She sat in the Starbucks cafe, sipping her coffee and staring out of the window. The blood stained knife lay next to her handbag, covered with her blue silk scarf…..

Blue had been her all-time favourite colour…..the deep electric blue described in all the Mills and Boon Books she had read when she had been more naive, and she had been an avid reader of fiction;- especially romantic fiction in her younger years. She had dreamt her Prince Charming would come on a white steer and whisk her off in her blue ball gown into the distant horizon and they would live happily ever after. She had dreamt they would have 2 children and a happy family full of love and mutual respect.

That dream was just that…..a dream;- harsh reality had turned it more into a nightmare of unfulfilled desires as the knife, a witness to reality, had just experienced.

It had been an arranged marriage; she had been so busy earning gold medals in her academic pursuits, that there had been little time for fun or romantic love. Soon she was 27 years of age and her parents panicked that she wouldn’t get a good match if she got any older. His good looks, silver tongue, purported honesty, and his medical degree all blinded her to his cruelly thin lips and she ignored all other warning signals that all was not as it seemed where this man was concerned. Her intelligence flew out the window and they were married in a hurry without a proper courtship period. His parents were afraid that any delay in the marriage would lead to another broken engagement like his previous one……

The honeymoon was in a hotel room in the same town and his friends were more interested in what had happened in the night than he was. Being a virgin, and a romantic one, she missed the clues that either he was not interested in her physically or he just didn’t have a sex drive……

No romantic courtship, no romantic preludes, no honeymoon and it was all over before it even began. She started feeling guilty, maybe she was expecting too much from her husband because of all the romantic nonsense she had been reading in her M&Bs all these years. Maybe men were not very passionate at all. (She had no role model except her dad and he had never been a romantic or openly been demonstrative when she had been a kid)

Maybe she was a nymphomaniac wanting intimacy all the time. And it wouldn’t be fair to expect him to satisfy her needs. After all, he had not signed up as a gigolo when he married her. So the future of her physical needs look doomed; if she made an overture and he happened to be interested, it would happen for all of five minutes and very often she slept with her body aching for more…….Foreplay, intimacy after the act were just chapters of fiction from an erotic novel and she delegated them there.

Lying was his second language, disrespect of women his first. Women were there to cook, bear children and an educated woman was a bonus money-making machine to bear the regular house expenses over and above doing the house-hold chores. Basically, she was his unpaid servant and golden hen, all wrapped up in one. His foul mouth never tired of speaking ill of others. (Albeit when no one other than her could hear him…..) It was 5 years into the marriage, after one child and a brain tumour operation that she started experiencing the full brunt of his cruelty both physical and mental.

I don’t know what it is with intelligent women and their hearts……all misplaced book love and romantic imaginations!!!! She felt that very few men would have stood by a wife with a brain tumour; most would have left her with the child to fend for herself, especially since she was no longer beautiful slim and svelte. So, she quietly took the physical abuse as her due……just like she had taken and continued to take the emotional battering that was the highlight of most of her days.

When her mother guessed the extent of the physical and mental torture after a failed suicidal attempt, she encouraged her to retaliate in kind because bullies according to her were scared of people who stood up for themselves. She was right……

The lady in blue because that’s who she was;-the blue lady, scratched such deep welts into those hands that had repeatedly punched her that it drew blood but blessedly, the physical abuse stopped. She threw herself into her career and her son and both flourished. Soon she was making more money and was more famous than him; people knew him as Her husband rather than the other way around and that didn’t sit well with him; another reason to assault her self-esteem had unfortunately cropped up…..

He continued to degrade her vocally and the moral, spiritual, and social degradation ate away at her self-esteem. Since he treated her so shabbily, it encouraged his family to treat her worse and he seemed to enjoy her plight and taunt her on it, making her feel that maybe she was a social misfit too and he was too nice to bear with her.

As a last resort to maybe save this marriage for her son’s sake, now 10 years of age, she planned and paid for a family holiday. And she came back with child. She loved children and secretly desired a daughter that she felt God had already sent to her. She didn’t want to kill it. The next nine months were sheer torture as he didn’t miss a single opportunity to make her very existence miserable & made her question her own decision to have the baby.

All those doubts went out the window when she held that little bundle of joy for the first time. She was an angel, and so beautiful. A girl, a doll to love and be loved by……

He had refused to pay any house or baby expenses while she was recuperating because she had coerced him into having the baby. So, though the tired and old body tried to cope with a baby, a jealous sibling who also needed her care and working to support the financial expenses, it had reached the end of its capacity.

Her parents observing her rough life advised her to return to them but she stubbornly refused for her children’s sake. They thought the sun shone from behind their father and for all purposes (except financial support) he acted like a good father.

Her body tired easily and was incapable of working as much as before. Bearing a child at 40 had made her bones so weak, she started getting repeated fractures. He refused to pay for her treatment or consumables required to run the house. She started borrowing from her old retired parents.

Her frustrations increased as his verbal torture escalated to a new level asking her to leave the marriage and her children and go back to HER house….meaning her parents home after 16 years of giving up her life for him???? Sucidal, she had given up being after the birth of her sweet daughter but it was slowly being replaced by an insane murderous rage. She often wondered how it would feel to stick a knife in his chest and watch the blood pour out like the drops in a fountain.

So here she was, sipping coffee in her favourite cafe in her favourite blue outfit with her favourite scarf covering up her favourite fantasy……come true.

She sipped her coffee calmly watching her nemesis, the woman her husband actually loved but couldn’t have because she was married to his brother, walk towards her with two men in uniforms and drawn guns. “Madam, we have a complaint from this woman saying you have murdered your husband in a cold blooded well planned and calculated manner and that you informed her before the deed. We have failed to recover the body from the crime scene but we are hoping you will help us with that.” She quietly nodded her head and as she wrapped the scarf around her neck exposing the bloody knife for all and sundry, she was satisfied to hear the pained gasp from this woman who had done a lot over the last few years without actually doing much.

The officers too gasped,……… but in disbelief as her husband, in the flesh, walked out of the washroom of the cafe with a well bandaged left wrist he had injured while clumsily trying to cut with the knife that lay on the table.

Seizing the accident as a mad opportunity to get these two lying oafs to admit their misdemeanours, she had called her sister in law and told her a tall tale of gory murder. With the prima facie evidence in their kitchen, it had not taken much to convince her. Hook, Line and sinker!!!!

The blue lady regally left the 2 conspirators, trying to explain to the two disgruntled officers how a dead man was alive. She saw grudging respect enter her husband’s eyes and his lips trying hard not to twitch into a smile. If nothing, 16 years of living with this man had told her what tickled his sense of humor……And she had scored a goal, atleast she could now live with him on her own terms.

It had been these few lines she had read in a message that actually inspired her: “Negativity…..it can only affect you if you are on the same frequency. Vibrate higher”. “It doesn’t matter who hurt you or broke you down, what matters is who made you smile again.” “You are only given a little spark of madness. Don’t lose it.” Then it hit her and hard……she had stagnated in a pool of her own self pity for the last 16 years of her life blaming a man (and the shadow of a woman) for her unhappiness when in reality, her happiness lay in her hands. Her children were all that mattered….they made her smile and she owed it to them to live and live happily. And she had always been crazy, she had lost that little bit of insanity in her ocean of unhappiness……..this was her way of getting back……..she packed her bags and though it was difficult to leave her comfort zone, she started her life afresh with just her two children.