Wife

1

If it wasn’t for your husband, you would’ve never come to this country. If it wasn’t for your husband, you’d have never enrolled for this damn PhD. This enrollment, which comes with a small stipend and a teaching gig, was just a bribe the department tossed to your husband. Because they were afraid he would leave. Because there wasn’t a single other South Asianist in the program. And as all too many of his Facebook posts revealed, he was getting way too close to a celebrity academic up North who just happened to be an endowed chair in a celebrity school. And who just happened to be Bengali. But your husband was simply licking this old man’s ass. The old man couldn’t possibly find all the young ass-lickers spaces in celebrity schools. But your husband’s department was scared anyway. Your husband was one of the two brown faces in their otherwise lily-white program in Comparative Literature. They surely couldn’t let him go. So you became the bribe. A throwaway of sorts, which the department could still afford back when you got here. Besides, the school could always use another underpaid graduate student for its innumerable undergrad writing classes. It’s the one way your expensive Catholic education finally paid off. Those Irish nuns taught you well. Thanks to them, you speak and write English better than most of your countrymen and women. Sometimes better than some of the Americans. So far, none of your students has complained about your accent. Because you sound like them. You can don a perfect American accent when you need to, want to.

In every other way, you are your husband’s wife. Nothing but his wife. Everyone in the department, where you both are students, treats you as such. The secretaries in the office hand you your husband’s mail. They call you when he forgets to sign something. The department chair always remembers to ask what your husband thinks when he is advising you about your career. You know this. You take pride in this fact. In private. And in public. There is also the fact that your husband wanted you here as a student, and not as a visa wife. Much easier on both of us if you have your own F-1 and your own stipend, he explained to you. This way, you would not be dependent on him, he said. You agreed. Who doesn’t like a bit more money, a bit more freedom? You would never be just another visa wife. This always gave you a slight edge over other Bengali women in town. You could always show up at the party without bringing any cooked food and blame it on the papers you had to write. The visa wives would look at you with awe, slightly envious.

Like any dutiful wife, you make all your Facebook status updates about your husband’s accomplishments. “The H-Man’s article has just been accepted in Social Text. Not saying this because he happens to be my husband. But it’s really good. You all should make it a point to read it when it comes out.” “The H-Man just presented a terrific conference paper. What a lucky woman I am!” Your friends “like” your posts profusely. Some of your Kolkata friends who have known you both since college raise their eyebrows. One of them once commented, “H-Man’s microphone!” Another had said, “I am so happy that the H-Man doesn’t have to pay for PR. Can I hire you too?” A third commented, “Patir punye shotir punya.” The chaste wife’s virtue lies in her husband’s virtue. To that, a fourth friend added, “Postmodern sati.” Though all of them put smiley signs next to their comments, and one wrote “haha” right after her comment, you promptly unfriended all four, and later blocked them.

The husband has always been obliging in this game. He would post, “Wife attending her night class. Just cooked a big pot of chicken curry. I can’t bring the Himalayas to...