Not a trace of the smell remained. Still she gave each room one more blast with the freshener and sniffed the palms of both hands. Sometimes, unable to handle such anxiety, Sahana pounded garlic into a paste and fried it in oil. All other smells were certain to be smothered.

But the situation had not been remotely like this when they first met and exchanged mōn. Fish had not seemed a significant issue during those early days of their romance. Sahana had never in the least felt that in linking her life to Paramesh’s she was treading the path of sacrifice. She had accepted the whole thing without protest. Although she realised now that she had indeed wanted to protest – but simply hadn’t been able.

‘I’m vegetarian,’ Paramesh had told her. ‘You mustn’t eat anything non-vegetarian at home.’

‘What about elsewhere?’ she had asked.

Paramesh was silent for a couple of seconds, then shrugged.

‘I don’t mind chicken. But as for fish, you’ll have to give it up completely, at home or anywhere else. I simply cannot tolerate the smell of fish, Sahana. I throw up on the spot. It makes me so sick, there’s been occasions when I’ve actually had to be hospitalised. I hate fish. Moreover, Sahana, I could never dream of kissing or making love to someone who eats fish. I can’t enter someone who is, in whichever sense, fishy.’

Waggling the middle finger of his left hand at her, Paramesh had made sure that she understood all of what he meant by ‘fishy’. ‘So you have to give it up.’

By that point, Sahana had already fallen in love with Paramesh. If it had been only love, things might have been different, but she had also become psychologically dependent on him. She had realised that she would have to give up fish if she wanted to keep Paramesh. There had been nothing else for it but to uproot the very desire for fish from her heart, and in fact this had been effortless. She simply trained her sights on all the other foods that existed in the world. Not a single flake of fish passed her lips in two whole years. Then the taste of it possessed her again.

And she began to eat fish in secret, and to fear Paramesh. For she was only too aware that if Paramesh came to know, their relationship would end. Alternatively, a conflict would erupt, a very familiar kind of conflict. The more Sahana began to fear Paramesh, the more she began to loathe him too. Hatred. Or, one could say that the more she became aware of Paramesh’s abhorrence for fish and those who eat it, the more determined she became to retaliate with a proportionate degree of abhorrence for those who did not. She seemed to feel a certain responsibility to do this. Her growing self-awareness provided ammunition for her opposition to, and disillusionment about, Paramesh.

‘Those who eat fish and those who don’t are poles apart, separated by a deep gulf of mutual contempt.’ Sahana grew deeply emotional about fish, and would argue, though with trepidation, ‘Why should I be deprived of fish, Paramesh, just because you don’t enjoy it, just because you can’t stand the smell? Why should your behaviour dictate mine? I’m not you, I’m my own person, separate and distinct. That isn’t going to change. Isn’t it you that’s mistaken, Param?’