I apologize for having left my A-Z assignment and my Garuda stories incomplete. I went on vacation following which my ADHD decided to hyperfocus on something entirely different and when I brought it back to writing, I was completely exhausted from my day job. Here I am a year later, picking up where I left off. Another attempt at being regular and doing things that keep my soul alive.
As an apology, here is a brand new short story – The Garuda series will continue after this. Certain warnings – this is horror, no gore but definitely touches on morbid themes involving miscarriage and male chauvinism.
Bride’s Harvest
The characters, events and the story depicted are purely fictitious and are not intended to reflect the life of any individual(s). Any resemblance to person(s) living or dead or to any real events is purely coincidental. No animals or birds were harmed in the writing of this story. Smoking and consumption of alcohol is injurious to health.
For he is the love of her life. She is his third wife. Not that love couldn’t be found after two failed marriages. He wasn’t divorced as he claimed, he was widowed. Why he lies about his ex-wives is not yet known.
She was completely devoted to him. Her identity lived within him, her purpose in life was his happiness. Everything she had done her entire life was to land a good husband. He was better than she could have dared to hope. He was older than would have been her choice and had had two other women in his life, but she knew she was the one for him. She would fulfill his every desire, anticipate his needs, serve him so well that she would become indispensable to him.
He had one dream, the same as all the men before him. He wanted to contribute to the continuing line of his family’s legacy, a small offering to join the expansive family he was a part of. A wife and a son, he could call his own. He hadn’t found the right woman, until now it seemed.
They had a lavish wedding. She was welcomed into the family house with all the pomp and splendor due a new bride. It was the happiest day of her life. The next few months were nothing short of bliss. She often caught her father-in-law boasting about the miracle of having found a perfect bride for his youngest son. Everyone in the family loved her and very soon she became an integral part of the household. She took over the responsibilities with ease. Her husband relied on her entirely: she prepped his office wear, packed his lunch, readied any documents he might need for the day – she was both a wife and an executive assistant. He had wanted a well educated woman who had no desire to have a job outside of her family and she was the right person.
He showered her with expensive gifts, took her out to fancy restaurants, bought her flowers and generally kept her happy. She was his trophy, he cherished her and vowed to protect her. He wanted to show her how important she is to the family. He wanted her to not just own him, but his entirely family. He needed to make sure she would uphold the values of his family. He needed her to understand his father’s vision, his vision – for her to revere his father as much as he did.
This family upholds a long legacy; their history unfolds from before the beginning of modern India. They started off as a small family of four in a tiny, remote village, befriending the right people and serving the powerful. They are never in the spotlight, but they are a constant in their circles. Their family name is now associated with honor, power and loyalty. Stay true to the family and you will prosper, but stray away and you will face the consequences. They maintained a strict patriarchy to keep their immense family under control. Most of them lived as a joint family in a mansion on the outskirts of the city, though they were spread out across the globe. The family as a whole had one goal – to keep the legacy going. They wanted sons that could inherit and progress their family name. They wanted strong, powerful men that knew how to keep those around them in check. There was a place for everyone in the hierarchy of the family and everyone had a place.
For their honeymoon, he took her to their village. It was important to him and his family that they honor their roots. The village owed the family everything. Men of the family had always worked towards the betterment of the village. Her father-in-law was responsible for the transformation of the village from a small, affluent and rural area to one of the most successful agricultural markets in the country. Schools, hospitals and institutions were named after various men in the family. They were building a rice mill to honor the youngest son. The village families flourished. They had timely rains to keep the harvest on track, their land was always fertile, they received more than the market value for their goods and they never had a bad harvest. The village thrived for decades until five years ago.
Five years ago the village was hit with a massive drought, unforeseen by any of the Godly men. None of the astrologers had been able to predict a curse of this extent. Their crops were infected, lands suddenly went barren, wells dried up and they hadn’t had a single harvest in five years. They had sustained and made ends meet with their savings and surplus, but their granaries were starting to empty. They had turned to the family – their savior, their protector. Her father-in-law had tried several rituals, explored various solutions but in vain. The lives of hundreds of people lay in the hands of the family or rather in the hands of the youngest son and his new bride.
When he took his new bride to the village, the people showered her with luxury. They organized a massive feast despite their privation. They welcomed her and told her stories of the great, heroic deeds the men of the family had done for the good of all the people in the village. They tried hard to hide their misfortune from her, but she had seen photos of the village in its prime in her family’s photo albums and she couldn’t help but notice the haggard look almost everyone in the village now wore. They blessed her with a bountiful womb. It was then she realized that the welfare of the village weighed heavily on her father-in-law. She felt fortunate that her husband had decided to share his father’s troubles with her. She had never felt more included. She had found her family. She was eternally grateful to her saintly husband.
She knew all he desired was a child and she wasted no time in making his dream come true. Within a year of being married, she was pregnant.
If her family loved her before, it was nothing compared to how they treated her upon hearing the news of her pregnancy. Her father-in-law was overjoyed. She was treated like a queen. All household chores were delegated to the other women in the house and they even hired a servant to look after her full time. Her mother-in-law had confided in her how immensely happy her father-in-law was with the news of a grandson gracing their house; he hadn’t felt this happiness in almost five years. She insisted she didn’t need to be treated like a glass doll, but there was no arguing with her loving mother-in-law. All her remonstrations notwithstanding, she did need all the rest she could get. She had been given a clean bill of health by her doctor after the initial visit – both the baby and the mother were doing well. However, over the next few weeks, she got worse. She wasn’t sleeping – plagued by dreams of dead crops and empty wells. She lost her appetite – barely eating enough calories for her and the baby. When she woke up in a bed covered in her blood, she was rushed to the hospital.
It had been six months and her husband was worried for his wife. She had gone back to her daily routine without any complaint. She had shed some tears for their lost baby that first night, but hadn’t spoken about the incident since. Her mother-in-law was worried too since she seemed to be performing her duties as though on auto-pilot. She didn’t laugh as much and seemed to have lost interest in everything around her. She barely engaged in conversation with her husband, to say nothing about being intimate. He assumed time would heal, but there hadn’t been any improvement in her. She wasn’t sleeping. She confided in her mother that she rather be sleep deprived than dream of horrifying images of a decaying village.
Her family loved her and wanted them to have a happy life. Her father-in-law didn’t want his youngest son and new daughter-in-law to be hung up on a tragic incident; they were still young, they could still start a family. Her father-in-law suggested her husband take her abroad – a change of scenery would do them good. Her husband thought it was a great idea, flying to a different continent was bound to help with the nightmares. He blamed himself for them. He knew she was sensitive and he shouldn’t have taken her to their village to see the once prosperous place crumbling. They decided they would go somewhere warm and easy going. Her father-in-law wanted them to go to Southern California, it would be perfect: he had several reasons he didn’t bother sharing with them, but it was settled.
However, the night before they were to leave, she had trouble sleeping. Her nightmares were ghastlier than ever before. She got out of bed thinking she’d check if everything was packed and ready to go when she heard some raised voices. She tiptoed over to her bedroom door and heard her father-in-law arguing with her husband. She silently opened the door to hear better. She had never seen her father-in-law angry. At first, she wasn’t sure what they were fighting about, but it slowly became clear that they were arguing about the state of the village. Her father-in-law seemed to have performed another ritual to no avail. His youngest son had disappointed him again – six failed attempts and his failures were starting to stack up. For the first time, she heard her husband raise his voice against his father, yelling at him about things not being under his control. Her father-in-law went deadly quiet; her husband seemed to have realized he might have gone too far. Her father-in-law simply told him he would return with a grandson or not at all. The next day, she was disturbed and uncomfortable during the long flight and she couldn’t even enjoy being on a plane for the first time in her life. Her husband kept throwing anxious glances at her and wondered if he could ever make her feel normal again.
San Diego was the answer to their problems. They wanted to be left alone, to enjoy themselves without external disturbances and the San Diego sunshine brought light into their darkness.
She was back to her jovial self. He taught her to drive, allowed her to venture into the city by herself and gave her her own credit card; she had never experienced such freedom. It was almost a second honeymoon. She loved the city – every beach had its own personality. She preferred Sunset Cliffs, though La Jolla was ideal for people watching and shopping for her new house and endearing husband. The ruggedness of the beaches between Ocean Beach and Point Loma had fascinated her. Of all the attractions in the city, she had a morbid interest in Pioneer Park in Escondido. It was a bit of a drive for her, but she spent a lot of her afternoons there, walking by the row of headstones and reading about its history. The park had originally been a prominent pioneer cemetery; it is rumored that over 4000 bodies were buried there, most of which are interred under its grassy lawn even to this day. It somehow calmed her to think of being surrounded by so many restless souls and made her nightmares tolerable. She still had them, the same desolate rice fields and empty wells, but they didn’t disturb her as much.
She spent several months exploring the city. She had never even left the confines of her little town and when she was married, her husband had taken take her to see the sites around their city. The furthest she had been to was his village, she had never imagined leaving her home state and yet here she was, on a different continent, in a new country and an unknown town. Oddly, she felt right at home here and soon time had done its healing. She was ready for her own family.
It didn’t take very long for her to get pregnant again and before she knew it, they were looking up the best gynecologist in town. Her family was overjoyed again and everything seemed right with the world. Her husband was over the moon, his wife was back to normal and his life was back on track. However, he decided to keep the news from his father for the moment. He told her they could surprise him when she started to show more.
She was quite shocked when her doctor asked them if she would like to know the sex of the baby on her first visit. Revealing the sex of the baby is illegal in India, but America might as well be a different planet. She liked the idea of keeping it a mystery. For the first time in her life, she asked her husband this one thing, she asked him if they could keep it a secret and find out at birth. He looked at her for a minute, smiled and agreed. She can have whatever she wants if she promises to take it easy during this pregnancy. She was advised against traveling considering her previous miscarriage and her husband decided they would stay until after the birth of the baby to return home. He didn’t want to risk anything.
Lightening doesn’t hit the same spot twice, but tragedy sure does. Just a week later and she was in the ER. This time, it wasn’t the sorrow of losing her baby, but the guilt of having failed her husband once again that plagued her. She couldn’t stand to know she was causing him so much pain – he had been the best thing in her life. She was very well taken care of and all he wanted in return was a baby. She couldn’t manage it. She felt like a failure, a let down and was absolutely disgusted with herself. All she had ever wanted was his happiness and she had been nothing but a source of trauma. She made up her mind; what was important to her was his happiness. She told him he should divorce her and marry someone else again. He should find himself a wife that could give him what he wanted. He looked at her aghast and shot down the idea vehemently. She started to deteriorate again. Her nightmares got worse, she was dreaming of dead babies lying in pools of blood atop ruins of a village. She lost all of her appetite.
Her husband decided tough love was the way to go. Coddling her hadn’t worked. He told her to get over it and that they should simply try again. Astrologers from their village had predicted that the third pregnancy would yield what they have been waiting for. It was written in the stars. Her chart had destined two miscarriages. Hearing this helped her feel better. This had been God’s plan for her all along. She was being tested and now was not the time to lose faith in God or her husband. She wouldn’t let him down a third time.
Before long, she was pregnant again. This time, her husband didn’t wait to tell his father. Her father-in-law seemed to take the news well. Her father-in-law insisted that her mother be flown to San Diego immediately. He wanted her to be mentally and physically safe, he wanted to make sure she was comfortable and didn’t want any stress to impact her. Unfortunately, even the best laid plans go awry. Her husband had planned to take time off work to take care of his wife, but two days after the happy news, his grandfather had a heart attack. He wasn’t expected to last long and he wanted to see his youngest grandson before he died. Extremely reluctantly, her husband flew back to India. He wasn’t going to leave his wife just with her mother, though. He flew in his mother and hired a driver to take his them all to her appointments.
She was feeling good about this pregnancy. She was feeling confident, her morning sickness was nowhere as severe as before and her dreams had turned from horrifying nightmares to those with little girls playing around a giant oak tree. This, to her, felt like a good sign. For the first time, she was visiting the doctor all by herself. Her mother and her mother-in-law accompanied her, but neither spoke any English. She was nervous, but also relieved in a weird way. She heard the baby’s heartbeats during the ultrasound – something her husband had been adamant about not doing. She was filled with a bottomless love for the little thing growing inside of her. The doctor asked her if she would like to know the sex of the baby – she wanted to keep the mystery this time as well. It didn’t feel right finding out without her husband. If she had been home, she wouldn’t have found out anyway. Her doctor gave her a smile and told her not to worry, her husband will probably surprise her like he had planned to before. She was quiet for a moment and she asked the nurse if the baby she had lost had been a girl. The nurse looked up her medical records and confirmed that it had been.
She was silent all the way back home. That night, after her mother-in-law had gone to sleep, she took her mother out for a walk. She wanted to know more about her husband’s family. Why is it that she has no sisters-in-law, how is it that every child in his family is a boy, was that scientifically possible? Is it some sort of an anomaly? The last girl child born into the family had been at least four or five generations ago and she had been ostracized. Her mother reminded her that this pregnancy was crucial for her sake. Her mother told her to not entertain such thoughts, an idle mind is the devil’s workshop and she didn’t want to end up like his ex-wives. She needed to keep herself occupied, perhaps pick up a hobby – knitting would be a good activity, useful and relaxing. She should spend her time praying for a son and reading scripture. She smiled at her mother and agreed, the pregnancy was causing her to not think rationally. She asked her for one favor, could her mother find out the sex of her first baby? She told her mother she had been dreaming about it and it felt like an omen. She wanted to get closure, do some prayers for the baby and move on, but she couldn’t pick the rituals she would need to do if she didn’t know the baby’s sex. Her mother told her that was not a problem at all. Her doctor in India was a distant relative and she would be discreet.
There was no doubt in her mind that her first baby had been a girl, too. She lay in her bed, her mind in overdrive. She didn’t know if it was the pregnancy or the fact that her husband wasn’t around, but her thoughts were going to dangerous places. She was starting to question if her miscarriages had indeed been that. Perhaps her mother was right. She really needed to distract herself. She took a few deep breaths, prayed a little and went to sleep. That night, her nightmares were bizarre. She dreamed of the rotting fields and wasted wells as before, she dreamed of little girls dancing around the oak tree, but this time she dreamed more. She walked closer to the girls; they weren’t dancing. They were hopping on hot coals, their hands shackled to each other unable to break the circle. The little girls had no eyes – not holes just smooth skin where the eyes would have been, their mouths twisted in an odd way trying to say something. They couldn’t get the words out, they were gargling as though drowning. She awoke with a start, her heart pounding. This could not be a good sign. Her dreams were trying to tell her something. She felt a deep pit at the bottom of her stomach – she touched her belly worried the baby would fall through.
She tried to schedule an appointment with her doctor, but this wasn’t India. She couldn’t just call her doctor and ask to see her, though she tried. She couldn’t bear the anxiety, she was worried that she had had another miscarriage and she wanted to get examined. She convinced her mother-in-law to take her to the ER. Her mother summoned the driver and off they went. Everything was fine, the baby was healthy and she was doing well herself. The ER nurse handed her some pills to ease her anxiety and to help her sleep. She hid them in her purse and went home. Her mother-in-law had already notified her husband who would be on his way home very soon. They were concerned for her health, all of them had experienced the miscarriage with her and they just wanted to make sure she was safe.
Her mother had heard back from their relative in India. The first baby had indeed been a girl. Her mother convinced the mother-in-law that they needed to perform certain religious ceremonies for the health of the baby. Her husband was back the next day and they arranged for the ritual to take place at her house. Her husband was too worried to let her out of the house. She maintained a calm demeanor not wanting to alarm her husband. She followed all the rules set by her husband, her mother-in-law and the priest. No one seemed to suspect anything and the rituals went as well as they could in a foreign country.
She went back to being the perfect wife as though the ritual had done its job and her husband eased up a bit. He even took her to her favorite park to get some fresh air and exercise. This time, at the park, she felt more than a sense of calm, but a sort of solidarity with the souls there. A few weeks later, the night before her next appointment with her doctor, she slipped two of the pills from the ER nurse into her husband’s nightcap. When he passed out, she went rummaging through his things. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she knew she would know when she saw it. And there it was, property documents: they owned two other properties in town. Surprisingly, neither of them were in her husband’s name. They were under two different women and it hit her that these must belong to his ex-wives. He had said he needed to take care of some real estate business, this must be it. She noted their names and the addresses for the two apartments, put everything back as she had found them and went back to bed.
It wasn’t easy getting away from all the watchful eyes, but she was able to linger in the bathroom without suspicion. She pulled out her smart phone and immediately started Googling. Perhaps her husband should never have bought her this phone. Perhaps he should have found a different doctor after her last miscarriage. She couldn’t find much about either of the women and there wasn’t much about the properties either. Just as she was about to give up, she stumbled upon a small article in a local newspaper. It was a crime report about two dead Indian women, not something worth an article, but the journalist seemed intrigued that two Indian women had died in similar circumstances not two years apart – they had owned some prime real estate and their bodies had washed up at Sunset Cliffs. That was all she could find, perhaps the journalist didn’t think it was worth following up on or maybe they had just moved on. Bodies washed up on that beach fairly frequently – drunks falling and drowning, capsized boats, etc. She thought back to the expression of fear on her mother’s face when she had warned that her she didn’t want to go the way of his ex-wives. She knew that he had divorced them because they couldn’t give him a child, but perhaps they hadn’t given him a son and he hadn’t divorced them. She tried to calm herself. This wasn’t the time to panic – she needed to keep it together for the baby’s sake. Whether it was miscarriage or sabotage, the stress was not going to help her carry to term.
At her appointment the next day, she told the doctor that she was very worried about the baby because of her previous two miscarriages and asked for more frequent visits if possible. She also requested a nutrition plan so as to cover all her bases. The doctor prescribed her a comprehensive prenatal plan, told her husband to take extra precautions and asked him for her medical records from India. The doctor was curious about her previous miscarriages since her physiology didn’t seem prone to it. The doctor asked her about her habits and diet in India and she let slip that she had been taking a daily concoction her mother-in-law prepared for her, something with Castor oil, Ashwagandha and other herbs. The doctor looked shocked. She told her to immediately stop taking it since Castor oil tends to increase the likelihood of miscarriages. The doctor remonstrated the husband, told her he should know better and to clear any new additions to her diet with the nurse first. The nurse made a note in her chart for special care. Her husband was quiet on the drive home. He was preoccupied all evening and was annoyed with her that night, but he said nothing.
She chose a natural birth, no medication or epidural, but she needn’t have worried. She had a smooth delivery, the baby girl was healthy as can be and she hadn’t had any complications. Her joy over her baby was overshadowed by the news that her husband’s grandfather had passed away. Her father-in-law was deeply affected at losing the former patriarch of the house, thirteen men left in the family barring the grandson he was waiting for; thirteen is not a good number.
She couldn’t travel to India with a newborn and her husband wasn’t leaving her alone at this stage. Her mother and mother-in-law, however, went back to India to take care of the funeral.
The next few weeks were some of the hardest in her life. Her husband was detached and morose – he was grieving his grandfather. She thought he blamed her for him not being able to see his grandfather one last time. She was barely managing to take care of an infant and keep house. There were no servants in San Diego, she didn’t have help from any other women since it was just her and her husband, she had to take care of everything herself. She had hardly had time to recover from the birth when her husband came home one evening with a surprise guest. Her father-in-law had decided to visit them, to see his grandchild and perhaps to make up with his son.
She prepared the guest room for him in between attending to her baby and preparing dinner for the three of them. She would have cooked just some rice and lentils for her and her husband, but that wasn’t going to work tonight. It was her father-in-law’s first visit and he seemed slightly on edge, she didn’t want to make him angry. She was the perfect Indian daughter-in-law and whipped up a feast. She was exhausted, but managed to keep up her energy for her father-in-law. She was relieved when her father-in-law told her to join them for dinner; she was too tired to realize how odd it was that he would request a woman to join him for dinner. They had a pleasant enough time. The two men discussed business which suited her just fine. She cleared the table and brought out dessert, but her father-in-law had brought her favorite sweet from India and insisted that they eat it now since it wouldn’t keep another day.
She was feeling content, she sat there savoring her favorite sweet, thinking about what had caused this change in her father-in-law. It must be her baby, children had a profound impact on grandparents. She looked at her husband, smiled and closed her eyes for a minute. It was so quiet, peaceful, how long had it been since she had enjoyed silence – it was too quiet – she didn’t hear her baby, where was her baby, her father-in-law had been playing with the baby just a little while ago. Her husband looked at her with some sort of horror on his face, she stood up to go find her baby, but before she could take a single step, she collapsed and fell on her face. She felt her husband turning her over, screaming something at her father-in-law. The last thing she heard before darkness engulfed her was a gunshot.
Across the Ocean 