Adultery Weekday Wife

[Sherlocked]

The silence of the third-floor bedroom was heavy, pressing against Shweta’s chest like a physical weight. She lay on her side, her fingers tracing the cold, crisp cotton of the pillow beside her—the pillow that remained undented and empty five nights a week.


Her mind, seeking an escape from the hollow quiet, drifted back to the cacophony of shenai and the smell of jasmine from a year ago. The day she married Ani. She remembered the weight of the red Banarasi saree and the heat of the ceremonial fire, but mostly, she remembered the naive certainty that her life was finally beginning. She had waited so long for him.


But the fairy tale had stalled the moment the rituals ended. There had been no honeymoon suite in the misty hills of Darjeeling, no walks along the beaches of Puri. Ani simply couldn't afford it. The reality of his life—and by extension, hers—was etched in the ledger of family duty. When his father passed away, Ani’s dreams of a degree had evaporated, replaced by the harsh necessity of the contract job at the steel plant. He had stepped up, sacrificing his youth to put food on the table for his mother and the extended family.


Shweta’s parents had been furious when she insisted on marrying him. "He’s a contract worker, Shweta," her father had argued, his voice trembling with worry. "The pay is low. There is no security. You will struggle."


But Shweta, stubborn and blinded by high college romance, had fought them. At the time, she had romanticized his struggle. She had admired the way he shouldered the burden, the way his hands were rough with work but gentle with her. She had loved his sacrifice. She thought it made him noble.


Now, staring at the spectral patterns the moonlight cast through the window grilles onto the floor, the nobility felt distant. It had been a year, and they still hadn't gone anywhere. Not even a day trip. The savings were meager, always earmarked for house repairs or family emergencies.


Worse than the lack of travel was the lack of *him*. Durgapur wasn't far, but the shift timings and the cost of daily travel meant he had to live at the plant site. He belonged to the company from Monday to Saturday, leaving her to haunt this large, old house like a ghost. She was a wife only on the weekends; for the rest of the week, she was just a caretaker of his memory.


A treacherous thought bloomed in the darkness, unbidden and sharp. *Did I make a mistake?*


The question hung in the air, chilling her more than the night breeze. Was this it? Was her life destined to be a series of lonely nights and counted coins, waiting for a man who was too exhausted to love her when he finally did come home?


Immediate, hot guilt flooded her veins, washing away the self-pity. She squeezed her eyes shut, her hand gripping the bedsheet tight. *How can you be so selfish?* she chided herself venomously. Ani was out there right now, likely sleeping on a thin mattress in a crowded worker’s dormitory, eating tasteless mess food, breaking his back in the heat of the furnace—all to provide for her. He was bending over backwards to ensure she had this roof, this food, this life. He did it all for her, and here she was, resenting him for his hard work.


She buried her face in the pillow that smelled faintly of detergent and nothing else. She tried to focus on his face, on the tired smile he gave her when he walked through the door on Saturday evenings. The mental image blurred as exhaustion finally began to pull her under. With the moonlight watching over her like a silent judge, Shweta drifted into a restless, solitary sleep.


—


Two hundred and fifty kilometers away, the air tasted of sulfur and iron rather than jasmine.


The shift whistle had blown twenty minutes ago, signaling the end of another grueling evening rotation at the Durgapur Steel Plant, but the heat of the blast furnace still seemed to radiate from Ani’s skin. He wiped a layer of grime from his forehead with the back of a wrist that ached deep into the bone. His uniform, stiff with dried sweat and industrial dust, clung uncomfortably to his frame as he trudged toward the company cafeteria.


It was a cavernous, fluorescent-lit hall that smelled perpetually of stale oil and damp mops. Ani joined the line of weary men, taking a dented metal tray that was slapped with the night’s offering: two stiff rotis and a ladle of watery, indeterminate vegetable stew.


He found a spot at a long, chipped table and sat down, staring at the food with a lack of appetite that had become alarming lately. It was the same *sabji* as yesterday, and the day before. He tore off a piece of the roti, dipping it into the tepid gravy, but as he chewed, the flavor was metallic and bland.


His mind drifted inevitably to the kitchen back home. He thought of the way his mother’s dal was always tempered with just the right amount of cumin, and how Shweta... Shweta had a magic in her hands. Even a simple potato fry made by her tasted like a feast. She cooked with a tenderness that this industrial kitchen couldn't comprehend.


Ani swallowed with difficulty. The food here sat heavy in his stomach, a leaden weight that offered little nourishment. He pushed the tray away, leaving half the meal unfinished. He knew he was losing weight; his work pants required a tighter notch on the belt these days, and the constant physical labor combined with this poor diet was draining his vitality. He felt hollowed out, his energy reserves perpetually flashing red.


Leaving the mess hall, he walked through the darkness toward the worker’s dormitory. The night air was thick, carrying the distant, rhythmic clanging of the plant that never truly slept.


The dorm room was a cramped, barrack-style hall lined with rows of bunk beds. It smelled of exhausted men—of cheap soap, old sweat, and damp towels drying on railings. Ani navigated the narrow aisle to his designated bunk. He sat on the edge, the thin mattress barely cushioning him from the metal frame beneath.


He pulled his phone from his pocket, the screen glowing harsh in the dim room. His thumb hovered over Shweta’s name. He wanted to hear her voice. He wanted to tell her he missed her, that he was doing this for them, that he was sorry he wasn't there.


But the digital clock read past midnight. She would be asleep by now.


He couldn't bring himself to wake her. She deserved her rest, free from the intrusion of his exhaustion. With a heavy sigh, he placed the phone on the concrete floor beside his shoes. He didn't even have the energy to change out of his work clothes. He simply swung his legs up and collapsed back onto the hard, lumpy pillow.


There was no tossing or turning, no time for pining or reflection. His body simply shut down. Within seconds, Ani’s consciousness was extinguished by sheer fatigue, and he began to snore, a deep, rhythmic sound that joined the chorus of fifty other men sleeping away their lives in the dark.


—-------


Back in the sprawling ancestral home, separated from Shweta’s lonely vigil by merely twenty feet of hallway and a teak door, Sumu lay awake in a world entirely different from the one his cousin inhabited.


The room was bathed in the crisp, high-definition glow of a fifty-inch OLED screen mounted flush against the wall. The latest episode of *The Family Man* played out in vibrant contrast, the dialogue crisp and immersive thanks to the 5.1 surround sound system he had meticulously installed. Sumu shifted against the plush, memory-foam headboard, the air conditioner humming a soft, cool lullaby that kept the humid Bengal night at bay.


This was the sanctuary of a man who had played his cards right—and, he admitted to himself, had been dealt a better hand to begin with. As a senior software engineer for a Bangalore-based MNC, Sumu had the luxury of earning a metropolitan salary while living in a tier-three town. With remote work becoming the norm, his expenses were low, allowing him to indulge in the expensive hobbies of a tech geek.


He paused the video, the sudden silence of the room highlighting the hum of his computer rig in the corner. His gaze drifted to the ceiling fan, his mind wandering. He hadn’t grown up with a silver spoon either; the house was old, and money had been tight in their childhood. But luck had favored him. His father had managed to hold onto his job until retirement, shielding Sumu long enough for him to finish his engineering degree. He had landed a placement at twenty-one, fresh-faced and eager.


Now, with ten years of experience under his belt, he was comfortable. Secure.


A pang of familiar, dull guilt stirred in his chest as he thought of Ani. Fate had been cruel to his younger cousin. When their uncle died, Ani had been forced to step up, abandoning his education for that wretched contract job just to keep the fires burning at home. Even though Sumu had started earning before the tragedy, the timing had been such that he couldn't prevent Ani's fall.


He had tried, of course. On multiple occasions, Sumu had offered to cover the family’s expenses so Ani could go back to college or at least leave that deathtrap of a steel plant. But Ani was cut from the old cloth—proud, stubborn, and unwilling to take charity, even from his "Borda." He refused to be a burden.


Sumu respected him for it, but looking around his room filled with gadgets and comforts, the disparity left a sour taste in his mouth.


Yet, as he stared at the frozen image on the TV, a different emotion crept in, sitting side-by-side with the guilt. It was a quiet, green-eyed jealousy.


Sumu had everything a man could buy, but he had no one to share it with. His life was a series of successful code deployments and lonely dinners. Ani, for all his poverty and sweat-stained struggles, had something money couldn't purchase. He had Shweta. He had a woman who had turned her back on a comfortable future to stand beside him in the mud. She waited for him, cooked for him, and loved him despite the empty pockets.


Sumu sighed, rubbing his face with a well-manicured hand. He didn't covet his brother's wife—he saw Shweta as a sister, a sweet girl who deserved better—but he coveted the *devotion*. He wanted that unwavering presence in his own life. He wanted to be someone's entire world, the way Ani was to her.


"Everyone has their own cross to bear," he muttered to the empty room.


Remembering an early stand-up meeting with the US team scheduled for the morning, Sumu pointed the remote and killed the TV. The room plunged into darkness, save for the blinking LED of the router. He pulled the duvet up, the expensive fabric cool against his skin, and closed his eyes, forcing his mind to shut down.


Outside, the old house stood still under the watchful gaze of the moon. To any observer, it was a picture of domestic tranquility—three lives resting under one roof, bound by blood and marriage. But the silence was deceptive. The walls that separated the lonely wife, the exhausted husband, and the yearning cousin were thinner than they appeared. The equilibrium was fragile, held together by duty and denial, and in the quiet of the night, the unseen threads of fate were already beginning to tighten, preparing to pull them all into a tangled web they never saw coming.