by Arnab Ray
‘Come on,’ Nimmi said, flashing a whitened set of cosmetically improved teeth. ‘You are not old.’
‘I feel old,’ he said, looking back at the reflection on the edge of his plate, which lay untouched, with the food on it. ‘When you come to as many forks on the road as I have, the shadows of the paths not taken grow longer, and what you may not realize at your age is that shadows have weight, heavy enough to make you grow tired dragging them along.’
‘Can you try to call them to see why they have not sent the cake yet?’ Nimmi tried to change the topic, looking at her husband. ‘It’s almost nine now and I told them repeatedly to have it here by eight. You would think a five-star hotel would have better service than a bakery shop in Fatehnagar.’
Just then, Ramesh, the head of security of the house, a sixfoot-something mountain of a man, stumbled heavily into the dining room.
‘It’s Riti ma’am,’ he stammered, and his eyes betrayed panic as he looked nervously over his shoulder towards the passage.
‘I thought she was…’ Preeti never completed the sentence.
For there in the doorway stood Riti.
She was in the same salwar kameez that she had had on when she left, except now she had sindoor on her forehead.
Right next to her stood Arijit. He held a cane for support, his right eye was covered with a white patch, and his once-handsome face still bore marks of the savage beating he had received. Sudheer’s chair slid back and he stood up, Arjun shot his hand out to stop him, and Sudheer sat down again.
‘Happy birthday, papa,’ Riti said.
‘What have you done? Oh my God, what have you done?’ Preeti started moving towards her daughter when she caught Arjun’s disapproving shake of the head through the corner of her eye, and stopped.
‘I see you have brought a guest,’ said Arjun calmly. ‘Will you not join us for dinner?’
She shook her head. ‘This is a family event.’ She looked towards Sudheer. ‘We are not welcome here.’
‘And yet here you are,’ said Arjun. ‘So there must be a reason for coming. Not that I can’t guess, looking at the sindoor, but please, go ahead, tell us why.’
‘I came to tell you, and everyone else, that I am leaving. For good,’ she said quietly. ‘The black mark on this family, as mummy likes to call me these days, will go away…’
‘Go away?’ Preeti was crying now. ‘What are you saying? You have already smeared our faces with the darkest ink and now you are going to do this? Is this why we brought you up? To see this day, that you would get married like this, like a thief, to some loafer from the road?’
Sudheer was trying his best to control himself, what with Nimmi noiselessly urging him to stay silent, but then he lost it. ‘I should have killed him. I really should have. Maybe I would be rotting in jail by now but at least we would have had our honour.’
Arjun raised his voice. ‘Enough. One more threat out of you, and I will get Ramesh here to throw you and your fake concern out of my house.’ Sudheer bowed his head low and Nimmi made an angry face at her husband.
Arjun now looked squarely at Riti. ‘I have told you before, I have no problems with who you marry, or the choices you make in life. But I will not accept this man. Because I know why he is doing this and it’s not because of love.’
He then turned towards Arijit and folded his hands slowly. ‘I am sorry. I am sorry for what my sons did to you. This does not come easy, folding my hands like this, but I know I have to answer for what they did.’
Arijit stayed stooped over his cane, and said nothing.
‘But that does not mean I do not understand what you are trying to do.’ Arjun pulled his hands back and kept them to the side of the plate. ‘I understand your game.’
‘That’s it?’ asked Riti. ‘That’s all you have to apologize to him for? That’s what you have to answer for? Just for Sudheer and Mohan? How about what you did to his family?’
Arjun sat silent. No one spoke for a few seconds. Then Sudheer asked, ‘What are you saying?’
‘Ask papa,’ Riti said. ‘He knows what I am saying. Don’t you?’
Arjun looked down, his head flopping forward to his chest, and Riti continued, ‘I think it’s only fair that all of us get to know why papa is so afraid of Arijit marrying me. So that before we understand his game, we know what papa’s is.’
‘Take that tone with your father and I will pull your tongue out, as if you haven’t caused us enough shame,’ Preeti yelled, and took two threatening steps forward, when Mohan stood up and got in front of his mother.
‘Pulling my tongue out or blinding his eye won’t change the truth,’ Riti said, her voice as low as before, ‘of what this family is. Of what papa really is.’
Arjun adjusted his shirt, and stood to his full height. ‘Let me tell you what Riti is talking about. Arijit’s father was my best friend. We were in the gun business together. He met with an accident many years ago, and his family blames me for what happened.’
‘You killed him,’ Riti said. ‘At least be honest. It’s not that anyone will make you pay for your crimes – you have bought out the whole world.’
‘Oh my God,’ gasped Preeti, clutching the end of her sari to her mouth. ‘Oh my God, it’s her son. It’s their son.’
‘Is that all?’ Riti asked. ‘Or have you still forgotten something?’
‘After his father died,’ Arjun’s voice quivered, ‘I had an affair with his mother.’
Nimmi gasped and then looked at everyone, worried that her reaction had been noted.
‘Not just that, you left after you got bored of her.’
‘Is that what he told you?’
‘He does not need to tell me everything. I can figure things out on my own.’
He sighed, suddenly feeling exhausted. ‘If it pleases you, if you believe it humiliates me further, I will say that too. Yes, I did kill your father. Because if I hadn’t he would have killed me. It had come down to that.’
Riti said, ‘Thank you. Thank you for this final bit of honesty.’
‘Why, Riti, why are you talking to me like this?’ Arjun sank into his chair. ‘You have always been the most polite, the most gentle of all my children.’
‘I was gentle because that was how I had been raised to be. A little flower. Papa, don’t you see that I see it now? I have been living in a bubble. And I would have all my life had not my brothers put a tape on my mouth and made me watch them thrashing nearly to death the man I love, while laughing among themselves. I have thought long and hard over this, and though I will never forgive my brothers for what they did, for taking away Arijit’s eye, I realize that they are not all to blame. For they are just the symptoms of an evil that exists in this house. You.’
‘Do you want your boyfriend to lose his other eye and then beg in front of Jama Masjid?’ asked Sudheer. ‘And do you need a few slaps to knock some sense into you? How dare you speak to papa like this?’
Arjun gave Sudheer another withering glance and he once again looked away.
‘It is because of you, papa, that Sudheer and Mohan are the way they are. They do not need to stop at murder because they know that in this city nothing will happen to them. They know this is what their father did when he was young and, look how he got away because everyone was scared of him. They were trying to make you happy, and that’s what I find so sad, that the only way to earn your love is by being more fearsome than you.’
‘I have never expected that of you. Nor from my sons. That they should make people afraid of them.’
‘Of course not from me. I am a daughter, the wallflower. Of course I am not expected to punch out eyes and break ribs. That kind of bravery is for the boys. For me, the measuring stick is different. I should nod and obey and carry the tray during Diwali.’
‘I never brought you up like that, and you know it.’
‘Accept it. You only want obedience. From the world. From your family.’
‘He has poisoned your mind against me,’ Arjun
said sadly. ‘As I was sure he would.’
‘See, that is precisely the problem. I cannot have an opinion. It has to be someone else planting ideas in my mind, because I do not have a brain of my own. That’s what you feel, all of you.’
‘This is not about you. It’s about him and me. I know him.’ He pointed towards Arijit. ‘If I was in his place, and I wanted revenge, this is exactly what I would do. I would take out the thing my enemy values the most, the one thing he can never win back.’
Riti raised her voice for the first time, thumping her heel into the ground. ‘But he is not you. He does not think like you. I know you will never believe me. So from today I have taken the decision not to even try. Whatever he is, or whatever you chose to believe, he is my husband. That’s how it is, and that’s how it will always be.’
Arjun’s lips pursed into a straight line. ‘Arijit, this is for you. You have won this round. I concede defeat. You have come into my house, on my birthday no less, taken my daughter from me, and you have shamed me in front of the people I love the most, and this is more than you could have done in years of sniping away at my business interests. So yes, you won this.’
Arijit spoke for the first time. ‘I never asked Riti to say what she did. I never wanted to shame you. I would never have told her anything had it not been for what happened that day. She wanted to know why you were so determined that I was here to take revenge, and I told her why you might think so.’
‘So, you have nothing against me, right? Absolutely nothing?’ Arjun asked. ‘The Vantor thing was just…I don’t know…you tell me.’
‘When did I say I have nothing against you? I do. Not because of what you did to my family, but because of what you have done to this country. Governments change, yet nothing changes for the people because of men like you, who don’t play fair, who rule without the responsibility, who sit in their palaces and move their paid pawns.’ Arijit hobbled for a moment on his stick. ‘It’s not you the man that’s the problem, uncle, it’s what you stand for. ‘
Arjun mock-clapped slowly. A sharp smile lit up his face. ‘That’s a nice little monologue. Not Salim–Javed quality nor do you carry it off like Dilip Kumar but still I will give you a few paise for the delivery.’ He turned his attention to his daughter, sombre again.
‘Riti, I respect your decision, but now I must ask you to respect mine. Never, and I mean never again, as long as you are with this man, come back to this house.’
‘Gladly.’
‘You have turned your back on this family,’ Arjun continued, his voice flat. ‘The family will do the same. You have tried to humiliate me in front of those I love. And so the doors of my heart and my house close on you forever.’
‘I am sorry you feel that way.’
‘In return for that consideration, I will make sure that my sons don’t try to go after you or your husband, but if your husband continues taking shots at my business, I will be free to deal with him, in my own way. ‘
‘So what you are saying is you won’t let Sudheer and Mohan try to kill him, this time you will do it yourself.’
‘Take it as you may,’ Arjun said. ‘I won’t defend my motives nor explain my methods to outsiders. You are an outsider now. That is how it will stay.’
They stood for a while, silent, each holding their positions, except for Preeti who kept weeping, her head perched on Mohan’s shoulder. Struggling to turn himself around while balanced on the cane, Arijit patted Riti’s shoulder and said, ‘Come on, let’s go. There’s nothing more for us here.’ They walked away and the frozen silence stayed behind, till Arjun stood up and said, ‘Thank you all for coming. And I hope you don’t mind if I don’t stay for the cake.’
Much later that night, Arjun sat in his study, his legs propped up on the table while looking out through the window. It was dark in the room, the only light coming from the lawns outside, when Arjun received a visitor. Not really a visitor, for she was his wife, but Preeti rarely came to his study, and definitely not when Arjun had locked it from inside.
‘I wanted to say something,’ she said, and Arjun could see even in the dim light that her eyes were puffy and swollen. He moved to turn on the light.
‘No, let it be.’
They sat together on the couch, not touching, a giant wall of emptiness between their shoulders.
‘You told me it was over with her.’
‘It was. It is over.’
‘Have you met her since?’
He did not reply, not for a while.
‘Look, I don’t care if you have been with other women. I just want the truth.’
‘I might not have been the best of husbands. But I am not like that.’
‘Have you met her since?’
He nodded.
‘When?’
‘Only to tell her to get her to control her son, to tell him not to meet Riti.’
‘She didn’t listen?’
He shook his head.
‘I want you to make some promises. Will you keep them?’ ‘I need to know what they are first.’
‘You trust me, don’t you?’
‘I still would need to know what you want me to do before I promise.’
‘You will not take Riti back. No matter how much she begs and how hard she pleads, no matter what happens to her, you will not let her come back.’
‘She won’t come back, she is a stubborn girl.’
‘I know you want her to. I know you care for her in a way you don’t care for our sons.’
‘I guess you are right. I care for her the most. She is the kindest and gentlest of all our children.’
‘And yet Sudheer and Mohan would never ever dare to talk to you the way she did. They would never sleep with your enemy. They would never have shamed you like this.’
‘I don’t want to argue with you about them, not today, please.’
‘You promise? You will not take her back. Promise me that.’
‘I promise,’ he said with a grudging nod of his head.
‘And I want you to promise that you will finish this viper and his slut of a mother. You will destroy them and you will not show them any mercy.’
‘I can’t, because he has Riti. Don’t you see he has taken her hostage?’
‘But Riti means nothing to you, that’s what you just said.’
‘I never said that.’ Arjun raised his finger. ‘Don’t put words in my mouth. I said I promise not to take her back.’
‘She is not our daughter any more.’
‘She is mine. And always will be.’
‘Then what is the point of the promise?’
‘The point is I will do as you asked. She will never be a part of my life again. She will not get a paisa from me, she can never stay in my house, but that doesn’t mean I will knowingly put her in danger.’
‘Okay then, I want another promise. You will never see that witch again.’ Preeti swallowed back a fresh burst of tears. ‘It’s not because I am jealous. I used to be once, not any more. It’s because you visiting her will be seen as approval for this marriage. You may not care for your status any more, but I do, I do care what people say about our family, about you. Because tomorrow people will start talking, all over the city. Because tomorrow you won’t be Arjun Bhatia, tomorrow you will be someone whose daughter eloped and married beneath our standing.’
‘I promise.’
‘On Sudheer’s head? You promise?’
‘That’s silly, I don’t do such things.’
‘You have to.’
He mumbled something, she stood up to walk away, and then turned around to face him again.
‘You wouldn’t know this, but the first day I saw you, you were working under a car. Mirwaiz, remember him?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘He was holding the garage jack, and fooling around, as he usually did.’
‘Poor kid, went to Azamgarh during the riots, never came back.’
‘I couldn’t see your face, just the top of your hea
d and those arms. I remember your arms then. They were lean and muscular, they had sweat and grease all over, and Mirwaiz was saying ‘What happens if the car drops on you, Ustaad?’ and you said, ‘I can hold the car up with my thumb.’ There was something in your voice that made me believe that you could really do that, and that a car was nothing or even a truck, you could hold the world up if you wanted to do. You did, for all these years, hold the world up. And I will not, as long as I live, let anyone bring that world down on us, be it your daughter.’ She paused. ‘Or even you.’
Sudheer adjusted the plush satin pillows around his lower back and gently shook his bottom from side to side. The heated water-bed responded softly in rhythm and he could not help but smile, despite all the trouble he was in. Ordering this bed from an American mail order catalogue was one of the best decisions he had ever taken – it almost seemed to balance out his choice of wife – and the smooth, satiny and wobbly sensation on his body made him feel sexy, in the way his nights never could. He sighed deeply, rotated his shoulders, reached out to the night table on his left and took the topmost magazine. This will do, he thought with satisfaction, the latest issue. He reached out to the right, took a little squirt from the lubricant bottle, glided his hand down through the opening of the front of his pyjamas, and started leafing through. The images of naked, buxom women in various imaginative contraptions filled the pages. Nimmi didn’t mind him doing this in bed, perhaps because it meant she would not have to, her conditions being, as she had put it so joylessly, ‘Don’t do it when I am in bed and wipe yourself and your thing clean once done, I don’t want our bedroom to smell like a hovel on GB Road.’ He was getting into a nice rhythm when he heard Nimmi’s voice, and he turned soft immediately.
‘Will you stop that? We need to talk.’
He looked up and there she was, standing in the doorway, turned slightly to the side, in a nightdress he had not seen her wear before. It was cream and lace, hugging her body, the light silhouetting her curves, and Sudheer could not help his eyes straying to her ample behind, which he admired even more now that she had put on weight. If it were anyone else, he would have thought she was trying to seduce him, the way she stood, but more than a year of marriage had taught him that if there was anything she disliked more than visiting her in-laws, it was having sex with him. Once he had said, in the way of a complaint, ‘When we are doing it, you look as excited as if you are watching the 8.40 news on Doordarshan,’ to which she had spat back, ‘The news at least lasts for 20 minutes. You are more like an advertisement. Twenty seconds and done.’ Nimmi had a tongue on her, and not in a good way, and Sudheer resented this rude intrusion into the highlight of his day.
