"Because all I have is you! Of course, it is prison-like, I have nothing of my home and a wife that never understands that she will never be blamed, that whatever she does, it will be me who is called ugly, frigid, wretched, for not being enough for you! When you are my whole world!"

She is shouting, now, no doubt, this argument was no longer private. But no one at least dared to stick their head around either end of the corridor. Good, too, because it is more than she means to say, more because it hurts and in the way her father taught her - to strike in with her blade, to press and press and press to the hilt, hold true, do not falter.

He did not teach you to be cruel, Lakshmi. Listen to what she said, she said -

For the first time in her tirade, she falters. "... A present?"