Infidelity

Who could have guessed that a letter from the department of revenue was what ruined Malini Srinivasan's marriage?

In retrospect, all the classic signs were already there. Srini had been coming home late for the past few weeks. Work, dinner with important clients, deadlines: he had made the usual excuses and she had believed him.

The letter changed everything.

The letter came when Malini was in the kitchen; she did not open it immediately. She was cooking Srini's favorite urundai kozhambu and wanted to get everything ready by 6:00pm. Srini had promised her that he would come home early. At 5:45, exhausted but satisfied with the afternoon's work, she sat down on the sofa and waited for her husband.

He came home at 11:30.

"Sorry dear, already saapaDaama .... Good night" was all he said before going to bed. The perfunctory apology was somehow worse than an insult.

Malini couldn't sleep. Looking for something to occupy her mind, she picked up the letter that had arrived earlier. It was from the Department of Revenue. It was addressed to her husband, but since Malini did all their taxes, she didn't hesitate to open it. As expected it was a property tax receipt.

She was about to file it away, when she saw something strange. The address on the receipt was not of their house. Strange, she thought, the receipt was posted to the correct address.

A seed of doubt was planted; and it grew. Malini started going through his credit card statements: not even one entry was a restaurant. So much for the dinner-with-clients lie. As she went through more statements, she began to understand the extent of her husband's betrayal.

Nobody knew how Malini got a gun, but she did. Two days after the letter, Malini waited for her husband; she would give him one last chance at coming out clean. But he didn't come.

At 7:00pm Malini hailed an auto to the address on the receipt. It was a nondescript house in a shady part of town. Without making a sound, she tried the door; it was unlocked.

The smell! The smell hit her just as she entered the house. It hardened her resolve; she knew what she was about to do was right.

There wasn't much furniture in the hall, just a table and a chair. A recipe book was lying opened on the table. Malini could hear her husband humming from the kitchen. She took out her gun and made her way towards him.

Srini was shocked to see his gentle, loving wife standing there with a gun in her hand. Nervously he glanced towards the vessel on the stove and back at her. "Is that what I think it is?" Malini asked him. He didn't have to answer, the look on his face said it all.

She closed her eyes and shot him.

She made the headlines in the newspaper the next day: "Tamil Brahmin Wife kills husband for eating non-veg food".