Yusuf would get out of the house by seven o’clock without even having breakfast, and come home only for lunch. In the evenings, dinner was at his mother’s house, which was not far away. The front of Yusuf’s house had a large room. He blocked off the door to the rest of the building, knocked in a new entrance facing the street, designated some space as bathroom and some space as kitchen, and called it a home. The left side of the house was his wife Akhila’s; the right side was his mother Mehaboob Bi’s. Widowed at a young age, his mother had spat fire on anyone suggesting she remarry, had carried her only son Yusuf on her back, and raised him with a lot of love. There was no struggle she had not gone through; there was no job she had not done.

Yusuf had been forced to sell fruit from early on. Initially he harvested the papayas that had grown in the front yard, carved them creatively, each slice as thin as paper, and sold them. Thin slices of cucumber with salt and chilli powder sprinkled on top danced in the hands of customers. Each piece of cucumber would melt in their mouths. A fruit-selling business that starts like this will grow more prosperous by the day. He set up a fairly large fruit shop. Whereas earlier he used to struggle for every mouthful of rice, he was now in a good position. He did not have many worries. But …

His wife was his only source of stress. Akhila was irritated at seeing him jump like a young calf every time his mother was nearby. She knew he didn’t like the lunches she made him in the afternoon. If she made fish or meat curry, he never asked, “Did you give some curry to Amma?” She would not spare him if he did that. Instead, he would mix just the curry with rice and push the fish or meat pieces to the sides of the plate before washing his hands. He would eat dinner to his heart’s content, sitting in front of his mother. Some days, he would eat till his stomach was so heavy that he had to lay down there.

This was why her mother-in-law Mehaboob Bi was the archenemy of Akhila’s life. When she and Yusuf got married, all of them lived together at first. Yusuf could not have imagined even in his dreams that his mother would live away from him, in a separate house. But Akhila’s anger, her temper, worsened day by day. She had four-five brothers; all of them lived close by. One day, the fight between husband and wife over Mehaboob Bi got so bad that one of Akhila’s younger brothers got in the middle and ended up thrashing Yusuf properly. After this incident, more so than to the witch Akhila who had been responsible for his humiliation, he became closer to his mother, who had hugged him to her chest, consoled him, fanned him with her seragu and shed tears over his condition.

The very next day, seeing his mother getting ready to leave for her younger brother’s house in Tumakuru, he became like hot coal. After he swore, “If you step out of the house, I am going to leave Akhila,” the whole jama’at, Akhila’s brothers and some neighbours came to sort things out. They decided that the door to the front room of the house would be walled up from the inside, a new door would be installed from the front and that Mehaboob Bi would live there.

Yusuf worked hard. If he bought a small TV for Akhila, the same kind of TV would grace Mehaboob Bi’s house too. If he bought a kerosene stove for Akhila, a similar one for Mehaboob Bi; if he bought a watermelon for this house, a watermelon of the same size for that house too. Although she was the mistress of her own house, Akhila used to boil with envy. Among all this, Akhila’s four sons, Raja, Munna, Babu and Chotu, took great advantage of the enmity between the two women. It is possible that if Mehaboob Bi had stood up to Akhila just as much, maybe Yusuf would not have taken his mother’s side so often. But the fact that she kept quiet no matter how much Akhila shouted or created scenes was painful to Yusuf, and he naturally became partial towards his mother.

Once, ten-year-old Munna had not only sat by his grandmother and filled his stomach with biscuits dip-dipped in tea, but also described to Akhila how crispy the biscuits had been. Yusuf had not bought those biscuits for either Akhila or his mother. Mehaboob Bi’s nephew had visited her and given her a packet. Instinctively Akhila had shouted at Yusuf and cursed his mother. She went to the front door so that Mehaboob Bi could hear, called her a homewrecker and cracked her knuckles. When none of this got a reaction, she began to beat her chest and cry, “You are making my stomach burn by behaving like a co-wife.”

Her four children surrounded her, scared. Seeing them, she began to sob harder. She could not tolerate the fact that her husband loved the old woman the most, more than her or these pearl-like children. She believed that he treated them like dirt under his feet. In the middle of all her crying, shouting and scene-making, she did not notice Yusuf standing behind her. Once in a while, Yusuf would lose his mind and wonder if he should thrash and kill her. This was one such insane situation. He had inherited a little calmness from his mother, so he remained silent. He sat down on a chair and trained his eyes on the gold rings he wore on both his hands. He loved wearing rings; seeing his attire, his Muslim friends used to tease him. As per Islamic tradition, silk clothes and gold were forbidden for men. But Yusuf wore a Kapali ring and another large ring with a green stone every day.

He sat there, deep in thought, absent-mindedly twisting the ring on his left hand. Although Akhila closed her dictionary of curse words when she saw him, she kept muttering under her breath, “My savathi, my co-wife …”

The dam of Yusuf’s patience burst. He abruptly stood up and asked, “Who is your savathi?” She was not willing to answer directly. “The one who is ruining my house, the one who is snatching my husband away from me, the one who is stabbing me like an old vulture … I will call her my savathi only,” she said, stubbornly. Thinking that it was useless to talk to her, Yusuf walked towards the door. Yet seeing him ignore her protests and retreat to his mother’s house in front of her, Akhila’s anger rose to the crown of her head.

She rushed and pulled at the back of her husband’s shirt and screamed, “You should have kept her! What did you marry me for?” Yusuf fully lost his temper. “Shut your mouth. If you talk such filth again, I will knock down all your teeth,” he said.

She widened her eyes frighteningly and began to tug more at his shirt, shouting, “Are you going to hit me? Hit me. That whore must have told you to.” Losing control, he beat her a few times and walked out of the house.

Excerpted with permission from ‘A Decision of the Heart’ in Heart Lamp: Selected Stories, Banu Mushtaq, translated from the Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, Penguin India.