The Rule Breakers

  THE RULE BREAKERS

  Preeti Shenoy, among the top five highest selling authors in India, is also on the Forbes longlist of the most influential celebrities in India. Her work has been translated into several languages.

  India Today has named her as being unique for being the only woman in the bestselling league. She has received the ‘Indian of the Year’ award for 2017 and the Academia Award for Business Excellence by the New Delhi Institute of Management. She has given talks in many premier educational institutions and corporate organisations. She is also an artist specialising in portraiture and illustrated journaling.

  Her short stories and poetry have been published in various magazines, including Condé Nast and Verve. She has been featured on BBC World, Cosmopolitan, The Hindu, Verve, Times of India and several other media outlets.

  She has a popular blog and also wrote a weekly column in The Financial Chronicle for many years. She has a massive online following. Her other interests are travel, photography and yoga.

  Website: www.preetishenoy.com

  Twitter: @Preetishenoy

  Blog: Blog.preetishenoy.com

  Instagram: Preeti.Shenoy and Preetishenoyart

  Facebook: http://preeti.io/fb

  Snapchat: Preeti.Shenoy

  First published by Westland Publications Private Limited in 2018

  61, 2nd Floor, Silverline Building, Alapakkam Main Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 600095

  Westland and the Westland logo are the trademarks of Westland Publications Private Limited, or its affiliates.

  Copyright © Preeti Shenoy, 2018

  ISBN: 9789387578678

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  For my daughter Purvi, who lives life by her own rules.

  Contents

  Start Reading

  Excerpts from a . . .

  Part One THE RULES

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two PLAYING BY THE RULES

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part Three BENDING THE RULES

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Part Four THE RULE BREAKERS

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Acknowledgements

  The legal age for marriage in India is eighteen for women and twenty-one for men.

  In 2001, 94 per cent of all women in the country were married by the time they were twenty-five years old. Furthermore, 44 per cent of these women got married when they were under the age of eighteen.

  Excerpts from a few letters written in 1995.

  I don’t have the strength to fight anymore.

  I don’t even know when the days begin and end. These are my study holidays and I am supposed to study. But that’s just not happening.

  The little free time I get, I sit in front of my books—but nothing I read enters my head.

  Back in Joshimath, I was a topper. I had a life.

  Here, there is nothing. All I see is endless days merging into one another. I have no idea where one begins and the other ends. This is a meaningless existence.

  I feel so alone.

  I feel so betrayed by my own parents.

  I feel trapped.

  I cannot fight anymore.

  I am a coward.

  You are just twenty. You have a whole life ahead of you.

  Part One

  THE RULES

  Rules and responsibilities: these are the ties that bind us. We do what we do, because of who we are. If we did otherwise, we would not be ourselves.

  – Neil Gaiman,

  The Sandman: Book of Dreams

  Chapter 1

  September 1995

  Joshimath

  There are two kinds of people in this world—the ones who follow the rules and the ones who do not think twice about breaking them. It is as though there is an invisible line separating the rule breakers from the rule followers. To cross over to the other side is blasphemy, a disaster of epic proportions.

  But, sometimes, the lines blur. The rule followers are then thrown into a tizzy. They do not have the boundaries which keep them safe. They are unsure of what to do, and how to behave. They go through the motions of life, hoping that they haven’t broken any rules. But that niggling voice in their head refuses to shut up.

  For Veda, that voice was booming inside her head that morning. And the fact that her sister Vidya had caught on to it was not helping.

  Veda was definitely a rule follower. Her parents would describe her as ‘sweet, charming and obedient’. Their father, Rajinder, wasn’t exactly a mild-tempered man. With four daughters and a son to look after, he ran his house with the precision of a military sergeant. Their pliant mother, Kamala, just went along with whatever their father decided.

  Veda descended the few steps that led to the rose garden in front of her house and inhaled the cool mountain air. She could hear the wind whistling along the bare slopes. The tall deodar and fir trees stood like soldiers behind the lone house perched atop the hill. In the distance, the Garhwal range of the Himalayas glistened like a crown. Veda liked this time of the year, before Badrinath town closed in November and re-opened only in April or so.

  It was then that Joshimath transformed from a sleepy mountain town to a bustling tourist centre, as it was the winter abode of the presiding deity of Badrinath. Joshimath had a rich history, as Adi Shankaracharya, an Indian philosopher and saint, had established a monastery there in the eighth century, named Jyotirmath. But Veda rarely visited that spot. To her, it was all part of ancient history. It was only when relatives from other cities came to stay with them, and they had to take them around, that Veda even thought about it. For her, Joshimath was just a small, nondescript, mountainous town, which did not afford her too many opportunities to pursue her dreams.

  Veda went into their little step garden, carved out into the mountain, whenever she wanted to think. Today, she definitely had to. The voice at the back of her mind was not allowing her to focus on her course work.

  From where she stood, she could see buses and cars making their way up the hill, slowly navigating the hairpin bends. They looked like toy cars and toy buses. Veda wondered where these people were coming from, how their cities looked, and what their lives were like. She had never travelled beyond Dehradun, except for one trip to Delhi when she was a child. She did not have any distinct memories of it, and she longed to visit other cities. She gazed at a lone eagle that flew high overhead and perched on a treetop.

  ‘Dreaming of Suraj again?’ Ve
da felt a sharp tap on her head. She turned around to see her sister Vidya grinning.

  ‘Ouch! That hurt, pagli,’ she said, as she rubbed her head.

  ‘Don’t change the topic. I saw him looking at you when we visited the Narsingh temple.’

  ‘He wasn’t looking at me,’ Veda quickly denied it, even as she felt her cheeks turning red at the mention of Suraj’s name.

  ‘Oh, he so was! He just couldn’t take his eyes off you. Look at you! Oh, good lord, you are blushing!’ Vidya continued relentlessly, as she teased her sister.

  ‘Who is blushing? Who, who? What are you talking about?’ asked Vandana, as she climbed down the steps carrying a large bowl of boiled peanuts garnished with chopped onions and finely sliced green chillies.

  ‘Nobody, nothing,’ said Veda and Vidya together.

  ‘Tell me, didi! I am not ten years old like Vaishali. I am thirteen!’

  ‘Thirteen is not old enough,’ said Vidya, as she helped herself to the peanuts.

  ‘Didi—tell her I am old enough! Just because she is older than me by three years, it doesn’t mean she has to leave me out,’ Vandana turned to Veda, her eyes pleading, as she extended the peanuts to her.

  ‘Almost four years; I will be seventeen soon,’ Vidya corrected her.

  Veda helped herself to a handful of peanuts and pretended to be a judge passing a sentence. ‘Order, order! This court rules that the legal age for knowing all about your older sisters’ conversations is fifteen.’

  ‘So unfair! I object. I shall not give you any peanuts,’ said Vandana.

  ‘Pay in peanuts and you will attract only the monkeys,’ quipped Vidya.

  All three sisters laughed. Veda and Vidya glanced at each other, relieved that Vandana had not pursued it further.

  The two older sisters didn’t always share things with Vandana or Vaishali. As far as they were concerned, Vandana and Vaishali, and their brother Animesh who was only seven, were just babies. The two older sisters looked after the younger siblings: they supervised their homework, helped them with the difficult subjects, combed their hair, and ensured that their school uniforms were kept washed and ironed the previous day. In short, they took over most of the childcare duties from their mother.

  Their mother was a frail woman, mostly because she neglected her diet and health. Giving birth to five children had taken a toll on her. She was a passive woman, showing no interest in anything, going through the motions of daily life as a matter of routine. It seemed like she had resigned from life itself. She was meek and unassertive and went along with everything that her husband said.

  The sisters were soon joined by their two other siblings, Animesh and Vaishali.

  ‘Didi, want to play badminton?’ Animesh asked, as they came down the steps.

  The terrain was largely hilly, but there was a small flat patch of land, about 20’ x 15’, which served as a makeshift playground, a badminton court, a volleyball court as well as a hopscotch ground. Their father, Rajinder, hadn’t wanted to waste that land, and asked for vegetables to be planted there. But Rudra kaka, their gardener, who lived in the outhouse, had convinced him to leave it the way it was.

  ‘Sahib, nothing will grow there. It’s all rocky underneath. Let the children play. There is no playground anywhere nearby,’ he had pointed out.

  Rudra kaka tended to the menial jobs around the house, like carving out graduated terrace steps in the mountains around the house, where he planted shalgam, seb, methi, palak, and anything else that he could cultivate. His wife, Paro didi, worked as their house-help, assisting in all the cooking, cleaning and numerous other chores that invariably had to be done in a household with five children. They had lived in the outhouse ever since Rajinder had bought the land, many years ago. He had got it cheap, and he had constructed a modest three-bedroom house on the land. Over the years, his family had grown, but he had not expanded his house.

  ‘This is all I can afford on my block development officer’s salary. Besides, don’t forget, we have four girls to marry off,’ he would proclaim from time to time, whenever well-meaning relatives advised him to build another room.

  ‘I don’t feel like playing badminton right now,’ said Vidya.

  ‘I will play with you, but you will have to fetch the shuttlecock if you miss it and it tumbles down,’ Veda made her terms clear.

  Animesh readily agreed. His level of skill in badminton was not as high as that of Veda and Vidya, who had years of practice. If he missed returning a shot, the shuttlecock often fell to the lower level, and he had to climb down a few steep, rocky steps, go around the vegetable patch, retrieve the shuttlecock, and climb back up again, to reach the court.

  Veda partnered up with Animesh against Vandana and Vaishali. Animesh would miss returning a shot every now and then, and he would uncomplainingly fetch the shuttlecock each time. After the eighth time, Vandana and Vaishali began to feel sorry for him, and they volunteered to get the shuttlecock.

  When they got tired of playing badminton, the five siblings sat on the rocky steps and talked until it was time to go inside for dinner. They talked about cities, and Veda told them how she wanted to escape from Joshimath, get a job as a lecturer in a college and work in a big city.

  ‘But you know Papa will never agree to that,’ said Vidya.

  ‘Well, you never know. He may change his mind. I intend to top the college this year too. And then I will get my lecturer to talk to him. She was encouraging me to do my Master’s, and she said she would talk to Papa,’ Veda said.

  She had heard her parents tell the countless relatives in their circle that they were worried about getting four girls married off. Veda always brushed it aside, thinking that if she studied hard enough, her father would be proud of her and not think only about her marriage.

  The praise never came. Year after year, as far back as Veda could recall, she had only received the same unenthusiastic response. He would glance cursorily at her perfect scores, say, ‘Hmmm. . .’, and then sign the report card.

  Vidya, Vandana and Vaishali got the same treatment, even though their academic performance was not as good as Veda’s. There were no remarks made, no praise, no applause. It was mostly indifference, and the girls learnt to make do with it. As soon as Vidya realised that neither her father nor her mother cared about her grades, she stopped trying to make an effort. Though Veda tried to instil in her the importance of performing well academically.

  ‘What difference does it make? It does not matter to them,’ Vidya shrugged.

  ‘Does it not matter to you?’ Veda asked.

  ‘Didi! There are other things in life besides books. Everyone is not a bookworm like you. What is that book you are reading? The one about lots of sisters?’

  ‘Little Women or Pride and Prejudice?’ Veda asked.

  ‘I don’t know! What I mean is, how does it matter? What do you get for scoring good marks in the exams? Nothing!’ said Vidya.

  Veda did not agree. Her response to her father’s indifference was to study even harder. She borrowed all the books that she could from her school and college libraries and read them back to back. She loved reading the English classics, adventure stories, romances, historical fiction—anything she could lay her hands on. Vidya, on the other hand, preferred chatting with her classmates, discussing the latest Bollywood movies, hairstyles and cosmetics.

  Veda was glad that she had at least managed to get both Vaishali and Vandana interested in books. She maintained a meticulous record of what they read. Many a time, she would read to both of them, as well as to Animesh, before bedtime. She would dramatise the stories and change her voice and diction to suit the characters.

  ‘Didi, it is so much fun when you read us these stories,’ said Animesh.

  ‘I agree. I like listening to you more than reading,’ remarked Vidya, who always joined in the bedtime story sessions. At times, in the evenings, when it was too windy to play badminton, the children would enact scenes from the books that Veda read to them. Vidya w
ould improvise, creating costumes from their mother’s sarees, their own dupattas and other things lying around the house. There would be cardboard crowns that Vidya made with gold foil, the ‘palace’ would be recreated with sarees tied around trees, and sticks the children gathered from the mountains would become swords. They had hours of fun with their pretend games.

  When the siblings put up performances, their mother, Rudra kaka and Paro didi were forced to be the audience. Animesh would create ‘tickets’ with pages torn from his ‘rough notebook’ from school—the only book he was allowed to tear out pages from—and distribute them for ‘sale’ before each performance. Their father stayed away from all the ‘nonsense’, as he termed it. His chief form of entertainment was television, and as soon as he returned from work, he would sit in front of the TV and watch sports or news till it was bedtime. Even his meal was served to him in front of the television. If Animesh or anyone else tried to join him, they would be reprimanded and sent off to study. The children quickly learnt to leave him alone. Kamala rarely got to watch television, but she never complained. She was happy to serve meals to her husband as he relaxed.

  None of the girls minded that Animesh was treated differently by their parents. He was undoubtedly their favourite child. Being the baby of the family, he was pampered by his sisters as well as by their parents. While their father didn’t much care about the academic performance of the girls, he monitored his son’s progress at school like a hawk watching its prey. If his grades slipped, he immediately summoned Veda.

  ‘Didn’t you help your brother? What is the use of your getting high marks? You have to ultimately get married and go away. He has to earn,’ her father would reprimand her.

  Veda would murmur that she had done her best and that Animesh had not practised enough, even though she had assigned him work.

  ‘You four girls—all of you have to see that he does his studies. Now, your mother is just a tenth class fail. She cannot help with his studies. You must remember that. What is the use of educating all of you? Eh?’ he would ask.

  ‘Why can’t I get a job and work, Papa? Why should only Animesh have that privilege?’ Veda wanted to ask. But she had been taught by her mother to never talk back to her elders, especially to her father. It was disrespectful, she was told. So she and her sisters would silently listen to her father’s rants.