Everyone called her husband ‘Seth-ji’.

A sharp pain rose from inside her body. She could feel something excruciating pass through. Was she bleeding again? A wave of nausea hit her as she looked out of the little window of the bus. Bidding adieu to the village that had once been her home.

They passed the serpentine queue outside the little Shani temple. They passed the marigold fields, the mustard fields, the carpets of wheat and paddy fields. They passed the milkman on the dirt road with his pots.

They passed the old men who smoked in the fields; women who worked with their scarves, sickles and babies; cattle ploughed the mud, with bells tinkling around their necks.

She bid her village adieu. ‘She is Durga, she is meant for great things!’ her mother’s often told story about her grandmother, and the prediction she’d had about her future rang in her head.

‘She is God’s child…’

Rajjo wanted to laugh out loud. She refused to cry. The bus stopped outside the temple. To everyone’s surprise, the young bride refused to alight from the bus and pay homage to the deity in the temple. After a minute of consultation it was decided that perhaps it wasn’t the correct time of the month, and Seth-ji went by himself to seek the blessings of the deity.

An old lady approached the beautiful girl staring out of the window.

‘That time of the month, you can’t go to the temple?’

‘No, I just don’t want to go …’

‘Why?’

‘There is nothing for me in there…’

The woman wondered why they named her ‘Durga’ in the first place. What a shame!

Rajjo could smell the rain approaching her village and she was glad this was the last of it that she was going to see.

The wet road and the water-filled manholes indicated they’d just missed a rain shower. The street was crammed with houses. It was one of the crowded residential areas in the sleepy town of Dholakpura.

As soon as Rajjo stepped out of the bus, she could see a large black gate, rusted in parts, engraved with intricate circular design. Beyond the gate stood the multistoried bungalow. The paint, a dirty pale pink, peeled in places and grey patches of cement peeked through. Wooden window frames on tinted dark glass gave a gloomy sad look to the house. She had never seen a house this big in size.

The cemented driveway lay bare. Water dripped from the leaves of the mango tree that grew in a corner, with a patch of garden left around it. The tree grew into the wall and spread across the neighbour’s house as well. It was old and gnarled, with anchor roots hanging down. It looked tired and sad, despite the fresh gleam of moisture on the leaves. But Rajjo liked it.

As she walked through the gate, the smell of grey concrete filled her lungs mingled with the smell of the old mango tree. The pale pink house looked foreboding. A few neighbours stood in their balconies, curiously observing the old man and his new bride.