Short Story: Dust & Water By Lavanya Shanbhogue Arvind

In the summer of 1994, Ganeshan married Meher in court. Garlands made of a single string of jasmine hung around their necks and rings were exchanged, as wished for by Meher. The couple thanked the Registrar, an irritable old man who didn’t even wish them a happy married life, embraced their witnesses who made small jokes about the night to come, and left in a waiting taxi to their new home – a first floor, two- room apartment on a street full of row houses in a South-western Bombay suburb. For their honeymoon, Ganeshan and Meher spent a few days at a reasonably priced hotel in Mahabaleshwar. Meher had picked out both the hotel and the honeymoon destination. Meher had wanted to go somewhere close by, a short bus-journey away from Bombay at the most, and Ganeshan had complied. Upon their return, they both resumed work responsibilities at the college where they had met, Meher, a Lecturer in Sociology and Ganeshan, a Lecturer in Philosophy. And thus, life began for the couple married under the Special Marriages Act of 1954.