Tulika was frantic. She hurriedly parked her car and almost ran towards her house. With shivering hands, she opened the lock of the door dropping the keys twice. On reaching the room she bolted the door and pulled the curtains. Throwing her black leather shoulder purse on the couch, she sat on the red Turkish carpet and started to cry. She hasn’t felt so angry and helpless before.
After a while when she calmed a little, Tulika got up, washed her face and changed her messed up clothes. She went to the bar cabinet, picked up a bottle of wine but then she thought of her husband and his disapproving face and kept the bottle back. The wine was a collector’s edition and he had bought it from one of his business trips and was kept exclusively to be opened on his promotion which is due next month. She remembered when on her birthday last month, she tried to open it to celebrate how he took it from her hand and kept it back glaring at her. She pours herself a large vodka and goes to the couch.
To get her mind off the things which were disturbing her she puts on the television. Today being Independence Day that was the theme everywhere in most channels. On some news channel she hears a politician of some party mentioning how India struggled for it’s Independence and how it is a free nation now. The politician was giving examples, proving how much progress the country has done since independence, how empowered a woman is etc. etc. This led Tulika back to her thoughts and she started pondering about the events of the day and her life.
Tulika had always been an independent minded and ambitious girl. Since her school days she was quite competitive and used to put all her efforts in excelling, whether it was in academic or non-academic activities. Being from a small town and a conservative family she had to live under so many restrictions all through her growing life which made her crave for freedom to make her own decisions and live her life her own way. After getting a job in a multinational firm, she moved to Delhi because of her posting. She thought that now with her financial independence she will be free, but she soon realised that wasn’t the case when she was asked to marry the groom...