Chapter 1: My name is Sabita.

My name is Sabita.

Thirty-two years of age, five feet five inches tall, fair-skinned, and a professor of Mathematics at a reputed college. On paper, it might sound like I have everything a woman could wish for — a decent career, a stable income, and a respectable marriage of five years. But what no one ever tells you is how quiet heartbreak can be. How it doesn’t always come with loud arguments or broken dishes. Sometimes, it creeps in silently ... like a crack in a glass vase — invisible at first, but deepening with time until it shatters completely.

I was twenty-seven when I married Ravi.

He was everything my parents had wanted — tall, soft-spoken, working in an IT company with a foreign assignment history. Our horoscopes matched, and our families exchanged sweets and garlands like people passing on fragile dreams. I wasn’t in love with him when we married, but I believed I would grow into it. That’s what Indian women are told, aren’t we? “Pyaar toh shaadi ke baad ho jaata hai, beta,” they said. Love comes later — after the sindoor, the rituals, and the sacrifices.

And for a while, it did.

Ravi was gentle, respectful. He would kiss my forehead before leaving for work, and I’d pack his tiffin with a smile. Our nights were filled with soft moans and whispered laughter, our weekends with grocery runs and movie nights. We weren’t perfect, but we were comfortable. I started thinking maybe this was enough.

Then came the pressure.

It started with a question — always polite, always masked in sweetness. “Koi khushkhabri?” my mother-in-law asked one evening, sipping her tea with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

When I said no, she didn’t comment. Not then. But I felt the shift — the way she stopped bringing me sweets from the temple, the way her gaze lingered longer on my abdomen than my face. Ravi told me to ignore it, that we were “still young” and “it’ll happen when it’s meant to.” I believed him. Or at least, I wanted to.