Feasting on the Moon

Karva Chauth — the fabled festival of women. Amidst donning and flaunting brilliant bangles, intricate mehndi, shimmering saris, matching bindis, glittering lehengas, elaborate hairstyles, fragrant gajras—and decking oneself from head to toe like a flamboyantly overdressed queen—lay the customary fast that every woman was piously expected to observe from dawn, while fervently praying for the long life of her husband! 

But that very morning, I had a hearing at the Civil Courthouse. For the past ten years, I had been caught in the same exhausting loop—running back and forth between courtroom dates and everyday life. All because my lord, lover, and husband had filed for divorce. 

My crime? That I failed to be the proverbial wife-woman-mate, the quintessentially servile companion he had always willed me to be. My lord had only one ambition in life: to be a communist revolutionary. But before he could claim the nation or society, his imperial fantasies demanded a domestic dominion—one serviced eighty percent by his wife and the remaining twenty by his daughter. Meanwhile, his only consistent desire was to remain our supreme master, the one who demanded — and expected — both moral and material sacrifices from us, without question. 

In the house below ours lived a couple with their only child. The husband was a sluggish sort of fellow, while the wife was industrious and worldly. She worked at the Reserve Bank and earned a handsome salary — more than her husband had ever earned in his entire life. Yet each evening, when she returned home and found him sprawled on a cot in the courtyard, she would smile dutifully and ask, “Sahab, how was your day?”

“Good,” he would mumble, slowly hauling himself up and walking into the house, always ensuring his wife followed quietly behind — reduced, in effect, to a mere shadow. 

For reasons I never quite understood, my husband deeply admired that scene. It tugged at his heartstrings and made him inexplicably sentimental. 

Every evening, I used to return home from work with our daughter, whose things I would first collect from the crèche and then carry, along with her, all the way home. During the walk, my daughter would deploy numerous tactics in her little arsenal of charms — coaxing me into surrender with giggles, pouts, and promises. More often than not, she won: toffees, chocolates, or some other small treats sealed her victory. Since our apartment was on the second floor, I climbed those same worn stone stairs every single day. Occasionally, when I returned earlier than usual, I would find His Lordship engrossed in a sermonizing self-help book, or absorbed in one of his moralizing pursuits. As a matter of habit, I would quietly slip into the kitchen, arrange our daughter’s tiffin and other things to one side, and prepare tea for the family.

“When did you come back?” I would ask, as always.

“Yaar, I came early today. That bastard RK Sharma—I am fed up with his scheming. We nearly came to blows!”

Taking a sip of the tea, I murmured, “Hmmm?”—and, on cue, my husband launched into more detail.

“Our Union — under my leadership — passed a motion today on overtime and uniforms. Every goddamned member of the management board claims petrol allowance — the so-called ‘conveyance cost’ — even though they all take the bus! We finally got photographic proof that they are all committing daylight fraud!”

In the middle of his outburst, our daughter, who was barely three, cartwheeled over my shoulders. She often thrust herself right between us — babbling, bouncing, or whining. I got distracted, trying to make her sit down and have her tea, or giving in to her need for cuddles and comfort. But the moment my husband sensed I was not paying full attention to his words, his mood would sour instantly — and stay foul the rest of the night.

“You damn bitches never understand anything! You do not even know how to respect a working man. Do you realize, the entire office is terrified of me? And you call yourself a woman? A feminist? Really? Just look downstairs! That limping bastard’s wife calls him ‘Sahab’ every day — even though he is not worth the dust on her shoes. Still!”

I was beginning to feel irritated. But I held it in. By now, our once-cackling daughter had gone quiet. The tension in the air had sobered her.

An awkward silence lingered between us for a few moments.

“Okay, Baba, I am sorry,” I said, placatingly. “Now will you please talk? I am listening.”

But even the faintest wrinkle of annoyance on my forehead enraged him further. As usual, he let loose again. Somewhere between his worship of the man downstairs and his bitter tirades about my character, I was still expected to walk into the kitchen and make dinner — for all of us.

This had become my routine.

My husband was a Marxist comrade. I, on the other hand, was an Ambedkarite-feminist activist. The first time we met was, in every sense, revolutionary — during the fiery protests that erupted in the wake of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.

Together, we attended seminars on caste atrocities; meetings at Saheli, that pioneering women’s rights collective; conventions against sexual violence; informal political gatherings; and countless mobilizations where the ideological air was, interestingly, a little left, a little secular, a little feminist, and a little humanist—all at once. These were spaces where radicals of every hue exchanged ideas freely, fearing neither friction nor difference.

Back in those days, I remained politically active in spite of everything—family responsibilities, the burden of caring for my younger siblings, and the many restrictions imposed on me by my conservative father. A typical day began with accompanying the Anganwadi Health Workers’ Union to the slums of Seelampur, where I taught young children. Evenings were spent at VP House, in room number 17, surrounded by spirited activists, where we argued, imagined, and reimagined the ever-shifting agendas of our feminist campaigns. I took part in marathon debates, thick with conviction, where comrades from across movements gathered to immerse themselves in our struggles. I was, by all accounts, a rising star. Comrade, meanwhile, held a government job and was fast becoming a leading trade unionist with a growing name in activist circles.

For months, our encounters and meandering conversations remained rooted in ideas and intellectual exchange—the raw material of revolution, the lifeblood of a generation hungry to transform the world. For me, it all unfolded against a backdrop of rising tensions at home: bitter arguments with my father, who grew more controlling by the day; the slow but deliberate hijacking of the Democratic Anganwadi Union by the Congress Party; and the overnight eviction of Seelampur’s slum-dwellers, who were pushed to the bleak peripheries of Nand Nagari. At times, it felt as if the very scaffolding of my life — its structure and its meaning — was coming undone, one beam at a time.

To make matters worse, the land mafia succeeded in uprooting the school where I taught inside the slum. The final blow came when local politicians began laying personal claim to the school’s land, parcelling out public space like private inheritance. I was drawn so deeply into resisting their incursions that, for a while, I lost touch with my feminist work entirely!

And then, in the midst of that turmoil, came a small, improbable opening: a job offer for the post of a clerk. The only catch— it was in Bombay. Predictably, my father opposed it with all his might. But that very job — even now — is what keeps me afloat. It is what allows me to feed myself and those who still depend on me. Eventually, my elder brother relented. He accompanied me to Bombay, helped settle me into a modest hostel, and quietly returned to Delhi.

Excerpted with permission from  “Love in the Time of Caste: A Dalit-feminist Anthology of Love Stories”, edited and translated by Nikhil Pandhi, published by Zubaan Books, 2026.