It was January 2009. Sunita's younger sister Nandini was finally getting married. Sunita herself had requested Hjjer for a couple of weeks of vacation time; she had been working with him for close to year and she hadn't visited her family ever since she's left for Delhi two years ago. In fact she had requested Hjjer to come to the village as a guest at her sister's wedding but he had declined because he was visiting his own family in France for Christmas and the New Year. The wedding preparations were in full swing and the actual consecration was to be in the second week of January 2009.
Sunita's parents had finally accepted the reality that their elder daughter was not going to be pushed into a marriage and therefore they had agreed to break social custom and get their younger daughter married first. They weren't even sure if the elder one was ever going to marry someone.
The weather was as could be expected in the village near Jaunpur town in the state of Uttar Pradesh: cold but enjoyable. The spirit was festive as a number of relatives had all descended home; Ram and Anu had come separately and were going to be here for the entire month of January. Sunita and Anu had a lot of catching up to do since they had met only twice in the year since Sunita had been working with Hjjer. But that would come later. First of course Sunita spent long hours with her mother and her little sister although they were both very preoccupied with the wedding preparations. Sunita sat with her father and told him all about Delhi, about her boss and her job, about life in the big city.
She told him about the various jobs she had tried to settle into; the school, the hospital, and finally her present job as a housekeeper. Not a maid. That's what Sahib had told her and she'd found the appropriate difference in her language so as to explain it to people. She told her parents that she lived in separate quarters for fear that the scandal would be too overpowering for them to handle. She told her father how much money she was making, how she controlled the household finances and kept accounts to give to her Sahib, how she had gone to the bank and had an account opened, how she had a plastic card and went to a machine everytime she needed cash.
Her father was very proud of his favourite beti, the daughter who would go out into the world and make a life for herself away from the usual child-bearing and rearing rituals of society that her elder sisters had gotten into.
Sunita took her father to the bank the next morning and opened an account in his name; then sitting across from the young officer who had come from the state capital and was posted at Jaunpur branch of his bank, she had some money transferred from her account to her father's. Quite a lot of money in fact. She told him that he was to use it for her younger sister's marriage expenses. She looked at him and saw her father's eyes glisten, a happy sad expression on his face as he held her to himself and kissed the top of her head, hiding his tears. He had never been prouder in his entire life.
They went into town and shopped for everyone at home; bought sarees for all the sisters and a special one for her mother, lots of gifts for the youngest, and she bought a special hookah for her father. They bought presents for Ram and Anu, for her brothers in law, and her father insisted that they pick up something small for the labourers that helped him in the fields and on the farm. Father and daughter had a blast in town that day before taking the bus home in the late afternoon.
At night, after supper, Sunita sat outside by the fire with her mother. They spoke of many things and Sunita told her about Hjjer. Of course she didn't speak of the sexual encounters; only about his character, his travels, the occasional small gifts he would bring for her. Her mother knew almost immediately that her daughter had got into a relationship that would not last but she believed Sunita was extremely happy at the moment. The wise old woman only hoped it would last a long time, but she knew it wouldn't forever. So be it.
In the busy hustle of the next few days Sunita and Anu finally got time to sit together and chat. After dinner one evening almost everyone had retired to their sleeping chambers when the two girls sat outside by the fire, wrapped in warm blankets worn like shawls, and they talked into the early hours of the morning.
Inevitably the conversation veered around to Sunita and her master. She sang such praises of Hjjer that Anu finally asked her if she was in love with him. The look in Sunita's eyes, with the glow of the fire reflected in them, made any verbal response irrelevant; Anu knew that her sister-in-law was smitten. Since the two women had shared many intimacies in the past, including a physical discovery of one another, Anu asked Sunita if she had gone to bed with her master.
Sunita was averse to revealing any of the intimate secrets of her two sexual encounters with Hjjer; to her they were sacred, not to be divulged or revealed. But after much cajoling, she agreed to share some photographs of her master that she had taken with her phone camera. Some of them had been surreptitiously taken while others were in Hjjer's knowledge. There were almost a dozen pictures which Sunita now showed Anu; photographs of Sahib lounging on the terrace with potted plants and a clear sky in the background, pictures of him dressed in a suit taken just before he was leaving for office, there was one of him in a dirty t-shirt with dam sweat marks all over taken soon after he'd returned from a run. None of them were overly intimate but they were of good quality. In a strange moment of incisiveness, Anu looked up at her sister-in-law and said "Your master is in love with you; in fact he wants you".