say more her mother in law appeared outside the door and made a strange gesture indicating she should exit the room immediately.
There was something not very nice about that expression and Vibha terminated the conversation abruptly and walked out of the room.
At night she called her mother. "These people like to boast and show off I think. They've told people I'm a medical student when they know I'm just a biology teacher." Her mother reminded her not to get into a habbit of finding fault with people. "Everybody has some weakness. Let it be," she said.


Varun had to go out of town for a week, and the shopping trips stopped for a while. Vibha joined a gym at an upscale hotel nearby. It was ten days into this routine, and she was waiting at the gym entrance for the driver to pick her up when a bearded man sitting in a run down Maruti approached her. "Madam,I don't have time to explain. But I'm a private detective and your family sent me to see if you are all right. They are worried. Call me if you ever need help. I must leave now." He handed her a card and walked away before her driver arrived at the entrance and parked.

She looked at the card. It was a detective agency of some kind that specialized in marriage frauds and surveillance. She was puzzled. Was Varun spying on her activities? Or were her parents, worried about her small but frequent concerns, trying to see if she was happy ? But she had talked to her father the day before and there had been no such talk. She called her parents again as soon as she got home. "Mother, did you send a marriage detective to look after me ?"

Her mother had no idea of what she was saying. "But this guy did not explicitly use your name, did he ? So he could have been totally waiting for someone else. Or perhaps Varun hired him to watch after you. Have you seen how many people are kidnapped for ransom these days ? Why don't you call Varun to find out ? "

Vibha called Varun. He was equally surprised and concerned and said he would have always told her before doing any such thing. "Please don't go out without some security from now on. Avoid talking to that person if you see him again. Like your mother says, this could be a plot to kidnap you for ransom. " When Varun came back from his trip he asked for the card that the so called detective had given. But something made Vibha write down the number in her diary before giving it. "Just in case it becomes important" she told herself.

The broken Maruti would occasionally appear in the lane where they lived, parked at a reasonable distance from the house during the afternoons.

The summer months arrived, and the rose bushes in the garden behind the house dried up. Vibha decided to try growing vegetables there in the summer. It had to be something seasonal, as they would be travelling to Europe in the Fall, for Varun's much delayed EU residence permit would be ready by then. She embarked on the project one morning after Varun had left for work, and managed to dig up and level half of the soil with a spade she had found in the garage. But halfway through, the spade hit some hard wooden surface in the ground, flew away from her hand and made her lose her balance and fall. She stopped to rest and had some juice.

On resuming work, she found that she had hit a small wooden case, about eight inches long that was buried in the ground. It was a small jewellery box , full of wedding bangles, a make up kit and a small purse . Curious, she hurriedly pulled it out and took it to her room upstairs for a closer look. The bangles looked just like the one's she wore. Some of them were broken. The small purse was empty, except for a Laundry bill from a dry cleaners folded up in a corner like a piece of scrap paper. It was dated almost eight months ago.

Vibha covered up the ground she had been digging. She called out the driver and said that she had some laundry that needed to be collected. She directed him to the address on the bill. At the store, she presented the bill and enquired about the person who had deposited it. The store attendant was angry. Some Vibha Chand had deposited it eight months ago and forgotten to collect it. The store policy was to charge and extra 10% for every month for goods not collected within 3 months. He brought out an expensive wedding saree and a coat. The address of the depositor turned out to be her current residence.

She dropped the packages in the car and asked the driver to rush back home. She called her mother on the way. "Mother, something fishy is going on..." Then she found the driver staring at her in the read view mirror and she said "Nothing...I'll talk to you later."

She rushed upstairs on reaching home and called her mother again. "Mother, somethings up here. There was a Vibha Chand living in this house before me. Please try finding out what's going on." For once, her mother seemed to believe her and said she would ask around. After hanging up from the call, Vibha went back to looking at the contents of the box in greater detail. She took out more pieces of broken bangles from the box and tried to arrange them on the table.

It was then that she noticed the specks of blood on one of the broken pieces.

Whose blood ? Her diary was out in a flash, dialling the number of that bearded detective who had met her at the gym. She got his voicemail.
She left a message. "Hello this is Vibha, there is something going on in this house that I don't understand, someone with the same name as mine was living here before. Please call me as soon as you can."

A few minutes after she hung up there was a noise of the front door closing below. Varun has returned from work early. She could hear him hurry up the stairs.
She pushed the box under the bed.

Varun was carrying the dry cleaning packages that she had left in the car. "What's going on ? The driver said you left these in the car. How did you find these things ? " His voice was loud and agitated. One could hear the mother in laws footsteps now on the stairs. From below Keshav Chand's blind brother shouted in a shaky voice "don't tell me you guys are fighting with Vibha again.."

The mother in law entered her room. She had a fork in her hand. "There are some rules in this house that are not meant to be broken. Too much curiousity is a bad thing. We need you to understand that."

"Mother,she knows too much already," Varun said as he showed her the packages from the cleaners. The mother in law lashed out at her face with the fork, leaving lines of blood. Vibha screamed.
She could hear Varun say "It's just too bad, but she will meet the same fate as .." The doorbell rang below, interrupting him.
"Open up, this is the police," a loud voice came from outside. It sounded like the private investigator's voice. The mother in law dropped the fork and looked towards the stairs.

Within minutes the bearded man and a whole bunch of policemen were upstairs, putting handcuffs on Varun and the mother in law, and looking at the wooden box.

"It was a close call," the bearded man said, looking at her. " Now we know for certain we had already lost the Vibha that I was told to look out for. But at least you got lucky."