One Ingredient Only

The terribly young Mrs Singhania tucked in the folds of her saree exactly an inch below her navel. Vedant liked it this way. He hardly mentioned it, as much as he hardly specified any of his preferences, but she knew he liked it like this. She would have liked him to like it like this. Her husband was quite unlike the other steel barons in his family. While at XLRI, he pursuing a degree and she, a diploma, they were made to marry in a wedding that only a dream could size up to. Ever since, she realized he was the wrong choice. She was a miserable misfit amongst her friends and family. Vedant Singhania didn't quite allow her many luxuries she wanted to indulge in.

At the swimming pool, she felt left out when she did not have the suspicion of 'other women over my man' to tell tales of. At the salon, similarly, no brotherly disputes to linger the nail coat upon. While she would have loved a good banter at parties on how he tortured her each night, or did not, she could impress neither. He was endlessly satisfying. In short, Vedant's greatest enemy was his unbelievable self. He did not permit a point of problem to arise. He loved her too much and she, she loved him back too. She was ruthlessly angry when she wished to abort the first time she conceived, and he agreed. Not that he would have minded a child, she knew, he just respected her choice and decision too much for her own comfort. 

Not to say he was hen-pecked in any way, Vedant was, to put squarely, too good to be true. He was sensitized, sweet and sensible. And selfishly, Shailja could not bear it. He was even loyal to patches of her madness. They were teamed as a happy couple with nothing rightly wrong about them. Except that she could not be her normal self of bad mouthing her husband, and then living up to his demands and restrictions and yet throwing the most lavish party where she would be labelled as his success story. Just as in good old days grandmothers and mothers and aunts were. She was not.  

And Shailja Singhania was short of that one ingredient only. She was a good wife. The only life she ever wanted, that of no-work and all-play was at her disposal, yet, she failed. She failed to become the suffering wife. The champion of all suffering wives.