"Did you sleep with him?" Ohas asked, his voice carrying a strange urgency that Naina laughed. At that, his voice dropped to a harsh whisper, intense. "Did you sleep with him?"

"Of course," Naina said sarcastically, remembering how she had walked in on her husband taking a shower. "He has a mole on his bottom." The image of his perfect bottom flashed in her head and made her nervous. "He was so close to me."

"Naina," Ohas inhaled sharply as he hissed her name. "Why did you sleep with him?"

"Why not?" She snapped, growing angrier at his frustrated tone. "Why do you care? We're a team, we're equal. You're not my boss to tell me what I should do."

"Don't you---"

"Bye," she cut the call, knowing how cruel he could get when he was angry. But she could get crueller and for the sake of their friendship, she decided to back out. That made her chest swell in dignity, her ability to be in control. But why the heck couldn't she be in control around her husband?

"Husband," she mused, shaking her head and entering the washroom. He was nowhere around their little room, the room that closed around her like a box. He would have gone to his office or whatever low paying job was out there. Seriously though, how could he not have even a few rupees?

"AAAARGH!" she cried out, sitting on the toilet and clawing at her hair. Her thick hair became wispy like cotton candy as she messed it up. But the bigger mess was her life. How did she end up marrying a poor fellow? And the fact that he was handsome did NOT help. "AAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

There was a sudden knock on the door and she stilled at the voice thick with amusement, "Are you okay?"

"Shit," that word flew out of her mouth as quickly as a bird set free. "I-I mean no shit. Just bowel problems."

Now it was stillness from the other side of the door, the stillness was so prolonged that she felt it solidifying into something concrete.

"Okay then," he finally said and she let go of the breath that she was unconsciously holding. Along with it, she let go of something in her stomach too, something like breath, but slightly odorous and loud. It was shocking to him as if he witnessed a tinier nation whip out a nuclear weapon that nobody knew existed. It was devastating to her as her own body shook from the embarrassment of launching this missile.

"I-I. . ." Naina never stuttered.

"It came out then," he said matter-of-factly and before she could justify to the door, he was gone. She buried her face in her hands in agony, screaming mentally at her stomach. It had never done this before! But before she could convey that to him, he left!

Now he was going to think he married a fart. A big, loud fart.

"To hell with it!" she cursed, getting up and pulling her pants like a soldier buckling up for war. She had seen him naked after all, this was nothing. Besides, he didn't dare to laugh at her. He knew they were even now. No more humiliation.

Taking a deep breath to restore her inner Buddha, she opened the door and stepped out. She couldn't fathom why she was tiptoeing, but she was. Her heels dropped to the floor when she found nobody in the room. There was a tiny chit with something on it on the bed. She walked cautiously to it, picking up a packet and reading the label, "Yeh hai pet ki rahat, ab phikar na kariye, kha lijiye woh daawat."

Crumpling the packet into mush, she flung it outside the window.

The chit besides it read, "Take this tablet with 2 glasses of water, not one. Water is good for you, for down there purpose. Come down at restaurant."

The chit followed the packet, flying so quickly out of the window as if it had wings of its own.

Naina stormed out of the apartment, stomping down to the restaurant that was right below the apartment. She had envisioned her first breakfast as a married woman at Taj Hotel, not at Udipi. Yet here she was, inhaling the aroma of sambhar and idlis wafting in the air. As much as her face crinkled in irritation, her stomach roared like a lion. Pushing through the waiters dressed in half-pants with steel cutlery, she marched to the familiar, brooding figure at the corner of the restaurant. His eyebrows raised from above the open menu card and she plucked it out of his hands, mock smiling at him.

When the waiter approached, Naina shut the menu and said, "One plate masala dosa and one filter coffee---"

"No," Ahanay said suddenly, picking the menu. "Potatoes will make your stomach . . . And milk in coffee again." He looked up at the bewildered waiter and explained, "She has problems with her---oof!"

"With him," Naina interrupted, after kicking him squarely under the table. "One masala dosa---"

Ahanay recovering quickly, said, "Plain dosa."

"---and a filter coffee---"

"Water."

"You!" Naina cried out in frustration, her cheeks puffing in anger. Her glare shifted to the poor, frightened waiter as she barked through gritted teeth, "Plain dosa and water for him. Masala dosa and filter coffee for me."

She heard Ahanay sigh as if it was him who underwent the exhausting ordeal and not her.

Just as the waiter left, she blasted on him like a loudspeaker, "What the hell is your problem?"

His face was as calm as the sea except for the ripples that broke on his forehead as he raised his eyebrows again. "I'm looking after you."

"I can do that myself! Besides, who the hell are you to look after me?

"Your husband," he said plainly, leaning back and wiping the glass table with a tissue paper. On that, shone her tiny face, the mangalasutra hanging around her neck like a dog's leash. With a mock scowl, she turned her face away, away to hide the deepening colour that rose in her cheeks.

Glossary-