Chapter 3: The Unseen Groom
314 Words
The day of the wedding arrived, but there were no festive songs or colorful decorations. The house was quiet, almost like a place of mourning. Saina sat in her room, dressed in a simple silk saree. Her mother had applied some sandalwood paste on her forehead, but even the fragrant paste couldn't mask the sadness in Saina's eyes. She felt like a sacrificial lamb being prepared for a ritual.
Outside, a small group of relatives whispered among themselves. The groom, Shajahan, arrived with only a few people. He was a tall man with sun-darkened skin and hands that looked like they had spent a lifetime tilling the earth. He didn't wear a fancy suit; he wore a simple white shirt and dhoti. He looked out of place in a house full of books and college dreams.
When the ceremony was over, Saina found herself sitting in the back of a small auto-rickshaw, heading toward a village she had never seen before. Shajahan sat beside her, but he didn't speak. He seemed as nervous as she was. He kept twisting a small ring on his finger, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
As they reached his small house—a simple structure with a tiled roof—Saina felt a wave of despair. There were no bookshelves here, no place for her to hide and read. She looked at her husband, a man who couldn't even sign his own name on the marriage register, and felt a lump in her throat. She was a scholar married to a laborer. "Is this all my life is going to be?" she wondered, her heart breaking for the thousandth time. But as Shajahan stepped down and held out a steady hand to help her out of the rickshaw, she noticed something in his eyes—not authority, but a gentle, silent kindness.
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