A Caged Love Affair
By 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.
About The Freedom Stories
In an open call, the audience was invited to send in their short stories on the prompt: “On Thursday, when I woke up, I found a broken cage by my bedside…” Three stories were selected by the jury featuring acclaimed author-historian Narayani Basu, and storyteller and author Nidhie Sharma.Read the other two stories here: