Couple of the week

Ranjana was heartbroken. She hadn’t been married for very long, only about three years when it all fell apart, and her husband left her. It seemed, at 25, with no job, no prospects, and no love either. The divorce had taken a toll on her life, and now she sat at home, in her parents house, spending all day in bed, and hardly moving. One morning, however, as she got out of bed to go to the bathroom, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and was shocked by what she saw.

“My hair was unwashed, I looked fat and old and shabby,” she recollects, “I looked, in short, like a mess.” It was time to get out of bed and back into the world again, as her parents had been gently suggesting for a while. Maybe it was a good time to start a course, learn something new, and in the meanwhile, figure out what she wanted.

She started small, a neighbourhood woman was offering a cooking class, Ranjana had always liked to cook, and she wanted to learn some new things. This was a Chinese food menu, spread over a five week course, and she began to go every evening. She made some friends, other housewives in the area, but kept her distance, because she felt they were judging her for being divorced. The only one she really spoke to was the instructor, a divorced woman herself, older than Ranjana, but who really seemed to get what she was feeling. The course finished, but Ranjana continued to drop in to her new friend’s house, and was devastated to learn she was moving to the States to live with her brother for a little bit. “Don’t cry,” said her friend, comfortingly, “My brother is coming to get me, and before we leave, we’ll all go out for dinner.” Maybe there was a small glint in her friend’s eye when she said this, but it was lost on Ranjana then.

You can guess the rest of the story.   The brother, Rajveer, turned out to be everything his sister was and more, gentle and understanding and kind. “And so handsome,” Ranjana says now, dreamily. He was meant to just pick up his sister and move, but he kept finding excuses to extend his trip. And finally, when he couldn’t extend any more, he asked Ranjana to marry him and all three of them moved to the States together.

“My sister-in-law is my best friend,” Ranjana says now, “And I couldn’t be happier.”

*Names have been changed

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