Prompt: Write about love, but not the happily-ever-after. Write about unhappy love, unrequited love, love at first sight gone wrong or the messy bits in the “happily ever after”.  Fiction/non fiction.

Gaslighter Link to heading

He was dead, his eyes like marbles, mouth open in surprise, head turned at an angle so I could see the back of his head, caved-in, where I had hit him with a pressure cooker. He had been trying to re-light the stove that had gone out, gaslighter in hand, grumbling about being disturbed from his crossword when I had clubbed him with the cooker, the rice half-cooked.

I stood over him, frozen, in a heightened awareness where I could sense each breath and yet in a place where time had stopped to flow, the growing pool of blood at my feet the only clue to the movement of the minutes. The whistle of the pressure cooker startled me out of my reverie, and as I collapsed to the floor, the thought that crossed my mind was, “I finally did it”.

We had been married 45 years when I killed him. I dont know when love curdled into duty, sometimes I feel it may have been just days after we married. Everyone saw us as the ideal couple: college sweethearts who eloped to get married, his successful career (retired as General Manager State Bank of India), our two sons who were doing well (one in London, the other in Perth), our large house in Banjara Hills (with no loan), his post-retirement golfing tournament victories.

And what of me? Loving housewife - check. Loving mother - check. Loving daughter, daughter-in-law, sister, sister-in-law, aunt - check. Did even I know who I really was anymore? Was it I who loved dance, whose bharatnatyam arangetram was the talk of the town so many decades ago? Was it I who was a tennis state champion in 1977? Was it I who won the gold medal in Engineering in 1979?

Years of being told that I was a dutiful had erased all my memories, all my aspirations, all my hopes. I had hoped that he would love me for who I was, that he would raise me up to the heights I could soar to, that we could be equal partners in life, each chasing our dreams, and supporting each other. Yet, through silences (when he didn’t speak up against the dowry), stories (“She loves cooking”), and false sorries (“I’ll never hit you again, it was just in the heat of moment”), my spirit had been enslaved and my memories modified.

So here I was, crumpled over him, hot tears flowing from my eyes and a wail escaping me. For even slaves cry when their master is gone, and freedom is a fearful thing.