It was Ahaana who said it first. Sharp, observant Ahaana, who had been watching her mother for ten years and her father for fifteen.
[ Kitchen. Sunday evening. Aaranya is peeling potatoes. Ahaana is sitting on the counter, doing nothing. ]
AHAANA — "Amma."
AARANYA — "Hmm."
AHAANA — "Have you noticed how often Appa is travelling?"
AARANYA — "He's been busy, kanna. The new office."
[ Silence. Ahaana watches her mother peel another potato. ]
AHAANA — "Amma. Please look up."
[ Aaranya looks up. She sees, in her daughter's sixteen-year-old eyes, the thing she has been refusing to see. ]
AHAANA — "You deserve better than this house. You deserve better than him. And you know it. You have known it for years."
[ Aaranya puts the knife down. She does not cry. She puts both hands flat on the counter, as if she is holding the kitchen in place. ]
AARANYA — "Kanna. I don't even know who I am anymore. How am I supposed to deserve anything?"
AHAANA — "Amma. That is exactly why."
That night, Aaranya did not sleep. She sat at the dining table at three in the morning with a cup of cold tea and let the entire shape of her marriage rise up in front of her, in full, for the first time in twenty years.