Eine gefangene Liebesbeziehung
© Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan | Nandita Basu
Von Malavika Mahesh
On Thursday, when I woke up, I found a broken cage by my bedside where my wife usually slept.
It had started in the early days of our marriage, this strange habit of hers. She had brought it with her from her childhood home and had it installed beside our bed one day when I was out at work. It was a strange contraption, with silk curtains on the side like some horrible magician’s apparatus, and a set of plush floral pillows and a mattress outfitted on the inside. She had been sleeping inside it since she was a child, she explained.
In the early days, it had been just an amusing quirk which I had found charming, almost endearing. We were living on our own in the city and she was mostly too busy with her thesis and career to fall back on her childhood customs. When she did sleep in the cage, it was always locked and the curtains were drawn, though they were sheer enough to see the silhouette of her body curled up tightly on the mattress.
All this changed when we had to move back to the town. There weren’t many jobs for her there — I had a lucrative job offer and it made sense to move back home and take care of Mother. But at night after she had washed the dishes and given Mother her medicine, she started sleeping in the cage more often. Once our daughter was born, she rarely spent the nights out of it — sometimes she would nurse her from the inside as well. None of my pleas or arguments had any effect on her.
On Thursday, 6th September 2018 when I woke up the cage had been forced open and my wife had run away with the neighbour’s daughter.
It had started in the early days of our marriage, this strange habit of hers. She had brought it with her from her childhood home and had it installed beside our bed one day when I was out at work. It was a strange contraption, with silk curtains on the side like some horrible magician’s apparatus, and a set of plush floral pillows and a mattress outfitted on the inside. She had been sleeping inside it since she was a child, she explained.
In the early days, it had been just an amusing quirk which I had found charming, almost endearing. We were living on our own in the city and she was mostly too busy with her thesis and career to fall back on her childhood customs. When she did sleep in the cage, it was always locked and the curtains were drawn, though they were sheer enough to see the silhouette of her body curled up tightly on the mattress.
All this changed when we had to move back to the town. There weren’t many jobs for her there — I had a lucrative job offer and it made sense to move back home and take care of Mother. But at night after she had washed the dishes and given Mother her medicine, she started sleeping in the cage more often. Once our daughter was born, she rarely spent the nights out of it — sometimes she would nurse her from the inside as well. None of my pleas or arguments had any effect on her.
On Thursday, 6th September 2018 when I woke up the cage had been forced open and my wife had run away with the neighbour’s daughter.
ÜBER DIE FREIHEITSGESCHICHTEN
In einem Open Call wurde das Publikum eingeladen, ihre Kurzgeschichten zum Thema einzuschicken: „On Thursday, when I woke up, I found a broken cage by my bedside… (Am Donnerstag, als ich aufwachte, fand ich einen zerbrochenen Käfig neben meinem Bett...)“. Die Jury, bestehend aus der renommierten Autorin und Historikerin Narayani Basu und der Geschichtenerzählerin und Autorin Nidhie Sharma, wählte drei Geschichten aus.Lesen Sie die beiden anderen Geschichten hier:
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