A Scandalous Secret

by Jaishree Misra

  ‘Did you get the feeling she wanted to stay in touch with you?’ Jasmeet asked.

  ‘I don’t see why she would want to. She has loving parents back in England and is about to start what is sure to be a very busy college life.’

  ‘And Sharat? How upset do you think he really is with this?’

  ‘Hard to say, Jasmeet … you know as well as I do that nothing normally upsets him. And, unlike Kul, he never, ever sulks. In fact, this is probably the first time I’ve known him to go completely incommunicado on me …’

  Jasmeet heaved a huge sigh but remained in silent contemplation, looking out into the darkening garden as, in typical pragmatic fashion, she tried to think of a sensible and practical solution to offer her friend. But there appeared to be none and, finally, Neha broke the silence. ‘Shall we go indoors?’ she asked. ‘We don’t want to be chewed alive by the mosquitoes.’

  The two women got up and, as they went into the drawing room, Jasmeet gently touched Neha’s forearm. ‘It was brave of you to tell me everything, Neha,’ she said, adding, ‘I won’t break your trust, I promise.’

  Neha shook her head sadly as she turned on a few lights. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t say anything to you earlier, Jasmeet. All these years. I should have known you well enough to trust you. It would have given me so much relief to be able to talk to someone.’

  Jasmeet seated herself on a sofa before saying, ‘You know, we keep secrets, fearing the day they may come out. But, in fact, the worse thing is when they never come out at all and people die with those secrets having burnt great big holes in their lives.’

  Jasmeet’s voice was suddenly bitter and so Neha looked at her in bewilderment. ‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked.

  Jasmeet was silent for a few seconds before she spoke. ‘Sometimes I have wondered if everyone has secrets. I have one too, that I think even you may be shocked by.’ She paused and then carried on, trying to keep her face impassive. ‘How do I say this … you see, I found out two years ago that Kul … yes, my husband whom you all like so much … had been having an affair with someone for over six years …’

  ‘What?!’

  Jasmeet nodded. ‘When I found out and threatened to leave with the girls, he got very worried, begging me not to go; and I finally agreed on the condition that he break off all ties with this woman.’

  ‘Oh, Jasmeet! And has he?’

  Jasmeet looked sad. ‘I think he has, Neha. At least he says he has – but will I ever know for sure, I wonder? After all, if he managed to hide it from me for six years, then anything is possible.’

  ‘And you kept it secret for the sake of the girls?’

  ‘For their sake and because of the shame … Delhi’s not such a big place, it sometimes seems. And I wanted to be able to go around doing my business with my head held high …’

  ‘Poor Jasmeet. Always so jolly, so upbeat …’ Neha trailed off, thinking of the anniversary lunch she had attended just last week where Jasmeet had, as always, been the life and soul of the party. She wasn’t the only one who had put up careful facades, clearly.

  Jasmeet turned to Neha at this point, leaning forward on the sofa to place a hand on her knee. ‘One thing I did find out, though, Neha – if it brings you any consolation – when I first found out and told my mother and a couple of my maasis about what Kul had done, I found to my surprise that all of them – yes, every single one of them – had had some sort of similar experience. All those marriages that I thought were perfect when I was growing up, they had all suffered some trauma or the other at some point. Not necessarily affairs but problems of some sort. And all of them kept it secret. My mother told me, for one, that my father had spent the first few years of their marriage out drinking himself blind every night until he abruptly gave up – and I grew up thinking he had always been a teetotaller! My mother’s older sister had suffered domestic violence, another auntie told me that her husband had gone off for years to America where he had lived with a second family, but she had quietly taken him back when that came to an end. And no one ever found out. I don’t know why we women do this to ourselves … but look at me talking about myself when you are going through this terrible thing right now. We need to think of a solution for your problem. First of all, we have to find out where Sharat is and get him back.’

  ‘Dear Jasmeet, always so pragmatic,’ Neha said. ‘Don’t worry, there’s actually huge comfort in just sharing. Anyway, I don’t think there’s a solution to my problem right away. I know what I want but I have to wait to see what Sharat wants to do. And what Sonya decides to do. I am completely out of control – not a feeling I’m used to, as you know!’ She tried to laugh but her voice caught in her throat.

  ‘Are you prepared for Sharat to say he can’t forgive you?’ Jasmeet asked suddenly.

  Neha contemplated the question before replying. ‘I would be devastated but, in the end, I think I’d cope. Like you say, the shame would be terrible. Perhaps I’m too proud a person and Delhi society …’ Neha paused and shuddered ‘… like vultures, waiting for you to fall so they can pick over your bones. But I would not carry on here. I’d go somewhere quiet and shut myself away, I think. Like Parmarth Ashram at Haridwar. I was there recently. But life in Delhi, without Sharat? Never.’

  Jasmeet looked alarmed at Neha’s dark tone and cut in, using her best no-nonsense voice. ‘C’mon, Delhi is not as bad as that, Neha. There are good people and not-so-good people everywhere. You will find your friends if things go wrong. The rest you will have to learn to ignore. No, I’m certainly not letting you run away. Parmarth Ashram, my foot!’

  Chapter Forty

  A day after leaving Delhi, Sonya looked at the scene surrounding her with immense pleasure. Marari Beach, a few miles north of Cochin, was a terrific find, wild and unspoilt with its rolling grey sea and soft stretches of beige sand toasting in the sunshine. Warm breezes were blowing across the water and rustling the leaves on the palm trees behind her. A kiosk selling beer and tender coconut water was doing brisk business nearby and she watched a small girl pay for a pineapple lolly while her mother stood by watching. It wasn’t a lolly like the ones Sonya had grown up buying from the ice-cream van, but a piece of fruit cut into a pretty serrated shape and stuck onto the end of a wooden stick. Sonya smiled as the little girl walked past, sucking on her pineapple stick with delight. She returned to surveying the sea and sank her toes into the sand, enjoying its texture, soft and dry like talcum powder. Then she threw her head back and heaved another huge sigh of pleasure. Delhi seemed so far away …

  The resort into which Estella’s Uncle Gianni had booked them provided basic accommodation, but its proximity to the beach more than made up for it. Sonya couldn’t have asked for a more perfect antidote to both Delhi and Agra and the crazy events of the past week. And not a tout around for miles! She smiled as Estella ran up behind her and wasted no time at all in stripping off a voluminous tee-shirt to reveal her generous curves in the tiniest of bright yellow bikinis.

  ‘Corblimey, I was starting to think I’d never get the chance to get into my cozzie!’ Estella said, bending down to loosen the Velcro on her beach sandals before kicking them off.

  ‘Too right,’ Sonya agreed. ‘Well, we knew there’d be no beaches but it was bit of a shame that neither Delhi nor Agra had a swimming pool within hitting distance. Would have been too much to expect at the prices we’d paid, I guess.’

  ‘Not that we’d have had the time in either place anyway,’ Estella reminded.

  Aware that Estella was about to jog down to the water’s edge, which would put paid to all conversation for the rest of the morning, Sonya said, ‘Hey, Stel, before you go – I feel I should apologize for the pretty shitty holiday so far. And say a big thank you for putting up with all my shenanigans in Delhi.’

  Estella squinted in the sun. ‘Hmmm … I could ask for money by way of recompense from you. But general trouperish behaviour is part of the service when you’re best friends, I guess.’

 
Sonya pretended to kick Estella’s backside with her bare foot, unsure of whether the reference to money was a deliberate and cheeky reminder of Keshav. That would be so typical! But Estella was already running down to the sea and Sonya watched her capering in, the water splashing around her ample bum before she gracefully dived in, head first. Sonya, who had always been much less of a water baby, pulled a beach towel out of her rucksack and spread it out on the sand. She also pulled out the hefty book she had found in the resort’s library, along with a writing pad, before sinking down on the towel.

  Mention of Keshav’s name still made her start, although Estella seemed oblivious to this, chattering on about him at the drop of a hat. Sonya had not been able to fully assess her own feelings yet. She continued to be both ashamed at her naivety and vaguely hopeful that Keshav’s behaviour had not been deliberately deceitful from start to finish. Surely – especially – the tenderness with which he had kissed her? It could not all have been made up.

  Fortunately, the peace of this Kerala beach was causing all the tumultuous events that had taken place in Delhi to recede in Sonya’s mind to a place that was far away and increasingly imbued with an air of unreality. She picked up the writing pad and looked out at the sea. This was the perfect place to write her postcards and letters. She had sent a postcard to Mum and Dad from Delhi airport, even though it had proven more difficult than she had imagined to choose the right one. The minuscule airport shop had millions of pictures of Delhi but they were all either of the Qutb Minar, or the Red Fort or Connaught Place, all of which reminded her rather starkly of the two sightseeing jaunts with Keshav. She could imagine Mum sticking it up on the fridge door forever-more and of her having to look at it and be reminded of Keshav every time she opened the fridge to get something out! Finally, Sonya had chosen a postcard that showed a handsome Mughal structure surrounded by stately bottle palms, and scrawled a couple of innocuous lines on the back.

  Sonya lay back on the beach towel and covered her face with her book in order to blank out the sun. She wondered whether she would ever be totally honest to her parents about the sequence of events that had taken place in Delhi; especially the more troubling bits about Keshav. It would only serve to distress them unduly. Certainly, that whole experience had helped her identify with Neha’s predicament when she, as a teenager, had kept a pretty big secret from her parents too. Sonya still felt relief flood through her at the thought that she had somehow managed to stop short of actually having sex with Keshav and was now not stuck with an impossible decision as Neha once was. It was so easily done and poor Neha, escaping her sheltered Delhi life in far-off Oxford, must have been so easily led at that young age …

  Sonya sat up and looked far out to the horizon where she could see the sails of what were probably fishing vessels. Was it true, then, about mothers and daughters and things that got passed down without warning or intention? How curious that when Neha had talked about Simon, the boy she should have fallen in love with, it was Tim’s face that Sonya had seen in her head.

  She looked down at the blank writing pad on her lap. She really ought to crack on with her letter to Tim, so she could post it as soon as she arrived in England. He would have already left for Durham by the time she arrived in Orpington and she did want to wish him luck in his new life. She had behaved abominably with him on that last meeting and now she felt deeply ashamed at having imagined she was somehow entitled to all that anger. Sonya had learnt a lot in these past few days, not least that no one had the right to blame anyone else for the circumstances of their own life.

  She looked at the waves breaking gently nearby, foam mingling with sand and churning it up into a soft golden sludge. It was impossible to think that the Boxing Day Tsunami had landed with such force on these peaceful shores just six years ago, wreaking indescribable havoc. The concierge back at the resort had told them that Marari Beach had been particularly badly hit. But he had added cheerfully that everything that could have been restored was now back to normal. ‘See now, completely peaceful,’ he had said. ‘No one will even know that such a thing ever happened here.’

  However, Sonya knew – with her newfound wisdom – that this was never the case. When such dramatic events overtook places and people, some things were surely indubitably transformed forever.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Sharat spent over a week in Bangalore, going on long walks, exploring parts of the city he had never seen and, despite not being much of a reader, buying half the books in the hotel bookshop. Sitting in the courtyard garden attached to his room, or by the poolside, he read – at first with a kind of dogged persistence and then with increasing enjoyment – discovering a whole variety of writers whom he had never heard of before. Some books were hardback, some paperback in shiny lurid colours, and Sharat lost himself in each one of them, surprising himself by enjoying their offerings far more than he had ever anticipated. Where previously he had always considered fiction rather a waste of time, the valuable role it played came to him as he finished his eleventh book that week and closed it with a satisfied thump: it was these glimpses into other people’s hearts and lives that allowed readers to know they were not alone. Made-up, fictional dilemmas and problems that provided readers with some kind of strange courage to face whatever real life threw at them. Why, a few of the books Sharat had read this past week had ended up changing some of his views completely. In his current state of mind, that felt to Sharat like a vital job indeed. Never again would he tease Neha of wasting time when he saw her engrossed in one of her novels …

  He had not called her all week and, unsurprisingly, she had not called him either. That was not entirely unexpected; it was typical of Neha to wait to see what he would decide to do. And decide he must. Pleasant as the air in Bangalore was, and accustomed as he was growing to his room at the Windsor Manor, Sharat knew he could not stay forever. Besides, his parents were starting to ask awkward questions about the time he was spending away from Delhi. Having spent more hours introspecting than he had done in a long time, Sharat went one evening for his regular pre-dinner walk in Cubbon Park in order to firm up his decision. He stood watching a pair of children at play with a football, listening to their happy screams, his thoughts far off as he considered the consequences of what he was going to do. Having looked at it every way that he could, he finally knew what he wanted. He went back to the hotel, asked them to book him an air ticket, and then packed his sparse belongings in order to return home.

  It was evening when Sharat reached the house and, as his car pulled into the drive, he saw Neha walking barefoot in the garden, as she sometimes did on the advice of her yoga teacher. He saw how she stopped and froze at the sight of him sitting in the back seat of his car and felt a renewed sadness that such a close relationship as theirs had become one of mutual fear and suspicion. Something had to be done to rescue it and Sharat knew that, at this point in time, matters were entirely in his hands. He got out of the car as it pulled up under the porch and walked purposefully in Neha’s direction. He saw her face crumple at the expression on his and, without further hesitation, did what he had never done in front of the gardeners before. He took Neha in his arms and held her as though he would never let go.

  It was a full two minutes later that he released her, suggesting that they walk up and down the lawn together. Neha nodded, with tears in her eyes, thankful that they would be able to talk without looking into each other’s faces. Until she knew for certain that Sharat had fully forgiven her, it was going to be difficult to look him straight in the eye. But she reached out and took his hand in hers with the words, ‘Thank you, Sharat, for coming back to me.’

  ‘Of course I came back,’ Sharat said. ‘Where else would I go, Neha? You know how much you mean to me.’ At Neha’s silence, he continued. ‘But, given how close we are, I don’t think I will ever understand why you couldn’t tell me about Sonya when we first met. I was hardly likely to hold against you a mistake you made when you were no more than a child, was I?’
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  ‘It was more than a mere “mistake”, Sharat,’ Neha replied gently. ‘I gave a baby away. I had not even told my parents, so how could I bring myself to tell you? And, by the time I had learnt what a kind-hearted man you were, it was too late because I had never said anything at first. And later … later, my deed looked so much worse when we were denied children. Almost as though it it was a punishment I deserved and had brought onto you.’

  ‘Come on!’ Sharat exclaimed. ‘Don’t tell me you made some kind of karmic connection between those two things – that’s nonsense!’

  ‘Well, not if you’re harbouring the kind of guilt I was,’ Neha said wryly.

  ‘Imagine carrying that pain around on your own all these years,’ Sharat said, his voice deeply exasperated. He continued, ‘Do you understand that’s the hurtful bit, Neha? The fact that you thought I wouldn’t understand.’

  She lifted his hand to her face and kissed it. ‘Of course, I’m sorry now that I made that assumption, Sharat. If I’d only had the courage to tell you earlier, I could have saved myself so much heartache. But the longer I left it, the more difficult it became to say. Now that it’s all come out, of course, I wonder how I couldn’t see that you would never blame me, or fail to understand …’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about understand, because there I was thinking you might be having an affair,’ Sharat laughed suddenly.