The Glorious Life of Mrs. Kapoor

Shlok Pandey

This is a story from not too long ago, five decades back. They all sat outside the operating theater. The granny is chanting a prayer. The father scratching his head in worry. The granddad is staring from the clouds above. All in worry.

The nurse came out. They all sprang up with big smiles on their faces and their eyes wide, awaiting the news. “It's a baby girl.” All smiles vanished. Eyes lost their spark. Grandma sobbed. Granddad once again died, in heaven.

The girl was Ms. Bhatt. She was raised well, said the society, for she knew everything—cooking, dusting, knitting sweaters, and altering blouses.

“You sent her to school and taught her all the household work she will need very much,” the society praised the parents.

When she and her younger brother came home from school, he would lay down on the sofa. She would be called by her mom in the kitchen. “Go and give the plate to him nicely in his hands; the poor boy must be tired. You come serve yourself later.” She did as she was told.

She became twenty-five. A marriage proposal came for her.

“Just say yes. So what if you have met him only once? He’s a rich businessman from Mumbai. Such a marriage should be the dream of every town girl like you,” they said. She agreed, like a good daughter. Her mom taught her that good girls should always think for their families before themselves.

She became Mrs. Kapoor.

“Be an ideal bride, the daughter-in-law they want in you,” said her mother at her wedding.

“That's your home now from today; forget this place now,” said her dad.

She became how her in-laws wanted her to. She was always taught to be this since her childhood, so it never came to her mind that no one will think for her. Her brain could only think that she had studied this hard, but she should do household chores first. Her parents fed it into her brain that she should first take care of home and then do a job if her husband agrees.

“I permit you to work; that's your fortune that you have such a modern hubby,” Mr. Kapoor said when she asked.

Two months after she joined an office, Mr. Kapoor walked up to her.

“You will have to leave your job. My mom doesn't like food prepared by servants. And I earn too well, so no need,” he ordered.

“But you gave me permission. Why did you allow me before? This is the only thing I ever demanded from you,” she said in a low voice with eyes down, the tone her mother-in-law taught her to speak in.

“How can you be selfish? How will you not think for us?” he yelled at her. A pin-drop silence followed. She couldn’t gather the strength to oppose him. Nobody would support her, not even her parents. She persisted.

A few years passed. She gave birth. Her husband walked in.

“Everyone’s happy. But if the first child would have been a boy, it would have been better for all,” he said.

At night, when her child would cry loudly, her husband would wake up and take his pillow to another room. She then became the mother of a son. She never did what her parents did to her. Furthermore, she treated them both equally and taught them both good values and equal duties as human beings. She also taught her daughter to be a girl who stood up for herself, not crippled like herself. She always told her son to treat women as his equal counterparts. Their mom taught both of them one thing: nothing in this world is exclusively for any gender. She was a good, ideal mother, inarguably.

Throughout her life, she did nothing except household work and raising children. No one thanked her, which she knew she would never get. She was ashamed of being a curbed woman who couldn't fight for herself but was proud that, thanks to her, her daughter would never be like her mother, and her son would never be like his father.

The reason for her sadness was never really understood by her husband, and he connected it to monetary pleasures.

One day, she was found dead. She was defeated finally by the suffocation of her husband’s rule. Her children never forgave him; they told him his mistake, and he declared his children his enemies, declaring a fault in her upbringing and pointing towards her corpse.

At her funeral, he said in his speech, “My wife, Mrs. Kapoor, lived a glorious life. We tried to never give her any problems; we succeeded in it, and she stayed by my side always.” Her children thanked her for not continuing this trend of male dominance in the household.

The society bid her goodbye and said, “She was a woman with rare luck. She had a gem of a husband and great children.” The society understood her luck, and that day it was empathetic, just as it has always been for women throughout their lives.

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Bio: Shlok Pandey is a 16 year old Indian writer who lives in the busy and bustling city of Mumbai. Though a student of a completely different field, he writes poems and stories in the very little spare time he can manage from his studies, reading and writing literature being his favourite hobby. His stories have appeared in the Wise Owl Magazine and the Drift and Dribble Miscellany. His poems have appeared in the Crossroads Review.

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Setu, December 2025