The evening quiet of Shalini's home felt deeper after the children left. The hush that followed their departure was sometimes comforting, sometimes unbearably heavy. Today, it pressed on her like a leaden blanket, stealing the ease from her breath.
She moved around the house with practiced hands, gathering stray notebooks, wiping down the table where Ravi and Prayush had been working. A half-smudged answer sheet, the faintly sweet scent of talcum left behind by a child's sweaty palms — these tiny reminders of life tried to fill the silence, but they couldn't.
When she sank onto the sofa, her bones felt tired, yet her mind refused to rest. Her eyes drifted to the framed photograph on the side table: a younger Shalini, beaming in her red bridal saree, standing next to Dushyant. He looked so proud, his hand around her waist as if to tell the world she is mine.
She reached out and touched the glass, letting her fingers trace the bright, happy faces frozen in that moment. Her throat tightened painfully. Dushyant had left months ago for work, promising to return as soon as he could. But messages had grown scarce, phone calls shorter, more distracted. At first she'd brushed it off — after all, he was working hard for the family. But as weeks turned into months, and his voice turned cold, a creeping fear began to bloom.
What if he never comes back?
It was a thought she tried to crush each night, but it sprouted again, like a weed in the dark.
Shalini let herself lie back, closing her eyes. She could still remember how Dushyant used to touch her — rough, eager, sometimes too quick, but at least it was a kind of closeness. A heat. A reassurance that she was wanted, needed.
Now there was nothing. Just an echo of that desire, buzzing under her skin, restless and half-starved.
Sometimes, in the quiet after the coaching class, her body pulsed with a strange tension. She tried to ignore it, tried to focus on being the perfect teacher, the perfect mother, the perfect daughter-in-law. But there were moments she could not deny the simmering ache in her belly.
She thought of the boys — Ravi and Prayush — and a shameful heat spread through her cheeks. She wasn't blind. She had caught their darting eyes, their breathless, reverent way of hanging on her every word. It should have disgusted her. Instead, a guilty spark of thrill had coiled in her stomach, making her stand a little straighter, arch her back a bit more as she wrote on the whiteboard.
What is wrong with me?
She scolded herself, again and again. She was a grown woman, a wife, a mother. What kind of teacher let herself imagine such things? Yet when she lay alone at night, the bed too wide and too cold, her mind returned to those stolen glances. To the open, raw admiration in Ravi's soft, downturned eyes. To the quiet, hungry stare of Prayush, his gaze almost hypnotic.
They worshipped her in a way Dushyant never had. Dushyant had taken her, possessed her, but these boys adored her.
That adoration was dangerous. It was also tempting.
She ran a hand down her own side, pressing over the swell of her hip where the sari blouse hugged her too tightly these days. Her flesh had softened, yes, but the boys didn't seem to mind. They looked at her as if she was made of gold.
Shalini sighed, a sound somewhere between exhaustion and longing. She tried to distract herself by making a list of household chores: wash the bed linens, refill the spice box, mend Avi's torn school shirt. But even as she ticked off these small tasks in her head, the deeper ache refused to die.
Avi was beginning to notice, too. Just this morning, he had asked in his innocent, childish way:
"Mummy, why do you wear more perfume now?"
She'd laughed it off, brushing his hair back, telling him she just liked smelling good. But the truth was more twisted: she liked seeing the boys notice. She liked catching their eyes widen when she leaned closer. It made her feel powerful. Desired.
And wasn't that what she'd been missing for so long?
With a frustrated sigh, Shalini stood and walked to the bathroom. She shut the door and let the mirror show her what she had been trying not to see.
There she was: a beautiful woman, yes, but also a neglected wife. Her eyes were lined with worry, her mouth drawn from biting back too many unspoken needs. She undid her braid and let her hair fall, thick and dark down her back. She lifted her arms, smelling the faint trace of jasmine body wash under her sari blouse, and for a moment wondered what it would feel like if someone — anyone — buried their face against her, breathing in her scent.
She shivered.
It was wrong. It was shameful.
But it was also real.
She splashed cold water on her face, trying to banish the sinful thoughts, and tied her hair back again. Outside, the clock chimed seven. She could hear the neighbor's pressure cooker letting out a sharp hiss, the TV running somewhere down the lane, Avi's footsteps as he returned from playing.
I have to be strong, she told herself. I have to be a good mother. A good wife.
But when night fell and Avi slept in his small cot, the house once more went silent. Shalini lay alone in her bed, her thoughts running riot.
In the darkness, she allowed herself to remember a different kind of touch — not Dushyant's rushed hands, but something gentler, worshipful. Like the way Ravi might touch her feet, or the way Prayush might press his face against her underarm in trembling devotion.
Heat burned through her belly, making her thighs clench.
No, she told herself, I will not cross that line.
But her hands slid down anyway, betraying her, searching for a relief only she could give herself for now.
The guilt washed over her as soon as she was done, leaving her hollow, tears stinging behind her eyelids. But it was also a kind of release.
In the night's stillness, she finally let herself cry, shoulders shaking as she buried her face in her pillow. The tears were not just for missing Dushyant — they were for all the parts of her that had been neglected, all the softness, all the longing that she could not even name.
Tomorrow, she would put on her strong face again. She would teach, she would coach, she would mother.
But tonight, in the darkness, Shalini allowed herself to feel the hunger that no one else could see — a hunger that was growing, that refused to be crushed, no matter how hard she tried.
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