Once there was a woman who was really fed up with all folks around her. Her parents, for instance. Every time they came to stay, her mother would whinge about her sisters, her neighbours, her grocer. “My neighbour stole my mangoes,” and “Your sisters think I’m their ayah,” “My grocer cheats me,” and so on.

Her father was no better. He wanted a tipple every evening and got high and loud, embarrassing her no end. He used hubby’s golf clubs without his permission, and damaged one of them, compelling her to play peacemaker. He burped and belched at the table, making her want to shrink into herself.

Moreover, her in-laws behaved like outlaws. They landed up when they liked, without advance notice, made themselves comfortable, and ordered her about like a servant. Her nosy ma-in-law opened all cupboards to check their contents, asked the maidservants intrusive questions about how the house was run, complained incessantly about her aches and pains and then accused her daughter-in-law of not attending to her properly.

 The pa-in-law ate like a hog and developed indigestion so badly it seemed like a heart attack and once had to be rushed to hospital. Since food was his passion, it seemed to our heroine that she was confined to the kitchen from daybreak to nightfall, dishing out enormous amounts of breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner without a break, with endless cups of coffee and lassi in between luncheon together with hot snacks. Worse, she never knew whether her in-laws planned to stay for a week, a fortnight or for months!

Her sisters-in-law considered her stuff as theirs. They helped themselves to her saris, ‘borrowed’ jewellery that was never returned and asked for heavy loans quite often, which too were never returned. If that wasn’t enough, they pestered her to use her contacts with her relatives abroad to find fancy jobs for their useless hubbies.

Her husband, she felt, was a carbon copy of his father. He broke wind and sneezed into her face, changed TV channels without permission, bored her to death with his longwinded opinions on what was wrong with the country and shouted to her from the living room to fetch him this and that, when she was immersed in housework.

Her children too, were demanding, unhelpful, fussy and petulant, her neighbours, prying and spiteful, her friends, self-opinionated and self-centred. The servants were deceitful kaam chors. The crows with their early morning cacophony made her want to shoot every one of them down, as they roused her much too early from her fitful sleep. The insistent ringing of the doorbell by the fruitwallah, the newspaperman and the courier grated on her nerves. Even her pet cat scratched her good and proper when she tried to give it a bath.

“Oh, God, I’ve had it up to here!” she exclaimed one day. “I wish they’d all disappear and leave me alone!” And that’s exactly what happened. There was a massive earthquake and everything vanished in a pall of dust. Mercifully, their house was still standing. After the rumbles, there was a deathly silence.

She frantically tried dialling her parents, her in-laws, her hubby, her kids. But the phone lines were down. She was alone. Really alone. Like the sole person on an uninhabited island. She tried getting out by opening the front door, but it was jammed. “Goodness me, what have I done?” she upbraided herself remorsefully.

As it often happens, a while later, her husband and children made a tired appearance. They’d been held up by huge traffic snarls. She discovered her parents and in-laws were safe. Some neighbours and friends had suffered, but were on the road to recovery. The servants had been cowering in the garage. The poor cat was hiding in tree branches.

As she gave a great big sigh of relief, she realized that nobody’s perfect. It could well be that the world was made up of fractious, ill-mannered, irritating people. But together we make one large family, where we need each other to make our lives complete.

And so, the story ends. But does it, really? From what I hear, in no time at all, everybody became their normal selves, resumed their normal behaviour, and our heroine was once again angry and depressed at being taken for granted.

One positive thing came of the earthquake, though. A distant aunt, whom she visited occasionally with a gift of mithai or namkeen, had passed away during the earthquake and left her her property, with a peculiar proviso in the will: My niece shall inherit what is mine only if she promises to spend all the profits on herself, till such time as necessary.

At first, our protagonist was nonplussed. Her legacy was a creaky old cottage. Since she didn’t wish to consult her husband, she left it as it was. But soon, a developer approached her and offered a tidy sum and a terrace flat. She accepted it with alacrity. The flat, when it was ready, was a disappointing one-bedroom unit, with the rest of the area cemented and lifeless.

By now, her creative genius had kicked in. She stole out of her home for a couple of hours every day, laying out her dream garden. She put long glass windows in her apartment, so that they looked out into a forest of fruits, flowers and vegetables. She created an arbour with a jhoola and coaxed climbing jasmines on them.

She bought crockery and cutlery to match the abundant flora and fauna. She kept furniture and artefacts to a bare minimum so it was comfy without being cluttered. She made friends with birds who visited her and no longer found them vexing. Most important, if she made any mistakes, she could rectify them without someone tut-tutting and I-told-you-soing her.

And in this oasis, she found herself again. In time, her family realized she was up to something. They followed her and confronted her. But she stood her ground. “This is my haven. You cannot come here without my permission,” she told them off.

Realizing she could disappear from their lives any time she wanted to, and that they’d be lost without her, they began to heed her need for privacy. She divided her time between the two homes and both sides gained. For, in respecting her, they began to respect themselves too, and found their hidden potential in not being dependent on anybody. The master-slave relationship took a backseat, and they presumably lived happily ever after.

Every once in a while we need to get out of our island prison and pamper ourselves at a resort — alone!

(Excerpted from Fables from Beyond, Authors Upront, 2020)

Journalist, author and animal activist Lakshmi Narayan is a former assistant editor of Femina and former editor of Eve’s Weekly & Flair

Also read: Short Story: The Spelling Bee