Mithila is walking home from her university after her graduate teaching degree final exam when a series of text messages from Vinay stop her in her tracks.
I’m sorry. Can’t be with you anymore.
Doesn’t feel like love. Can’t stop thinking of last week’s fight. We’re clearly very different people.
Keep the ring.
Mithila reads the messages again. When Vinay says something, he always means it. The absolute certainty of this knowledge is terrifying. For a fraction of a second, the world seems to cease existing — the air unmoving, no vehicles zooming past or people walking by, everything around her falling into a silent blackness. Then, as though rushing through a funnel, it all comes back. Her paused breathing resumes, leaving her chest heavy.
Mithila feels strangely removed from her body. She doesn’t start bawling in the middle of the road, nor does she angrily take off her engagement ring and fling it into the canal by the roadside. Without replying to Vinay, her hands put the phone in her jeans pocket. Her legs resume moving as if they’re beyond her control. With the late afternoon heat beating down on her and Vinay’s messages flashing through her mind, fury builds with each walking step until she imagines that her head is on fire, scorching beams shooting from her eyes, threatening to obliterate everything in her path.
When she reaches the rented apartment that she shares with her friend and fellow university student Miriam, she takes deep breaths and tries to compose herself before unlocking the door and entering. Miriam is already home. “How did the exam go?” She asks.
“Fine,” Mithila says. “How was yours?”
Mithila says nothing else, shame burning up her insides. Sarcastic and rebellious Miriam, critical of couples hastily settling into marriage, had been enthusiastic about Mithila’s engagement when Vinay had proposed with a ring a month ago.
“You’re lucky, Mithila. Remember that time when you fell sick? Vinay rushed over with medicine for you, and I saw the concern on his face as he held you like a child while you vomited your guts out. He really takes care of you.”
Mithila had been triumphant at winning Miriam over then. She feels foolish now. Moments ago, she was walking home, luxuriating in the freedom from a tension-filled month of studies, looking forward to Vinay’s call, expecting that they’d sort everything out as they usually did after their fights. Instead, his cowardly message had shredded her marriage dreams and proved Miriam’s cynical opinion right.
Mithila tries to keep a neutral face while her chatty roommate goes on about her own examination experience — sailing through the smaller questions and then realizing that she’d got the main essay question wrong ten minutes before the buzzer rang. Mithila nods and gives the appropriate “oh no” response before blocking Vinay’s phone number (not that she expects him to contact her) and locking herself in the bathroom.
She sits on the toilet for a while, agonising, twisting the ring on her finger until the diamonds set in the shape of a protruding arch begin to chafe the skin underneath. A year of a serious relationship — all gone, in the time it takes to snap her fingers. Vinay won’t go back on anything he’s said, and she won’t humiliate herself by asking him to reconsider.
“Be practical. You must set things right,” she imagines her parents saying. They’d been happy to get her off their hands to a wealthy prospect like Vinay. But even before she had any inkling of his inherited money, she’d fallen for him and was happy to have found The One. She thought she and Vinay could resolve their differences. She thought she could change him. In front of the bathroom mirror, she commands herself to cry, to let it all out, but dry eyes stare back at her.
When she comes out of the bathroom, Miriam is rolling up and putting away posters belonging to one of the many student protests that she’s always participating in. Her curly hair has been brushed and left loose, and her lips shine with lip gloss. The doorbell rings and she grabs Mithila's wrist just as their friend Jimmy’s voice calls out from the other side. “Let’s go, girls.”
“Did you forget the party at Sheila and Sunil’s place this evening?” Miriam says when Mithila doesn’t move.
Mithila remembers Sunil saying something about being unsure of hosting the end-of-exam party because of a relative coming over to stay at their place but it looks like it’s still on. She lets Miriam and Jimmy hurry her along to Sheila and Sunil’s home.
Sheila is pursuing a PhD in Psychology at Mithila’s university while her husband Sunil works as an accountant, loves to cook, and writes poetry. Their apartment is filled with plants, books, and the chatter of friends coming and going all the time. Right now, the furniture in their living room has been moved against the walls to make space for the party. Mithila dives into the crowd and heads for the drinks laid out on a table near the balcony with its hanging lanterns and marigold plants. There would have been thousands of marigold flower garlands and glass chandeliers at her and Vinay’s destination wedding. She’d have worn a gold-bordered sari and a diamond jewelry set gifted by her in-laws to match the five stones on her engagement ring.
“No need to apply for a job once you graduate. I’ll be taking care of you,” Vinay had said last week. Mithila had been surprised and livid. He knew how much she was looking forward to standing at the head of a classroom once she got her teaching degree. But Vinay didn’t understand. So, they’d fought, each bitter word coming out of their mouths raising new levels of hurt they thought they’d never be capable of inflicting on each other. Mithila tries to push it all out of her mind for the moment at the party. If she can’t bear it any longer, she will make an excuse about not feeling well and go home.
She gulps her wine and lets her gaze wander through the open balcony door. In a corner of the balcony sits a heavy, sari-clad woman, toad-like, on a chair. Wrinkled, sun-toasted face, white-streaked hair, and a hearing aid in her right ear. A walking stick leans upright on the balcony railing next to her. An ordinary elderly lady, inclined to spend the remainder of her days pottering around her house or mingling with other ageing women, very much out of place against the backdrop of a youth-filled revelry.
The woman grins at Mithila, showing crooked, yellow teeth. She raises a beer bottle to her lips and takes a sip. Mithila stares at her in disbelief, having never seen an elderly woman within the conservative Indian middle class drinking alcohol in such a brazen manner in front of strangers. In her shock, Mithila takes a step back, colliding with Sunil, who’s appeared by her side.
“My aunt,” he says, gesturing toward the woman with one hand and holding his drink in the other. There’s pride in his voice. “Family members consider her odd, but she pays them no heed and does what she wants to. Even with a severe limp, she lives and travels by herself. She’s partially deaf and in her town, runs the only school for deaf and mute children for miles around. Remarkable, isn’t she?”
Taking a sip of his drink, he continues, “Anyway, she’s staying with us for a few days. Her school has been struggling financially in recent times and she’s trying to raise funds from some wealthy relatives. She had to attend a court hearing as well. It ruled in her favor yesterday so she’s in a celebratory mood. The court case involved a businessman who’s backed by a corrupt politician wanting to snatch her school’s land and build a shopping center in its place.”
“F— capitalism,” says Miriam, who’s strolled over and is listening.
“F— crooked politicians,” says Sunil.
“F— life,” Mithila wants to say, but doesn’t.
Someone turns up the music and most of the guests start dancing. Sunil gives a loud whoop, puts his glass down, and walks in a dancing motion toward his wife. Mithila watches Sunil and Sheila put their arms around each other, look into each other’s eyes, and move their bodies to the beat. Marriage suits only certain couples, Mithila thinks. Sheila looks up, catches her eye, and beckons her to join but Mithila shakes her head and hides behind some people. An idea, rising from her broken heart, is strengthening its hold on her mind. She finishes her drink and slips out to the balcony, shutting the door behind her.
A wave of admiration toward Sunil’s aunt sweeps over Mithila as the elderly woman sits drinking in the corner, looking out over the balcony railing at birds flying through the darkening sky to settle and roost in the surrounding trees. The woman shifts in her chair, spots Mithila standing by the closed door, and grins at her as if she were aware of a joke that she alone was privy to. Mithila walks up to her until she can smell her sweaty body odor. She pulls at her engagement ring and winces at the pain as it rubs against the chafed skin from earlier in the evening.
She’s never taken the ring off ever since Vinay had put it on one evening at sunset beside a lake. He casually mentioned how much it was worth and when Mithila heard the amount, she was so afraid of the ring slipping off by accident that she constantly pushed it up her finger, before she finally realized how strong its hold on her was and that it wouldn’t easily slide off. Still, when agitated, she’d got into the habit of fidgeting with the ring, as if seeking reassurance from its presence. Now it’s stuck behind the bony joint of her finger, and for a moment, Mithila panics. But she pulls hard, taking it off in one swift motion.
Meeting the woman’s eyes, Mithila drops the ring onto her lap. The woman looks down and then up at her in confusion. Mithila kneels and speaks as loudly as she can. “These are real diamonds worth the price of an apartment in this city. Take this ring and sell it. To help keep your school running, or to pay off whoever's after your school, or with lawyer fees, or whatever else you need. I’ll let Sunil know I gave this to you. Did you hear what I said?”
The woman nods in answer and stares open-mouthed at her. Before she can protest or give the ring back, Mithila walks away and slips back inside the room. She looks around. Miriam, Sunil, and Sheila are in a corner, talking, their heads bent forward in a tight circle.
Squeezing past dancing bodies as she types out and sends a message about the ring to Sunil on her cell phone, Mithila hurries out of the apartment building into the night. The sound of the music fades behind her and is replaced by noises from the busy road. Her ears strain for running footsteps or her name being called out, but there’s no one behind her. As she walks on with quickening heartbeats, out of habit, she reaches out a hand to fidget with the ring that had been there all this time. She’s going to be called reckless and stupid for what she’s just done but she cannot summon up a shred of regret.
Passing under a streetlamp, she spreads the bare fingers of her hand and looks at them in the light. There’s a reddish patch around her finger where the ring has rubbed, and it stings a little. Dropping her hand to her side, she continues on her way home.
DoubleSpeak 
[…] My short story “The Ring” was published in DoubleSpeak magazine: https://dsmag.in/2024/06/28/deepti-nalavade-mahules-short-story-the-ring/ […]
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